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Fond Du Lac Dam, Minnesota

Fond Du Lac Dam is the top of the St. Louis River run — 7 anadromous species stack below it out of Lake Superior.

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46.6655, -92.2965 · St. Louis County · NID MN00603. Tap the map to open this water in the live app.

What the runs do here

Fond Du Lac Dam is the anadromous ceiling for the St. Louis River — the top of the run out of Lake Superior. Fish moving up from the lake stop here, which is 16.5 miles of river below this structure.

SpeciesIn the riverWhat it does
Steelhead Mar–May What this coast is fished for, and it is a spring run first — the fish move as the ice goes out and the snowmelt comes off, peaking late April into early May, later on the far North Shore than at Duluth. Wild steelhead on the North Shore tributaries are catch-and-release; the harvestable rainbow in the same water is MN DNR's stocked Kamloops strain, and telling them apart is the reader's job before a fish goes in a cooler. A thinner autumn push follows the salmon in September and October.
Pink salmon Aug–Sept Naturalised in Superior since the 1956 Thunder Bay escape and heaviest in odd-numbered years, when small pinks fill the lower pools of nearly every North Shore stream; peak early September.
Coho salmon Sept–Oct Thin beside the steelhead and worth knowing about, mostly in the lower reaches and the stream mouths; peak late September into October.
Lake-run brook trout Sept–Oct Coaster brook trout, staging at and just inside the stream mouths in early autumn. Superior's own fish, at a fraction of their historical numbers on this shore, and under restrictive North Shore regulations — the point of this entry is that they are there, not that you should go and catch one. Read the Minnesota regulations before you keep anything.
Lake-run brown trout Sept–Nov Lake Superior brown trout, running with and behind the autumn steelhead; peak October. Strongest in the Duluth-area streams, where MN DNR's stocking has been, and occasional up the shore.
Chinook salmon Sept–Oct Minnesota's only chinook worth naming a window for. MN DNR's chinook programme is the French River, and the fish that return do so to the lower river and the estuary rather than up the shore; peak mid to late September. Thin beside the steelhead, and nothing like a Lake Michigan run.
Lake sturgeon Apr–June Spawns below the Fond du Lac Dam, which is as far up the St. Louis as the fish can get. Peak is May and the trigger is temperature rather than the date — the run starts around 55°F and is finished above about 64°F. This is a restoration: the estuary's sturgeon were gone by about 1900 and the fish here are the Fond du Lac Band's and MN DNR's reintroduction, decades of it. Sturgeon fishing on the St. Louis is closed or catch-and-release depending on the reach and the date — read the Minnesota regulations, and do not lift one out of the water.

Curated calendar guidance from state run-timing prose, not regulation and not an observation of this river on any day. MN DNR Lake Superior area fisheries management and North Shore stream run-timing guidance, with the Minnesota Fishing Regulations' North Shore special regulations; curated.

Ceiling cited as: USACE NID MN00603 'Fond Du Lac', River or Stream Name 'St Louis River', Source Agency Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

The structure

Owner
Allete, Inc. Private
Purpose
Hydroelectric
Completed
1924
Type
Gravity
Height
80 ft
Length
1475 ft
Spillway
Controlled
Storage
2,675 acre-ft · 160 acre pool
Drainage
3,600 sq mi
Condition
Satisfactory · High hazard potential
Status
Normal Operations

From the National Inventory of Dams (USACE). Hazard potential is a downstream-consequence classification, not a statement about the structure's condition.

The water above and below

Coldwater designation is the state's own classification. A dam sits on one river and this list is every designated reach within a mile and a half of it, so a tributary mouth shows up here too.

Water right now

GaugeDistanceTempFlow
St. Louis River at Scanlon, Mn 6.3 mi 62.2 °F 448 cfs
Skunk Creek below Elim Creek near Holyoke, MN 13.0 mi — —

Live from USGS. A gauge miles away is a gauge miles away — the distance column is there so you can discount it. A hydro dam's releases move the flow below it on a schedule the gauge sees and this page does not. 1 of the gauges above is not sending water temperature at all — a stopped gauge still answers with the last value it ever sent and nothing to say so, so those rows carry a modelled figure where one can be fitted, marked as modelled, and a dash where it cannot.

Getting to it

Public access sites near the dam, straight-line distance. A dam itself is private property unless its owner says otherwise; these are the places the state lists as open.

Fly shops nearby

Open this water on the map →Every reach around it coloured by today's water temperature, with the access points along it.