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ON THE NORTH SHORE - You don't come up here in April for the weather. When snow isn't falling, rain is, turning North Shore rivers into foamy chutes of spectacular currents. "We had 6 inches last night, just inland a mile," one good-old-boy steelheader said the other morning. Stacked high with snow, the rusty bumper of his old truck carried the proof.
Dave Zentner and I had stumbled onto this fellow while pulling on our waders along Hwy. 61, north of Two Harbors. Overhead, a low gray sky spat snow and sleet, vestiges of the overnight squall. Like Dave and I, fishermen were scattered up and down the Shore looking for big, muscle-bound steelhead. Otherwise, visitors were few. In plate-glass windows of restaurants north and south, signs sagged that read "Closed for the season."
Steelhead are migratory rainbow trout that begin their lives in Minnesota in North Shore rivers and later are nurtured in Lake Superior. At about age 4 they return from the big lake to their birth rivers, drawn by instincts steeped deeply in mystery. Averaging about 24 inches long, and colored bright silver when they re-enter North Shore rivers, steelhead in spring struggle mightily upstream against cascades of raging water. Many swim until barrier falls block their journey, and it's there that hens lay their eggs and bucks fertilize them. Life continues.
My older son, Trevor, was along as well, and the night before, he and I ended a long day of casting up and down the Shore on the Knife River. Reminiscent of the tempestuous day that claimed the Edmund Fitzgerald, weather off the lake was as foreboding as a funeral. Gales folded huge rollers against Superior's craggy shoreline, and our fingertips had long since grown numb. But we hadn't landed a fish all day, and we fantasized well into evening about new pushes of steelhead entering the river, their movements triggered perhaps by nuanced changes in water temperature. Or whatever. When we cased our rods, sitting on our truck's tailgate, darkness enveloped us.
Now it was the next morning and Trevor already had climbed down into the rocky canyon of the waterway we had chosen to fish. Dave and I followed amid the cacophonous din of this river wild. We wanted not to make any false steps here. The granite outcroppinigs were ankle-breakers, and staying upright was also the best way not to break a fly rod.
Trevor had found no joy in the first pool he fished, but he stayed with it still longer. Dave arranged himself riverside just downstream of Trevor, and soon tied on a yarn fly he hoped might entice a big fish to bite. If one did, hunger might be less a reason than annoyance, because many steelhead that enter a river in spring are less interested in eating than procreating. Still, brightly colored egg-pattern flies often do the trick, and Dave gave one a go.
In some ways, the North Shore's heyday of steelheading is past. Years ago, so many fish ran up rivers from the Lester near Duluth to the Brule north of Grand Marais that anglers could keep three, if they wished. Now, no wild steelhead are allowed in an angler's possession; a restriction that seems not to dissuade any of the devoted from pursuing a fish whose power, beauty and determination are rivaled by few others.
Moving upstream of Trevor, I made a first cast. This was just below a river-wide declension over which endless water tumbled. Worn smooth, rocks that formed the river's bumpy bottom alternately showed and hid themselves through the clear water. Casting and casting again, I revived fantasies of the evening before about upstream movements of fish.
The day would not warm a whit, nor would it grow brighter. Thirty-eight degrees at sunup, and about that at sundown. But steelhead were the attraction here, as was the picturesque flowage of water from upstream drainages so vast they could only be imagined -- places where snowmelt circled balsams and birch, and white and red pines, before trickling downhill.
I made a cast, danced my fly through a current seam, and cast again. Sensing a tug, and thinking it perhaps only a snag, I set the hook nonetheless. As quickly, the turning of a fish's head was telegraphed to my hand through my line, and I knew I had one on. I reefed back on the long rod, setting the hook again.
Fighting a big fish in fast water focuses the mind in the manner of a surprise attack, during which all thought bows to the heart-thumping task at hand. I yelled downstream for the net, but neither Trevor nor Dave heard me over the river's roar. Shouting again, I got Trevor's attention, and soon, net in hand, he staggered toward me atop the minefield of boulders that separated us.
The fish appeared every bit a trophy when I finally brought it to hand. Flush with eggs, "it" was a hen, and we cradled her gently before freeing her easily into a quiet eddy that buffeted the main river current.
Two days, one fish.
But one good fish, and now the weather, still seasonably dank, never seemed so pleasant.
Dennis Anderson
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