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Splake in Minnesota
Salvelinus fontinalis × Salvelinus namaycush — a hatchery hybrid, stocked in Minnesota, holding water between 52 and 62°F. This state's files carry no stream record of it, and this page says so rather than filling the gap.
Splake are a hatchery cross of a female lake trout and a male brook trout, and in Minnesota they are stocked into a small number of deep north-eastern lakes. Nothing about the fishery is natural: reproduction in the wild is rare enough to be academic, so every splake in the state was put there, and the stocking is the fishery.
They sit between their parents in every way that matters. The band is 52 to 62°F, upper limit 68 — the brook trout's ceiling on the lake trout's water — and fourteen to twenty-two inches is ordinary, which is more than a brook trout and less than a lake trout.
No water is listed on this page. This site maps streams, Minnesota's Chapter 6264 designation covers streams, and splake here are a lake fish that no stream record would carry.
- 52–62°FWater, preferred
- 14–22"Typical length
- HybridIn Minnesota
- 0Waters listed here
What it is
Salmonidae — a hatchery hybrid of two char · Salvelinus fontinalis × Salvelinus namaycush
- Intermediate between its parents, which is the whole identification problem: brook-trout vermiculations on the back, but paler and less defined.
- A tail forked more than a brook trout's and far less than a lake trout's — the usual tiebreak.
- Spotting pale rather than red, without the blue halos.
- Lower fins white-edged, as in both parents.
Typical length in Minnesota is 14 to 22 inches. That is a curated range for water of this kind, not an average of any survey: MDNR's abundance file counts fish per acre and per mile and records no lengths at all, and no other state on this site publishes lengths either.
Native or stocked
A hatchery cross of brook and lake trout, stocked into a small number of deep north-eastern lakes. Not a stream fish and not a reproducing one: every splake in Minnesota was put there.
Where to find it in Minnesota
Minnesota does not publish which species each segment holds. What MN DNR publishes is not a survey and not a habitat class at all — it is a law. Minnesota Rules Chapter 6264 designates trout water and the tributaries that feed it, for watershed and timber-harvest planning as much as for fishing. So this is not a list of waters this fish has been recorded from, and it is not presented as one: it is the state's own designated water, filtered to the drainage size this species occupies and ranked with the designated stream ahead of the protected tributary. Treat it as where to start looking.
No water in Minnesota's files on this site carries a record of splake in a stream. That is the record, not an omission — see the note below.
Minnesota's classified trout water, whole
The inventory the list above was drawn from, by the state's own class.
| Class | Named waters | Miles |
|---|---|---|
| Designated trout stream — Chapter 6264 | 463 | 3371 |
| Protected tributary — Chapter 6264 | 23 | 25 |
Where that is on the map
Every subwatershed this site covers in Minnesota as a faint dot, and the ones holding the waters listed above lit. A coverage map with this species on it — the map on the front of the site is the map.
When to fish for it
Splake hold 52–62°F water and are under real stress above 68°F. On this map's own colours that band is cold, cold-transitional water, which is what the river pages and the live map are painting when they run green and blue. The season follows the temperature rather than the calendar: the water is in the band early and late in the day through the summer, and all day either side of it.
Spawning: Autumn, and largely academic: splake are a hatchery cross of a female lake trout and a male brook trout, and reproduction in the wild is rare enough that the fishery is the stocking.
How to catch it
Stocked inland lakes, and the cold water near the bottom of them. Not a stream fish.
Patterns from this site's book, chosen by the insects recorded from Minnesota's own regions and filtered to the kinds worth putting in front of this fish. Each one has its tying recipe.
- Muddler Minnow streamer · #4–10 — Grasshopper
- Woolly Bugger (Black) streamer · #2–12 — Giant Black Stonefly (Salmonfly)
- Woolly Bugger (Olive) streamer · #2–12 — Cranefly
Rules for splake in Minnesota
Minnesota does not publish its limits split by species: the bag and the season apply to trout as a group, by the class or category the water carries. So what follows is that, and not a splake rule dressed up as one. Snapshot taken 2026-08-17.
| Class | Bag | Season | Waters |
|---|---|---|---|
| designated trout stream | — | — | 415 |
| designated trout stream tributary | — | — | 98 |
The full Minnesota regulation page →
Habitat notes
Stocked inland lakes, and the cold water near the bottom of them. Not a stream fish.
- 52–62°F preferred
- 68°F upper limit
- cold, cold-transitional on this map's colours
The four thermal classes named there are the ones every river on this site is painted with, at breaks of 58, 64 and 70°F. A river page showing cold water is showing water inside this fish's band; that is the whole point of the colour.
The other trout in Minnesota
- Brook trout in Minnesota Salvelinus fontinalis
- Brown trout in Minnesota Salmo trutta
- Rainbow trout in Minnesota Oncorhynchus mykiss
Splake in the other states
The same fish, on different water and under different rules. Michigan's sand-bottomed rivers, Wisconsin's driftless springs, Minnesota's North Shore, Virginia's mountain brook water and North Carolina's tailwaters and freestone gradient are five fisheries, and the limits differ with them.
Open the trout map →Every trout stream near you, coloured by today's water temperature.