The reason for this is trout are very temperature cautious.  During the summer the surface and shallows are often too warm for the trout.  Usually they are down cooling their fins in deep water.  But in the spring and, now, in the fall, these stocked trout move shallow and cruise in search of food.  From now until season closes the shore fishing will get much better.

Another reason trout, especially brook trout, move shallow in the fall is that is when they spawn.  No natural reproduction has occurred in lakes or pits, but the brookies sometimes go through mock spawning runs. In iron ore pits you’ll often see groups of male brookies escorting a female, all of them showing spawning behavior.  And when you cut them open to clean them, the eggs in the females are mature, and the males are full of milt.

These schooled trout can get very competitive and will try to beat each other to each little morsel of food.  Watch for groups of roving trout just under the surface.  When you see them, cast a bright spinner or bait right into them and let it settle.  Many times it will be race to see which trout can nail it first.
You will find that large schools of trout are more competitive than small groups.  In fact, bunches of six trout or less may ignore your lure completely.  In that case, just keep casting to them and bother them until one can’t resist any longer.

It takes a fast rod and accurate caster to be really good at this kind of fishing.  Use an ultralight spinning rod and 4-pound test clear monofilament line.  Heavier line makes it difficult to cast light lures very far.

My favorite lure is a small orange Worden’s Worry spinner with a silver blade. Any similar spinner will work, too.  Live bait can be really deadly.  Worms and crawlers are the most popular, but I’ll bet grasshoppers would work fine. Some people even use “grocery baits”, such as marshmallows and canned corn kernels.

So if you enjoy fast and easy fishing, fall trout fishing is the thing for you.  A list of managed trout lakes and their locations is available at MN DNR website.

We liked to send a congrats out to Craig and his son, while hunting in central Minnesota, who both just recently harvested wild turkeys. Great job guys…lets hear about it on the RRR website.

The time of year for the boyz at Davis J. Hennes is also exciting. We’re closer than ever to unveiling a product for all hunters and anglers to use for a lifetime.  We hope you can wait a little bit longer, it will be worth it.

Prez. @ Davis J. Hennes, LLC

What has me most excited, however, is that nights are getting cooler, the days a little shorter and hunting season is just around the corner.  Not to mention that September is a great month for Walleye!  I feel like it has been a long summer and am itching for fall in the outdoors.  I’ve read how many hunters are setting up their deer stands, checking their field cameras and getting everything ready for another great season.

We want to encourage all to hunt and fish safely.  Remember that coming home is important, but not as important as coming home with some great stories!  Think about your experience in the field while you are out there this season.  Take an extra look around.  Breath deeply.  Be thankful for the world God has given us and the freedoms we have to enjoy it.  Be open to the inspiration that comes with isolation and communion with nature.  We encourage all of you to take a pencil and some paper and write down your thoughts.  Not only for yourself, but for your posterity.

Those of us who have parents and grandparents who enjoyed the outdoors knows what it’s like to sit around and swap the tails of the trail and hear about hunting in times gone by.  Now is a good time to start preserving your own memories!

Good & Safe Hunting
The Partners at Rod and Rifle Rag

On one particular trip we had 4 adult leaders and several kids crammed into 2 Suburbans and we were headed up the mountains to do a little spelunking. Like on most trips, a few of the kids, and one particular leader, had brought their fishing rods in the hopes of catching that nights dinner.

I was driving the trailing vehicle as we wound up a narrow, dirt, mountain road that had a cascading creek running beside it. After driving on this road for about 45 minutes, the truck in front suddenly came to a stop on the side of the road, our adult angler jumped out, grabbed is rod from the back and hopped down the bank to the creek.

Confused, I stopped the car, and went to talk to the driver of the first vehicle. As it turns out, for the previous hour our fishing buddy had been talking up his fishing skills with outlandish claims. No one in the car was buying his stories and were giving him a hard time. Finally, in frustration, our friend told the driver to “stop right now, and I will catch a brook trout in that stream running along the road in 5 casts or less.” So, without any hesitation, they stopped.

We looked down into the creek in time to see him make his first cast. To our amazement, he reeled in what was probably about an 8″ brooky. Thankfully, as he lifted it out of the water, it fell off the line. We insisted that it didn’t count and he had 4 casts left. On his fifth cast he brought in a slightly smaller, but good looking brook trout. He let it go, threw his rod in the truck, and continued to boast all the way to the campsite without anyone else saying another word.

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This post was submitted by Doug.

My wife and kids (two boys 10 and 13) wanted to go Salmon fishing, as there was a Coho window open in front of the beach. My dad came and we took the boat north, around Bush Point, then close to the beach and anchored up.

It was a late afternoon trip, more to enjoy the scenery than anything else. We had two salmon rods and two trout rods fishing with “buzz bombs” aka Pt. townsend darts. Nice. Sunny. Warm. Took the trout rods ’cause they were in the boat, and figuring they would be a nice match for the small resident coho.

Well, a school of Chinook swam through the darts, inhaling two of them. My wife had one on a Salmon rod, and my 10 year old had one on a trout rod. I didn’t know who to help first…..wife who had never caught anything larger than a trout in her life, or my son, who loves to fish.

My son reeled the Chinook to the boat….a lot of times these fish swim up to the boat, take a look, then take off….and this is exactly what happened. He was holding the rod up, had the drag cranked down, but the fish was swimming away like a train. I tried to apply additional pressure to the fish by pinching the line between my fingers, but as soon as I had done that, and was starting to mention to my dad that we better chase this fish, the line reached the bottom of the spool and “PINK” (this was the sound of the line breaking at the knot attaching the line to the spool). My son had this shocked look on his face, and I thought he was going to cry. I said “I’ll be right back….

Went over to my wife that was fighting the Chinook salmon on the salmon rod, she was doing a great job with my did helping with instructions. Several time she said “it’s gone…” but you could see the line getting closer to the boat, and we’d shout “reel! reel faster!”. After a bit, my wife was getting tired, but she brought the fish to the boat and my dad netted it. The fish was about 18 lbs, a nice fish, but the season for Chinooks was closed, so we couldn’t keep it. I looked at my dad….and we read each others minds….should we keep it? Is anyone looking?…but then made the decision to let the fish go. I gently removed the hook from the mouth of the fish, kept it in the net for a minute, took the picture in my mind, and let the fish go. She (it was a hen) swam away healthy.

Gave my wife a hug and said congratulations on her first salmon, then remembered I still had a job to do with my son. I went over to him, and said that it was a privelige to hook one of these fish, and an honor to be spooled by one. There will be more.

To this day, we still laugh about the fish that got away.

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This post was submitted by rick stallbaum.

Mirror Lake was a mountain lake in the High Uintas of Utah. After what seemed like a couple of days of drive (probably no more than an couple of hours), we arrived at the location. Mirror Lake was a relatively small lake surrounded by pines and quaking aspen. There was evidence of beaver activity.

Fairly early on, I cast out and apparently hooked the big one. It was fighting. Another member of our party on the opposite side of this small lake cast out and also hooked something.

While we were both fighting, the “big one” surfaced. The beaver. I had hooked it’s tail, and the other guy had hooked something on it’s head. He wasn’t very happy. He thrashed around a bit and the lines broke.

But Mr. Beaver got even. That day we had caught several fish and left them on a line in the cold lake. We walked to another near by lake planning to come back and clean the fish before heading home. By the time we got there, the fish and line were gone. Since there weren’t any other people up there, we’re pretty sure Mr. Beaver had himself a nice fish dinner of rainbow trout.

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This post was submitted by Paul.

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This post was submitted by Peaches.

I was on a camping/party excursion with some friends and acquaintances (no names will be mentioned to protect the innocent). The campground was on the Mississippi River. Some people had brought fishing equipment and I asked to use it for abit. Permission was granted and I grab a rod and some beers to head down the bank of the river to wet my line and my whistle. Reaching what I thought to be a good location, I set up shop. The afternoon/early evening was nice and I was enjoying myself even with no bites on the line. Now the bait/lure I was using probably had no business being on the line for where I was, but I didn’t care, I was just hanging out.

Time went bye and I heard some rustling behind me, as though someone was coming. I thought it was someone I was camping with, no big deal, hopefully bringing me some more beers. Well I was wrong, I looked over my shoulder as they approached and saw Mr. DNR Conservation Officer! We talked for abit about the fishing, weather, blah blah blah. He asked me for my fishing license. Well, I was in a pickle since I didn’t have one. We talked for awhile longer, with no way of me getting out of this one.

Results of this was a warning, confiscation of the rod (which wasn’t even mine) and humiliation going back to camp. I paid the guy who’s rod it was for my mistake. I’ve always, always bought a fishing/hunting license for whatever I’m up to.

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This post was submitted by CRUSTY.

We got up early, got to the lakes edge around sunrise and were fishing away. Being young scouts, most of us didn’t have any of our own gear so our scout leader broke open is tackle box and identified the lures we could use (obviously they were the “its’ okay if I never see them again” lures). A quick instruction about knots and casting and we were off.

Me and another scout, now a Major in the Air Force, had to share one of our leaders old rods. I began. After several casts with nothing to show for it, my leader informed me that one of the reasons he let us use that lure is because it was the one lure in the box he had never caught anything with.

I almost immediately gave up and handed the rod to my buddy, Ty, who, was eager to prove to the leader that it’s the fisherman, not the lure that makes the difference. He is so naive, I thought.

Not expecting much, we all turned our attention to other people. But shortly after his first cast, he is jumping around trying to get help with the fish on his line. Unbelievable. One cast and he caught something with a useless lure. Turns our, the lure truly was useless. He had in fact caught a nice lake trout by hooking the gill. Dumb luck.

He was so excited about his success that he quickly got the fish off the hook and onto the stringer and was ready for another cast. He apparently didn’t hear me when I told him to wait. I was standing right behind him.

At first, I just thought some large insect had bounced off my cheek. It wasn’t until Ty started wildly waving the rod around to try and see his line in the water that I realized that it was his lure, still covered with fish guts, and it was connected to my face about 1/2″ below my right eye.

At first it didn’t hurt much, but before long it was throbbing. I don’t know if it was the velocity of the cast, or the waving of the rod, but 2 of the tri-hook prongs were deeply set in my cheek and we were hours away from professional medical help.

My leader and I decided that the best course of action was to have him take the hooks out there at camp and then I could get to a doctor later that evening when the trip was over. No big deal, he thought.

With the barbs and how deep the hooks were implanted, he couldn’t quite figure out a good way to pull the hooks out backwards so he decided to clip the individual hooks off with wire cutters and push the hooks through. I knew I was in trouble when the pain from him just trying to cut the hooks ripped through my face.

Well, after many tears, screaming and some blood, I had 4 nice holes in my face. For about a year and a half afterwords, those four holes served as a reminder every time I looked into the mirror, don’t stand behind the guy with the rod.

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This post was submitted by Doug.

The year was 1997; I was seventeen and already had quite a few years fishing under my belt. The tournament had three classes; walleye, pan fish, and northern. Dad and I were in it for the Walleye (of course). Shotgun start at 8am Saturday morning we all sped off on our boats to our favorite spot. It started out as a nice morning… but unfortunately it turned windy, cold and rainy by noon. We fished until we could no longer feel our fingertips, went back to warm up, and then back out for more. Not a single fish was caught on Saturday.

Sunday morning we went back out on the lake… same weather, I was still frozen from the day before, not to mention my clothes were still a little damp. FINALLY a little luck… I caught about a 1-1/2lb walleye. That fish helped me warm up for about 45-50 seconds! We trolled for what seemed like hours, spotting fish on the hummingbird but not catching squat. Around 11:00am we trolled near another team and asked them how they did. They said they had their limit, and the biggest one was around 5lbs… we were baffled and continued changing lures as much as possible to find what they were biting on. I was frozen stiff and asked my dad if we could go in on several occasions. He said “give it another half hour, I know there’s fish down there, if we could just catch a couple we can go in.” Another five minutes passed and BAMM… I got slammed with a great hit. I fought the fish for what seemed like hours (more than likely a couple minutes) and dad finally netted my 8lb 12oz walleye.

I warmed up quickly after that, and although we found out what they were biting on, didn’t catch anything else before we came in for the end of the tournament.

At the ‘awards ceremony’ we asked the other team how much they really had… the one guy said “we didn’t have squat… that teaches me to lie”

We won the tournament with 2 walleyes, but I’d have to say that’s my greatest memory of any fishing trip with my dad!

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This post was submitted by Nick.

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This post was submitted by Steven.