Quote Originally Posted by ekim22 View Post
When (what month) will I start seeing boats on the river again and what will be the first thing people start fishing for?
Check with the Corp of Engineers about when they start opening the St Anthony Locks to boat traffic. If I heard right, this coming week they start opening shipping channels at Duluth for barge traffic and there is some correlation for barge traffic here in the Cities. And check with whoever runs the Coon Rapids Dam. That is a control on river levels above it and barge channel flow below it. The public works department in Elk River is another source to check out.

There will be lots of junk, some of it real dangerous to boats in the runoff from spring melt, so early outings need to be especially careful. Also watch out for forming or breaking up of ice jams.

The last few years, we have been both on the river and starting to fish receding ice edges in some lakes by close to this time for crappies and bluegills. There is a very important pre-spawn crappie run around here that is heavily fished and it actually starts before ice out in a lot of waters and then just keeps getting better. Carp also show up early, and the first channel cats to come up out of the winter holes on the Mississippi are also taken in March, too. The first sheephead start somewhere in there. Walleyes, bass and pike also show up as bonus fish, BUT season is not open for them until in May, and it is not legal to target them even as catch and release out of season, except for special autumn rules on smallmouths. There are also muskies in the big muddy but season for them does not open until June. The ones I have seen don't make the 48" minimum size for keeping anyway, although most muskie fisherman release every one whenever they take em. In general the first fish targeted by most river fishermen in the spring around here are the channel cats and carp.

Last spring we had the highest city lake water levels I had ever seen, but last summer was so dry that by fall we had the lowest levels I had ever seen. Fish patterns were all over the place. The river was more stable. How they handle the barge channels down stream from you on the Mississippi will affect the river upstream into your area. A whole lot depends on how the snow melt goes.

A few years ago snow melt came so hard that the Corps opened both gates on the top two locks at St Anthony falls resulting in a standing wave on the apron at the top lock that was easily 6-10 feet high from top to bottom of the trough with a spray curtain probably 40-50 feet high above it. I never saw anything quite like that raw natural power there before. Most years that doesn't happen but it can if the snow melt comes off all at once. They don't very often pass full trees through those locks but they sure did some that spring.

Head of waters which is as far up as the commercial barges generally go is in north Minneapolis some little ways above the St Anthony locks where they service cement plants and scrap metal yards. Lock and dam #1 is actually downstream from the St Anthony Falls pair of locks at the Ford Ave bridge between Minneapolis and St Paul. I guess one could say it is all down hill from there.