The Minnesota North Shore is the only steelhead fishery covered here whose season starts with ice going out. Nothing happens until the rivers clear, and the state says so in exactly those terms.
Seasons, limits and licence rules are set by your state agency.
Each bar below spans January to December, with today marked, and draws the quoted sentence underneath it. Where an agency describes a run by season rather than by month, the card carries the sentence without a bar.
The start date is not a date. It is ice out, which the state puts anywhere between late March and early May depending on the year.
The adult traps capture annual spawning runs of adult steelhead in the spring (ice-out in late-March or early-April through July)
Coho, Chinook, pink salmon and both trout, in the same window, ending when the rivers freeze rather than on a date.
many other adult salmonids (i.e., brook and brown trout, coho, chinook, and pink salmon) that spawn in the fall (September through ice-formation in late-October or early-November)
| River | Water temp | Flow | Measured |
|---|---|---|---|
| Knife Rivernear Two Harbors | Loading | Loading | |
| St. Louis Riverat Scanlon | Loading | Loading | |
| Pigeon Riverat Middle Falls near Grand Portage | Loading | Loading |
Source: USGS Water Services (National Water Information System). Instantaneous values service. U.S. Geological Survey data are works of the United States Government and are in the public domain. Gauge list verified 2026-08-24.
Minnesota publishes something no other state covered here does: a written report every Thursday through the spring on how the run is actually going. The 2026 sequence read like a diary of the season, from ice and cold in early April, through high water in the middle of the month, to the run being underway by the twenty third and spawning continuing into mid May. If you want to know what a river is doing this week rather than what it usually does, that is where to look.
Stream conditions and smelt updates, including steelhead run timing, begin once anglers start fishing in North Shore streams. Reports are posted here every Thursday through Memorial Day.
Fish passage counts are published by the programmes that run the counting stations, linked below with what each one reports.
Run windows on this page are quoted from the agency named beside each one. River conditions come from the U.S. Geological Survey and are readings, not forecasts and not fish counts. Fishing seasons, bag limits, gear rules and licence requirements for Minnesota are set by the agency linked here, and a run window is not an open season. For rules, see Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. National picture: every state with a salmon or steelhead run →
Hero image: “Gooseberry Falls, Main Falls, Gooseberry River, North Shore of Lake Superior, Minnesota” by James St. John, CC BY 2.0