Fishing in Minnesota

Sportfishing is more than recreational pursuit in the Land of 10,000 Lakes; it is a way of life. About 1.4 million fishing licenses are sold in Minnesota every year, and about one in four residents own a fishing license. Every year on the second weekend in May, an estimated 1 million people participate in the general fishing opener, a day regarded more as a celebration of spring than the beginning of the fishing season. Sportfishing tourism is among the top five industries in the state.

With its bounty of water and its northern forests, Minnesota has come to epitomize the northwoods fishing experience. The phrase “going up North”—a standard in Minnesota vernacular—means piling into the family car for a weekend at the cabin, usually to fish for walleye, northern pike, bass, or panfish. Perhaps the most enduring postcard image of Minnesota is that of a canoe floating serenely on a remote northern lake, its occupant holding a fishing rod.

But Minnesota offers much more than northwoods lakes. The Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area boasts one of the nation’s largest and most diversified urban fisheries. Twin Cities lakes are populated with trophy muskies (in excess of 30 pounds), feisty walleye of all sizes, unlimited numbers of panfish, and largemouth bass up to 7 pounds. Lake Minnetonka, which is within sight of downtown Minneapolis, became the darling of competitive bass angling in the mid-1990s, in part because it yielded catches of bass with an exceptional average weight of 4 pounds.

Lake Superior, the world’s largest body of freshwater, abuts the far northeastern edge of Minnesota; this deep and cold lake is home to chinook and coho salmon, two species of rainbow trout (steelhead and Kamloops), and a burgeoning lake trout population.

Minnesota also contains the headwaters of the Mississippi River. As the river winds south from Itasca State Park, it develops into a world-class fishery for smallmouth bass and walleye, even in the urbanized stretches within Minneapolis and St. Paul. The renewed fishery there is due to dramatic improvements in water quality.

The St. Croix River, a federally designated wild and scenic river, supports thriving numbers of smallmouth bass, walleye, crappie, and muskies. Several other major river systems—notably the Minnesota, St. Louis, and Rainy Rivers—are established walleye fisheries.

For trout lovers, the southeast corner of the state offers hundreds of miles of streams full of browns, brookies, and rainbows. Inland streams along Lake Superior’s North Shore hold native populations of brook trout, while dozens of northern inland lakes supply anglers with brook, rainbow, and lake trout. Minnesota enjoys a large and growing population of fly fishing enthusiasts, despite the state’s obsession with walleye, the official state fish.

For true trophy seekers, Minnesota has some of North America’s finest muskie waters; indeed, two fish exceeding 50 pounds in 1996 came close to bumping off the 54-pound state record. Large northern pike are also found in select trophy waters.

In the winter, anglers turn their attention to ice fishing, which is a story unto itself. Some lakes support entire communities of heated fish houses. Minnesota is also the birthplace of the modern portable ice fishing shelters that have revolutionized the way many anglers spend their winters.

More than 1 million acres of roadless forests and nonmotorized lakes are at the disposal of backcountry anglers in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Most canoeists regard a Boundary Waters trip incomplete without a sizzling meal of fried walleye.

Unheralded but equally important are the dozens of lesser rivers, hundreds of smaller prairie lakes, and thousands of farm ponds—there are actually 15,292 lakes and nearly 15,000 miles of rivers and stream in the state—that provide opportunities for all manner of warmwater species.