Submitted by spree (ip 12.109.78.2)

Date Fished: 6/15/2002
Water Temperature: 65
Water Clarity: 1 foot

june 15-21 birch lake st. louis county, minnesota nearest town is babbit

tannic-stained lake river system. near the edge of the boundary waters canoe area and superior national forest. we fished the southeast portion of the birch system.

from what i read/researched it was supposed to be a smallmouth sleeper lake. no doubt they are in there, but i think they were concentrated around river inlets/rapids/moving water. there was one location like this and another group did very well on smallies, they took about 10 fish out of a small stream. unfortunately they filleted them all! the largest was a 19in (what a shame), and second big fish was a 17in. (average size was 11in). unsurprisingly, fishing the same stream afterwards was mediocre - i caught about 4 more smallies in the 12in range (AND RETURNED THEM BACK TO THE STREAM). very disappointing :( to say the least. fishing was only good for a couple hours shortly after sunrise.

walleye fishing was extremely tough. primary technique - veritical jig presentation with large leeches in the 8-12 ft depth range. briefly attempted trolling jerkbaits in 8-10 ft along the 10ft depth break, nothing. trolled spinner rigs in same depth with leeches, nothing. fluke of the trip were two 13 in walleyes that hit spinnerbaits cast into shallow water (2 ft). another group ran into this same behavior and landed a 25 in 'eye on a spinnerbait! minn. dnr says the average size of the walleye in birch is 16.4in, i have my doubts since the average we saw was around 11in (and there is a 13in+ slot to boot!). after a week of fishing we just made the 6 fish/person limit (3 people) on the last day. this was fishing too, no drinking or screwing around - on the water from 8:30am to sunset. strangely, night fishing was not productive at all.

northern fishing was very tough. lack of sufficient vegetation in the bays made for poor pike conditions. largest caught was a 22.5 with the average size being 18 (snakes). primary lure - spinnerbaits.

we ran into the occasional rock bass while jigging for walleye. no bluegills or crappie, although another group ran into a few black crappies - the largest of which was a 13 in.

weather temps - low 80's high, morning lows in the high 50's. north country weather. one night of thunderstorms (oddly enough the few hours leading up to the storm was the "hot" time with a total of 5 eater size walleye caught in several hours).

maybe we just got a bad spell since people were saying that this year was a late spring. any locals/veterans have any comments on this system?

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