Anyone still fishing the Brule?

[Quickstrike]

With one week left in the season, the steelhead finally started to bite. The water is still low and clear but I managed to pull a bunch of fish on small princies and hair's ears. With hunting season in full swing it sure is nice to get some water to myself. Anyone else still fishing?

[Tom Linderholm]

With the tips you gave me at work I will be doing a AM solo trip before I climb in the stand for the evening. Thanks!!!

Musta been a busy one after I left, see your on the guest comp during prime dinner service. Get back to work!!!

[Quickstrike]

actually i was on my laptop behind the bar. good luck today and i hope you can keep a spot secret better then i can!

[outdoor ran]

Tom, it took me a few seconds to realize what I was looking at in your pic. Cool pic, that with camera phone? Start applying and in 5-7 years you'll be able to let the arrow fly. Lots of bears roaming around here.

[Tom Linderholm]

Kent don't worry I never made it down to the river today. Ended up scouting a new stand behind my house instead and found a hearty scrapeline leading to a rather impressive rub 20 yrds behind my house. Needless to say stand is up and resting for Sunday. Get in touch with me about hitting it again I have my gear locked and loaded in my trunk.

Ran, that pic was taken from a cell phone the very first time I ever planted my butt in a tree earlier this season. We have seen 3 seperate bear this year on our land and that one would have made a great rug running about 300-350. Permits have been applied for and now we are just waiting for our day.

[Swamp Scooter]

We fished the brule about a week ago. did well on steelies. Landed 3 in 7 casts. got them on crawlers, still. Did not want flies much. No browns or salmon to be seen but lake run fish seemed to be moving in. All different sizes.

Question for anyone: Do these Fall run fish also run in the Spring or are then a different group?

[mwal]

The fall run steelies winter over in the river. The run in the spring is very small compared to the fall fish.

Mwal

[Swamp Scooter]

So they all load up in the river for winter?? Seems like it would be a hard place to find food with that many fish going around. With the water being so low lots of good holes are shallow.

[Quickstrike]

about 90% of the steelies run in the fall and can start spawning around the end of winter and go into the spring. we actually caught some spawned out fish on opener last year. a lot of the spawning of fall run takes place upstream from highway 2 where they are protected until well after they are done spawning. It seems most of the spring run fish stop to spawn around pine tree and high landing. There is plenty of water and food in the river for this amount of fish. The Brule takes between 8 and 12 thouusand lake run fish every fall. That leaves us with under 500 lake run fish per mile. (which is still pretty good ) However, there are streams that are much smaller that can hold up to nearly 10,000 trout per mile in the south western part of the state. These trout are a lot smaller, but thats a lot of fish.

I fished hard this week and caught quite a few nice steelies on small nymphs and even got a few on white scuds. Hope you guys had a good season and see you on the water next spring.

[thistlekicker]

another thing to remember is with the water so cold these fish don't eat all that much.

[Swamp Scooter]

HHHHMMMMM...

Now I see why you guys fish so far South on the opener. thanks for the info.