They used to swim up the Knife River in great numbers, pulled by the urge to spawn. Maybe 2,000 or more made the run. Nobody knows for sure.
Most Lake Superior tributaries took spawning runs of steelhead, Lake Superior's migratory rainbow trout, and the Knife always took the largest runs.
But those big runs happened in the 1950s and '60s.
The run began to fade in the 1970s, and the decline continued through the 1980s. This past spring, only 143 wild steelhead ascended the Knife River to spawn, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
The state of the annual spawning run has taken on added significance this winter as the DNR works toward revising its 10-year-old steelhead management plan.
DNR biologists are working with a steelhead advisory group, about 20 anglers and others who have closely followed Lake Superior fisheries issues, to shape the revised plan.
At issue will be how to rehabilitate this once thriving fishery and how to do so without diluting the genetics of Lake Superior's so-called "wild" steelhead any more than necessary.
In addition to the wild steelhead fishery, Minnesota also stocks a strain of rainbow trout called Kamloops rainbows in Lake Superior. That stocking program has been highly successful.
Although steelhead numbers have declined since historic highs, not all of the news is bad.
Catch rates for anglers have actually improved since 1992, when the original steelhead plan was crafted.
In 1992, anglers caught just one steelhead for every 10 hours of fishing. In 2001, that figure was one fish per three hours of fishing.
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