2017 Rainy River Conditions

I’m guessing the erratic nature of the last couple days is the ice breaking up. But that’s quite a few miles up river from the rainy.

Going to be an interesting week.

First picture is the Big Fork at Hwy 11 at around 9am this morning(4/3).
Second picture is the Little Fork…Same place same time.

Well, it should clean up nicely for my trip starting next Wednesday. This will be a long 9 days.

Got a friend that works and lives around the Big Fork and the Little Fork. He sent me a couple pictures from today. The first picture is in the town of Little Fork. The second picture is the Big Fork. He said there is a crazy amount of trees in Big Fork.

Ish.

Yikes, those pics don’t look good at all. Stay safe everyone!

Worth the drive up this weekend?

Joe wrote:

Worth the drive up this weekend?

I’ll be making it.

We had 8 boats going and we just backed out. For those that are going I look forward to the pictures so you can rub it in our faces Good luck!

From sat 4/1.

Very nice. Joe, where did you guys plan to stay at? Im looking for a place this weekend.

Any visual reports? Looks like the Little Fork Popped. It dropped several feet.

This is Birchdale yesterday (4/3) evening. My buddy that took the pic of the Little Fork in the town of Little Fork yesterday morning said all that ice by the bridge is now gone.

That seems to make sense to me since both river gauges for the Little and Big Fork’s show the river height decreasing so things must have broke loose.

Thoughts on how this will look by late Friday and Saturday? Heading up for the first time this coming weekend…

Any advice from the experienced guys on this river would be very much appreciated!

Wondering the same as Justin. I made the mistake of taking the trip to Rainy 3 years ago a couple days after the forks broke and it was absolutely worthless. Caught two fish in two days fishing all day.

Plans were to travel up this Thursday-Monday but as of now Thursday is out and am leaning towards switching up plans to fish the Fox if reports dont look promising.

How long the system takes to flush out is the million dollar question imo. I’ve been going up for 10 years, and have had some great trips after the Forks broke and were flushed out. Unfortunately, I don’t recall how long that took, and even if I did there would be a lot of variables that could adjust that timeline (snowpack runoff, any add’tl rain/snow, air temp etc).

Mike W wrote:

Joe, where did you guys plan to stay at? Im looking for a place this weekend.

Mike, we just camp on a guys land we know.

@rsballar6941 – Fox? Is that a river or lake?

JTDuluth wrote:

@rsballar6941 – Fox? Is that a river or lake?

Fox River is in Wisconsin

Some info from today.

https://www.facebook.com/RippingLipwithJasonGrollFishing/

https://www.facebook.com/CQuesnell/

Anybody know if the river is clearing up? ????????

Just an FYI to anyone trying to decide to go up. The Little Fork river is moving twice as much water today than it was one year ago today. It’s near record levels right now.

It is dropping fast and should be near average level by the weekend. But that doesn’t guarantee it will be clean by then.

Just talked with people at Ballard’s said reports are mixed and people are catching fish in the river and lake. Unfortunately since we have a 12 hour drive we will not be coming up. If anyone is still looking for lodging I just canceled a four person cabin at Ballard’s for Thursday (tomorrow) April 6th through Saturday April 9th. Good luck to all who go.

We were up sturgeon fishing out of Wheeler’s Point 4/2-4/4. Fish were still being caught but it seemed like the fishing slowed each day and perhaps not coincidentally there was more debris coming downstream each day. The water was pretty dingy-not quite chocolate milk. Didn’t hear of tons of walleye being caught but we weren’t fishing the same areas.

tg

A friend gave me a report from 4-2 through 4-4. 4 guys were fishing.

Sunday they caught zero fish in the river. They saw one caught.
Monday they caught a couple in the river.
Tuesday they caught a dozen in the lake but all were very small.

No sign of numbers or decent fish from these guys.

gizmoguy wrote:

Any visual reports? Looks like the Little Fork Popped. It dropped several feet.

Anyone have the link to the graphs?

Rainy River at Manitou Rapids

https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?site_no=05133500

Little Fork

https://waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/uv?05131500

Big Fork

https://waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/uv?05132000

Just copy and paste into your web browser.

Also, I saw a post on Facebook from someone up there that most of the debris has moved past Birchdale and most of the river. Probably still pretty messy down by Wheelers. Clarity was around 1-3 inches in the morning but 8-12 inches by the evening out by Birchdale so it’s improving.

rschmidty wrote:

Also, I saw a post on Facebook from someone up there that most of the debris has moved past Birchdale and most of the river. Probably still pretty messy down by Wheelers. Clarity was around 1-3 inches in the morning but 8-12 inches by the evening out by Birchdale so it’s improving.

I also saw that report and was surprised by it.

I have a friend that is up right now fishing out of Birchdale and he said clarity is no where near 8-12″. Said it is still muddy and there is lots of debris under the water. They have not caught a fish yet today.

Mike Stark wrote:

I have a friend that is up right now fishing out of Birchdale and he said clarity is no where near 8-12″. Said it is still muddy and there is lots of debris under the water. They have not caught a fish yet today.

I heard the same. More like 4″.

With the levels dropping so quickly I’d predict that clarity should start to improve by Saturday. I’m betting that water levels should be back to normal by Tuesday.