South West MN

I took my daughter out to the Little Cannon River and Vermilion River today. We found a school of about a dozen 12-15 inch trout near the falls in the middle of town on the Little Cannon and I was going in for the kill until my daughter tried out her throwing arm with a rock dead in the middle of the school. I didn’t see any other sizable fish after that. The fingerlings were feeding on top water bugs though.

The Vermilion was more my daughters speed. We found a ton of worm dunkers and had a little trouble finding a spot big enough for my daughter and I. We watched a frustrated bait fisher leave a nice spot and quickly landed a 5 inch brown on a black bead-headed woolly bugger. I spotted several more small trout very close to the parking lot, but was unable to fool them despite changing through 5 different nymph patterns. It was mid afternoon though and they were inspecting their meals quite thoroughly.

Went out to the Vermillion again today, but by myself this time. The bows were stacked on top of each other. I caught a few on a brown woolly bugger. Another guy just upstream was catching them on a prince nymph. The fish we were catching were all around 9 inches. The other guys said somebody caught a 22 inch brown about a half hour before I got there.