River report

[bigyooper]

I fished the river last night around number 9. We ended up with 5 walleye smallest was 19" and a 4 pound blue. It was a bit slow but I think we caught more than the FLW G3 boat that I don't think ever got a line wet. The walleyes were really warm and slimey the meat was really mushy. The cat had better fillets than the walleye. If anyone fishes by number nine most of our hits came between the weeds and the buoy.

[biff]

By blue you mean channel? No blues in the st.louis. I like catfish but I wouldnt eat anything that is digging around in the bottom of the river all year. Fun to catch and release though.

[Catfishunter]

the two pounders are very tasty, but out of a little cleaner water. i do relese 98% off my cats, might keep a couple of thoose bottom feeding walleyes

[biff]

Yeah, I like when people are like...ewww, those are bottom feeders. Meanwhile they have walleye on the stringer that pretty much do the same thing. I love eating smaller cats but just not out of the st.louis. There really arent a lot of good catfish areas near the duluth area. I eat a few out of the clouquet river but other than that and the st.louis I dont know of any other good nearby spots. The clouquet runs into island lake...anybody know if the lake itself has a decent catfish population?

[EatSleepFish]

pretty sure the cloquet flows OUT of Island, could be wrong though

[Heartman]

Cloquet River flows into and out of Island Lake.

[Muskie-searcher]

Island Lake itself has the biggest catfish I have seen in the area. It is fairly unusual to get a cat over 10 pounds out of either the St. Louis or the Cloquet, but I have caught quite a few really big cats 30 to 37 inches out of Island Lake. I don't know how many are in there, but they are big. I have caught my fish in the upper half of the water column, not on the bottom, using large suckers on a quickstrike with northerns/muskies being the primary target. By the way there are a lot of big northerns and muskies in the lake as well.