Small water, big fun: Red Lake serves up fast action for rainbow trout

RED LAKE INDIAN RESERVATION, Minn.--The tiny jig tipped with a piece of crawler barely had hit the bottom of the lake some 40 feet below when it got smacked by a rainbow trout.

There was no guesswork; this fish meant business. As fishing trips go, they don't start much faster.

There'd be plenty more of the same in the next four hours.

On a lake we had mostly to ourselves.

The fast start was no surprise to Daris Rosebear. A guide for Seven Clans Casino near Red Lake, Minn., Rosebear, 25, is used to fast starts--especially when it comes to rainbow trout. While Lower Red Lake and the tribal portion of Upper Red are closed to anglers who aren't members of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, more than 25 lakes in reservation boundaries are open to anglers who buy a special license and fish with a tribal guide.

Seven Clans Casino offers guided trips on the small lakes, which hold nine different species including walleyes, largemouth bass, crappies, bluegills, pike and trout. The wilderness lakes see very little pressure by tribal anglers, who prefer to fish the "big lake" for walleyes--a key source of income on the reservation--and provide a unique fishing opportunity only a couple of hours from Grand Forks.

Four of the lakes are managed for trout--rainbows and brookies--but a fifth lake also has lake trout, denizens of cold, deep water that have been known to tip the scales at 15 to 20 pounds.

New opportunity

Historically, the season for nontribal anglers closed at the end of October on the small reservation lakes, but in 2012, the Red Lake Tribal Council passed a resolution opening the rainbow and brook trout lakes to winter fishing by nonresident anglers who hire a guide.

Walleye, bass and panfish lakes still close at the end of October, as does the lake managed for lake trout, but the year-round rainbow and brook trout fishing has been a popular offering, Rosebear said.

It's also a way to keep the income flowing throughout the long winter months. There are worse things, after all, than getting paid to fish.

"I'm having a lot of fun guiding," Rosebear said. "It's been a blast."

The beauty of small lake fishing is the flexibility it offers even on windy days. Monday, a stiff southeast wind would have meant miserable conditions on larger bodies of water.

But here on Kinney Lake, a bluish-green gem covering only 30 acres, the wooded shoreline provided ample protection from the wind, and conditions were favorable for drifting.

Rosebear worked the wind to keep the boat in 30 feet to 50 feet of water and used the electric motor to steer the boat back for the next drift. Trout lakes in the reservation are limited to electric motors.

Every drift, it seemed, would produce four to six rainbow trout, all of which we released for others to enjoy. Unlike walleyes and panfish, which can be finicky, Rosebear says the trout tend to cooperate most of the time.

No wonder, then, they're a favorite among anglers who fish the small lakes. They might be small, these lakes, but they make up for it in action--and variety.

"We can fish nine different species in eight hours within a full day of fishing, or you can jump from lake to lake for a half day of fishing," Rosebear said. "A lot of people like to go for the trout or the bluegills and crappies."

Regular stocking

Pat Brown, tribal fisheries biologist for the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, said two of the trout lakes, Kinney and Island, are stocked annually, while the other two--Heart and Squaw-Smith, which cover only 15 acres--are stocked every other year.

Using stock from the Genoa National Fish Hatchery in Wisconsin, the band stocks 5,000 trout--a mix of rainbows and brook trout--every year in Kinney and Island lakes, Brown said. The rainbows average 8 to 10 inches when stocked, while brookies are 6 to 8 inches, Brown said. Living on a diet of mainly insects and freshwater shrimp, the trout do well.

"I bet some of those fish can get to 8 to 10 years old," Brown said. "We do get trophies pretty much on an annual basis, and they're definitely not the fish we're stocking that year."

The trout lakes have gotten more attention since 2012, Brown said, but the increased fishing pressure doesn't appear to have had an impact on the population--especially with the annual stockings.

"We're not fishing (them) out by any means," Brown said. "They're still catching some nice fish. I know of at least one guy who caught a trophy brook trout and trophy rainbow in the same day."

Shifting gears

After a couple of hours of near nonstop rainbow action, including several trout in the 17- to 19-inch range, Rosebear suggested a change of scenery and steered the small boat toward a beaver house that was a known hangout for brook trout, Kinney Lake's other species.

He anchored in about 10 feet of water, and we pitched jigs toward shore or jigged vertically below the boat. The brook trout, most of them stocked earlier this spring, were 6 to 10 inches long; we also caught several "bonus" rainbows in shallow water, including a 20-incher that was our biggest fish of the day.

In four hours, we released some 40 rainbow trout and brook trout--a conservative estimate--on a day that would have been too windy to fish many lakes.

No problem here.

"The trout stay active all year-round as long as you get out here before noon," Rosebear said. "They slow down in the afternoon."

That certainly was the case on this day, but after four hours, we'd caught our fill anyway.

"The wind is blowing 15 to 20 mph today, and we're doing good," Rosebear said. "It's a lot of fun out here."

That it was.

• If you go: Seven Clans Casino offers both full- (eight-hour) and half-day trips for nine different species on the small reservation lakes, and lunch and gear are included. For more information, call (888) 679-2501 ext. 16000 or check out the website at redlakeoutdoors.net.

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