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How to fish the Temperance River lake run

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The run corridor The mouth the first barrier falls — the run stops here
The colour is this river's run stage today, read off Minnesota DNR run-timing guidance. Where along the corridor the fish are is not modelled here — only the sixteen rivers the staging estimator covers carry that. Drawn 30 September 2026, north up, and it is a map of the river rather than of the lake it runs from.

Spinning and float tackle for the salmon and a fly rod for the steelhead is the short answer on the Temperance River, and the long one changes by species: coho salmon, lake-run brown trout, pink salmon and steelhead all run this corridor and they are not fished the same way. The water splits into 1 zone over 0.2 miles — mouth to river mile 0.2 — and the pier is a different fishery from the water above the first holding pool. the first barrier falls is the ceiling: no run fish above it, whatever the calendar says, so the whole fishery is inside those miles. Lake-run brook trout is catch-and-release water here, and the handling matters more than the tackle does. Tackle guidance on this site is per species and never per river.

0.2 corridor miles · Lake Superior · windows curated from Minnesota guidance · page built 30 September 2026

Tackle, by species

General guidance per species and never per river: there is no record of what a given river fishes best with, and a page that invented one would be worse than a page that says so.

Coho salmon

Spinning: a medium 7'–8'6" rod, 10–14 lb line, small spoons and spinners. Coho chase, and a moving bait outfishes a still one.

Fly: 7–8 weight, streamers and egg patterns, 8–12 lb tippet.

Lake-run brown trout

Spinning: a medium 7'–8' rod, 8–12 lb line, minnow plugs and spoons fished at dusk and after dark, which is when these fish move.

Fly: 7–8 weight, large articulated streamers on a sink tip, 10–12 lb tippet.

Pink salmon

Light spinning tackle is enough — a 6'6"–7' rod and 6–10 lb line. Small pink and orange spinners, spoons and flies.

Fly: 5–6 weight, small pink marabou patterns. The fish is two to four pounds and heavy gear takes the fishing out of it.

Lake-run brook trout

Catch and release, and tackle chosen to make that survivable: barbless hooks, a net that keeps the fish in the water, and heavy enough line to land it fast rather than play it out.

Fly: 5–6 weight, streamers and soft hackles. Check the state guide before fishing for these at all — the rules on coasters are not the general rules.

Coasters are a managed restoration fishery under special catch-and-release regulations on much of this shore, and the rules differ river by river. Read the state guide for the water you are on.

Steelhead

Float fishing: a long 10'6"–13' rod, 8–12 lb main line, spawn bags, beads or jigs under a slip float — the method that covers a run without wading it.

Fly: 7–8 weight single-hand or a switch rod, egg and nymph patterns on a dead drift, swung streamers in the fall push. 6–10 lb tippet.

Zone by zone, mouth to ceiling

The corridor's own zones, with river miles walked up the NHDPlus HR mainstem from the harbour mouth. Fish arrive at the top of this table and work down it as the river cools and rises.

The ceiling

the first barrier falls stops the run. There are no run fish above it whatever the calendar says, so every mile of this fishery is below it — which is also why the water immediately under a ceiling is the most crowded water on a run river in September.

MN DNR, Posted Boundaries and Fish Sanctuaries on Lake Superior Tributaries (May 2020): Temperance River, U.S. Highway 61 — UTM 15N 659962 5269159, posted on post at U.S. Highway 61. MN DNR's own record for this stream calls it a barrier: MN DNR StreamFinder S-053: "The Temperance River hosts a spring rainbow trout (steelhead) run, and fall runs of pink, coho, and chinook salmon in the short stretch of river below the first barrier falls (just below highway 61)."

More on the Temperance River

Nearby run rivers

The rest of the run

Open the lake-run map →Every run river, with where the fish are holding today.Or get BirdTrout on the App Store