This spring, I’ll have been a steelhead angler for 50 years. My very first steelhead—a lake-run form of rainbow trout—was hooked and landed when I was 12. That began an obsessive journey that continues to this day. Luckily, I’ve been able to chase these fish in a part of the world that offers both a variety of rivers and a great fishery. The fishing only improved when the limit for steelhead was reduced from five fish to one between Pigeon River and Marathon. As a member of the committee that developed the regulation, I felt in my heart the fishery would be secured for generations to come.
However, Mother Nature has a way of changing the script.
In 2023, I was steelhead fishing a river east of Nipigon with my father, Gord Sr., and conditions were perfect. The water was right, the temperature was great, and the steelhead should have been running. Yet we fished hard and never touched a single trout. Other anglers on the river had similar experiences. When a steelhead was finally hooked by another angler, I stopped and watched. This was prime time in early May, and that was the only fish caught all day. This river runs into Nipigon Bay and traditionally has had an excellent spring run of steelhead. However, over the past three years, the fishing has been noticeably slower. This trend has also been seen on other classic freestone rivers east of Nipigon. It all might be written off as just a blip, but the spring of 2024 was even worse. The news is even more dire for steelhead just one bay to the west of Nipigon.
Black Bay, nestled between Nipigon Bay to the east and Thunder Bay the west, is unique. Black Bay is mostly shallow and milky, with suspended particulate giving the north end of the bay a brown hue. Historically, Black Bay was a thriving warm-water fishery, with walleye, smallmouth bass, perch, and pike making up the main part of the fishery. Commercial fishing in the 1950s led to the collapse of the walleye fishery and then the perch fishery. While the warm-water fishery was at a low point, the steelhead thrived. All the spawning tributaries into Black Bay, which include Coldwater, Wolf, Black Sturgeon, and Portage Creek (among others), had robust runs of steelhead for years. For much of the ‘90s and early 2000s, the Wolf River and Black Sturgeon were my go-to steelhead spots on Superior’s north shore. These rivers were a little closer to Thunder Bay than those east of Nipigon, and the Black Bay fish were often big. When the commercial fishing stopped in Black Bay about 15 years ago, a change began: perch and walleye started to rebound. Although sport walleye fishing is closed on the north end of the bay, perch anglers began to tangle with more marble eyes—many quite large.
At the same time, numbers of steelhead in all Black Bay tributaries began to drop at a precipitous rate. This decline can be seen clearly in the results of a decades-long study of Portage Creek. This creek has been closed to most public sport angling for many years, as it is largely surrounded by private land and posted. However, a long-term, cooperative study has been in place on the river, using mark and recapture of adult steelhead to learn about repeat spawning, growth rates, population dynamics, and year-class strength. In about 2003, the steelhead spawning population in Portage was more than 2,000 fish. In 2007, the spawning population had dropped a bit but was holding steady. By 2010, the number slid to around 700 fish. In 2020, the population fell off a cliff—barely 200 spawning adults remained. Keep in mind, this creek has seen no harvest in nearly three decades.
And there’s more: Since 1991, there has been a partnership between the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and the North Shore Steelhead Association to monitor steelhead populations on the western side of Lake Superior within Ontario. Steelhead anglers involved in the project record the length, sex, and any identifying marks of the fish. They also take a scale sample and place it in an envelope. In some tributaries, fish are tagged and clipped. With this data, biologists can determine the age of the steelhead, assess how many times a fish has spawned and, through mark and recapture, estimate population numbers.
The results for 2024 are sobering. The Cypress River, once one of the premier rivers on the north shore, has an estimated 770 steelhead. The MacKenzie River, a large waterway located about 30 km east of Thunder Bay, has an estimated 239 fish. Portage Creek, which was down to 200 fish in 2020, slid to a paltry 39 in 2024.
The rivers that fared best are found within the city of Thunder Bay. The north branch of the Neebing River has an estimated 906 adult spawners, while the McIntyre River has 2,378. However, both rivers are down substantially from historic highs. For instance, in 2022, the McIntyre had more than 5,000 adults in the spawning run. So, the run has dropped precipitously in just two years.
Yes, this is all a little gloomy if you love wild steelhead. Their numbers along the North Shore are down across the board. There has been a notable increase in native, warm-water species like pike, walleye, perch, and bass in Black Bay, Nipigon Bay, and even Thunder Bay. Are the warm-water fish impacting the steelhead smolts through predation in the estuaries? The increasingly sporadic spring runoff and very hot summers are also a concern. These are freestone rivers that all but dry up during a drought. There have been recent summers when I could walk across the Jackpine or Cypress and not get my feet wet. It just seems to be a perfect storm.
Personally, I don’t kill wild Lake Superior steelhead and haven’t for some time. With numbers this low, every fish is important. Rainbow trout are a resilient species, and they have made Lake Superior home for more than a century. Hopefully, they will find a balance in the big lake and continue to provide exciting fishing and great memories for years to come.
Losing them would be a tragedy.
