St. Croix Trout Streams

[pkv]

Yeah, probably was the Stillwater Bigfoot.

[grate8]

pawlenty

[waterbound]

Well it looks like I'm going to be fishing the St Croix area streams on Saturday. I'm not entirely sure where I'm going yet, but I have some ideas. Would anyone be interested in meeting to try and catch a few trouts? I won't be able to get to that side of town until about 1 in the afternoon or so, but that still leaves plenty of time to fish!

[Scudly]

Info from Brian Nerbonne metro stream HI specialist.

Brown's Creek is stocked annually with yearling browns, which are the majority of fish caught in the stream aside for the occasional carryover fish.  There is good access at the highway 95/96 junction near the mouth of Brown's Creek into the St. Croix, and is also where the best trout numbers are.  We own or have easement on a long reach of the river, and the scenery is really beautiful there as well.  Because the trout population tends not to have high carryover, harvest is allowed.

HTH and good luck this weekend!

[the man]

so who fished the st. croix trout streams and how did you do.

[waterbound]

I fished one and had most of my luck on a gold crankbait. I caught a lot of browns and hooked more that got off. I had a brook trout that looked to be about 12 inches hit the lure almost as soon as it hit the water and start jumping on the surface but he got off too. I ended up taking home one brown and one brook trout, both about 9 inches.

[gooty]

The DNR does NOT stock the old mill pond, its all natural baby. So please let those little bad boys go

[JBMasterAngler]

I was in marine on st. croix today and I walked down to the old boat launch, checked out mill creek down there but didn't try fishing it. From the croix to the waterfall it's fast and shallow and doesn't have any pools. Wouldn't doubt there's a trout or 2 in there, but it didn't look very fishable. Anyway, drove up county road 4 to the state park access. The driveway to the gate said no parking How are you supposed to access the park/trail if you can't park there? Or was that not the right driveway to the creek?

[Mike_Top]

I drove through Marine last week, and had my fishing rod with, so I decided to check out the Old Mill Creek. I parked on cty road 4 at the state park entrance, just west of the ponds right off of 4. There is parking for about 2 vehicles, and a quarter mile walk down a trail that leads to 2 feeder creeks into Old Mill. The creeks were about 2 feet across, waaaay too small to fish...so I followed the creeks upstream and downstream looking for a pool or bigger water, but ran into a fence and just decided to leave. Disappointing...I'm wondering where you would fish the Old Mill creek???

[MNcz]

From South to North: I used the MN DNR trout map: http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/maps/trout_streams/south/map_19.pdf to try out Northeast Washington and Southeast Chisago counties today. I'm a novice all the way, just started fishing, but these are not easy to get to, and I'd say about 90% of what it shows they stock on that map was on private property. I noticed earlier before I went someone mentioned getting rocks chucked at them, and I have a feeling I know exactly where that might've been. There is a long dead end street when you take the first right turn (to follow 4, turning North) when going up the hill away from Marine on St. Croix. Then County Road 4 takes another right angle turn (West) but you can go straight on a dirt road. If you plow through to the end of this dead end street there is a spot right next to this Old Mill Creek, but it looks very much like private property, and William O'Brien State Park's official map seems to match up with that plot there, at the end of the dead end, though bordered by "state park" yellow signs is private property. So I didn't try fishing there. On one of those little random streets going UP the hill on 4, if you take a right before the bridge that goes over the stream (same trout stream I do believe) on the little streets there's a school, and I think there's a pretty decent access there just past the school. Someone's graduation party was going down though and cars were parked all over there so I didn't want to bug anyone and didn't fish there today. Not sure if anyone has had success on the tail end of that same stream, which dumps into downtown marine then into the St. Croix. I fished around the spot it runs into the St. Croix.

Couldn't quite find "unnamed stream" at Otisville, declined going down the dirt road this time.

There is a sign that shows "fishing easement" by the next "unnamed stream" up the road but there is NOO parking around and I was not about to park on MN 95. I took the only dirt back to where it ended and no stream in sight there. Actually this one I saw the easement sign but didn't really find the stream!

Next unnamed stream (between forked unnamed stream shown and MN 242 (Osceola bridge) I didn't even try. Didn't show up in my DeLorme MN Atlas.

North of County Road 26 which is 2 mi. North of MN 242 I saw a road on the atlas that led back to this "unnamed stream" and I turned around after I got a football field or 2 past the "private" something or other sign. It ended at 2 houses. So no kind of access I could see on this one either.

Franconia is an actual little village down there. And it's got a 1 lane bridge between 2 regular sized residential properties. This is the only near public place I could find and I didn't fish there because any land I would've been standing on would've been private

Hope someone has a helpful tip for where to stream fish Washington County! I had worse luck scouting than any other counties I've tried. Fillmore and Houston are rockin! Lots of spots in those 2 far from the city counties.

[MN BassFisher]

I live in the Metro (Ramsey Co.) and I've fished a few streams while camping down in SE Minnesota. I loved it and was looking today at the streams located around me, sad to hear that they aren't very fishable...

[MN BassFisher]

I think I'm going to take my ultralight out next week sometime for a shot at some trout around the metro, I don't really care about size. As I will not be keeping any, I just like catching new fish that I'm not very experienced at.

[MN BassFisher]

So after work I wanted to get out and fish a stream or two before the storms hit and possibly screw them up. I live in White Bear Lake so I grabbed a couple small spinners, hooks, worms, and my ultralight and took off east on HWY 96 until I reached the intersection of 96 and 95. I found the parking designated for people fishing. I found a set of steps and walked down them til I got here...

from the tunnel, I kept walking upstream for about an hour. Searching for holes that had any potential to hold a fish, with no much luck. I casted into a handful of holes, if you could call them that, to no avail. I walked upstream for over an hour waiting for it to get deeper or maybe wider, never happened. I read that downstream of Stone Bridge Trail you'll find the highest population of browns but from what I saw, I found that hard to believe that many trout would inhabit this lower part. I didn't quite make it to the Stone Bridge Trail and I started right where the creek flows under HWY 96. It was a pretty cool and scenic walk upstream but I wish I could have found a few trout. It left me with a decent amount of mosquito bites and an even great appreciation for the streams down in SE Minnesota! A few other pictures that I took.

[so haaad]

I think that first picture is what you'd call a "metro trout stream". Sounds like you still had a scenic fun hike though.

Personally I think it's well worth it to get a WI license and fish the Kinni/Rush area. There's a lot of quality water within an hour of the White Bear area.

[MN BassFisher]

Yeah, the stretch I saw of Brown's may hold a few yearlings but I wouldn't say it was fishable. I do have a WI license, I would just need to get a WI Trout Stamp because I don't have that.