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Trout fishing near Bemidji, Minnesota

Last updated 2026-09-24 · water classified by MN DNR

MN DNR lists 23 named streams as trout water within 40 miles of Bemidji, Minnesota — 107.1 miles of it inside that circle. The most of it is Clearwater River, 14.7 miles out, with 18.1 classified miles that MN DNR lists as a designated trout stream. The closest is Necktie River at 6.5 miles. A listing is MN DNR's statement about the water, not a record of a fish in it and not permission to stand on the bank — check access and the current regulations before you go.

The trout water within 40 miles of Bemidji

Ranked by how much classified water lies inside the circle, and by nothing else. Distance is a straight line to the nearest point of the stream rather than to its middle, because the question is how far you drive before you can park — this app carries no road network and will not print a drive time it cannot compute. A stream that runs out of the circle is counted for the part that is inside it, never for its whole length.

Stream Miles out Classified miles MN DNR listing Size
Clearwater River 14.7 18.1 Designated trout stream medium stream
Kabekona River 15 16.6 Designated trout stream small stream
Buckboard Creek 28.8 7.7 Designated trout stream small stream
Bungashing Creek 10 7.6 Designated trout stream small stream
Hennepin Creek 13.8 7.3 Designated trout stream small stream
Necktie River 6.5 6.6 Designated trout stream small stream
Lost River 28.4 5.8 Designated trout stream small stream
LaSalle Creek 19.4 4.6 Designated trout stream creek

23 named streams clear the circle in all and the 8 holding the most classified water are named. The rest carry less water than something a reader would pass on the way to it.

A stream marked part of the stream carries classified water outside the circle too, and the mileage here is only what is inside it. There is no thermal column, because MN DNR publishes no thermal class. What it publishes is a listing of designated trout streams under Minnesota Rules Chapter 6264 — and Chapter 6264 is a timber-harvest and watershed-permitting rule, so a reach being listed under it says the legislature protected the watershed, not that anybody measured the water in July. Rather than infer a temperature from a land-use statute, this page leaves the column out.

What MN DNR is saying, and what it is not

Every row above is on the list because Minnesota Department of Natural Resources publishes a listing of designated trout streams under Minnesota Rules Chapter 6264. That is the reach being listed in Minnesota Rules Chapter 6264 as a designated trout stream — the flag-1 listing, not the flag-2 protected tributaries, which are listed for what they flow into and carry no claim about trout. It is not a record of a fish caught there, it is not a promise about any particular day, and it is not permission to walk to the bank — the land beside a classified stream can be private, and in most of these five states most of it is.

No species are named on this page. Minnesota Department of Natural Resources classifies the water and does not publish which trout a segment holds, and this site will not put a fish in a named creek on its own authority. The classes above are what the state does say.

Where you can get to the water

Named public access standing on classified coldwater within 40 miles, nearest first. Each of these has a page of its own here, and that page says which list it came from — one of the five agencies, or OpenStreetMap, which is where most of the bridges and two-tracks a trout fisherman actually parks at are recorded. A site being on this list is not a claim about who owns the bank on either side of it, and the water named beside it is the classified reach the site stands nearest to rather than the one it is named for.

Thermometers in range

USGS gauges within 40 miles that report water temperature, nearest first. Federal rather than the state's, so one may stand across a state line. No reading is printed here — this page is about where the water is, and a temperature on it would be true only of the minute it was built. The river pages carry the live numbers.

Read next

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