water temp vs. fish migration

I am always wondering others thoughts on surface water temps in relation to the fish migration on the rainy river.

I’ve been fishing the run for about 12+ years now and for many years it was rule to get up there as soon as it opened, beacuse there were fish in numbers already at Birchdale, not always females, but large numbers of males and with normal, steady weather, the females would be right behind. The last couple of years think have been much different, but for fairly obvious reasons, we’ve had high turbid water, we had the rollers all the way open in I falls in 09, so there is easily something to point blame.

This year the river was clear, and flow was minimal. Lake fish were not in river in any large numbers. Water temps were 32F in AM, 36F by late afternoon, overnight lows for the past week and a half have been sigle digits.

I guess my question / hypothesis is it those darn cold nights that are holding every thing up, if so that changed the other day and with datytime highs near 40 one can only hope somethings gotta give.

And yeah I know seasonality/biological clock is a factor as well.

What ya think about this one?

Are they not there or are they there and not biting? Cold temps = lock jaw

there are fish actively biting, just not large numbers…seems like those fish always roll through in huge waves and are ready to bite (when it’s right). Obviously there are some fish that show up earlier than others, but what triggers that huge push? Or are they already there? I don’t know.

I have been fishing the Rainy about the same time frame as you and your correct about some years ice is still at Frontier and the fish are going nutz, big females too. Other years like last year the mega load of walleyes didn’t show up until almost the season end 14th. I will have to go back into my archives to see what the temps were when those fish migrated, but I know when the river was still iced up it wasn’t 38 degrees.

I am thinking they have a gate at the Gap.

I’ve been doing the run for about that same amount of time as well. There are so many things that go into timing this trip it can drive a guy nuts.

I firmly believe the big girls (lake walleyes..much lighter in color) start showing up at 37-38 degrees water temp and when it hits 40 degrees it’s in full swing for the lake fish.

The problem is there is variables such as precipitation, water elevation and flow that can change things in a heartbeat. I’ve been up there on years where I was chasing the ice toward the lake, but the water temp directly upriver was 38 degrees and pounded the big lake fish. I’ve also been chasing ice when the flow was high and water temps were much lower and did poor for big fish.

With the internet and USGS sites you can now sit on the couch and wait for the conditions to get pretty close to ideal….but about that time you get a bunch of runoff and the river muddies up and it’s over!

In a nutshell I do believe water temp has ALOT to do with when the lake fish begin arriving in big numbers…it’s just the longer you wait for the temps to get up there the more chance you take of the Fork Rivers letting loose and the river getting muddy. I do think you can typically get good number of the males and resident local river fish as soon as the ice goes out if the weather is steady and considtent. The weather has been constantly changing since iceout this year and I think that is why the bite seems to be off.

I’m heading out at 4 am. Good luck to all over the weekend!