FRENCH RIVER, Minn. _ They stood on the flat shoreline rocks with their backs against a northwest wind, faces pointed at the sunshine glistening off Lake Superior.
Their bobbers were floating on the lake, pitching in small waves, small flies or jigs or spawn sacks hanging below.
The ice that had locked onto the North Shore over winter separated from the mainland in the final days of March. Last Tuesday, a 35-mph northwest wind blew it entirely out of sight, out to break up in Ontario or Michigan waters.
Spring had sprung. Trumpeter swans and Canada geese flew by. It was an absolutely beautiful morning to be fishing on the shore of the big lake.
And yet, to a person, the eight or so guys fishing here were brooding, even angry. Not a single one had caught a Kamloops rainbow trout through noon. No one had seen a looper caught yet this open water season. No one had even seen one rise and roil the surface of the water.
"They're gone," Steve Anderson of Grand Rapids said of the loopers. "They're never coming back because there's no stink in the river water. No stink, no fish."
Anderson was referring to the shutdown of the French River fish hatchery which permanently closed last July. Many looper anglers say it was the discharge from the hatchery _ full of trout pheromones _ that attracted loopers swimming in Lake Superior to congregate in this specific spot on the North Shore. That congregation made them very catchable to shore anglers.
"Now they're out there wandering around aimlessly with nothing to clue in one," Anderson said of the loopers.
Anderson was using a spawn bag under a marshmallow sack near the mouth of the French River last Wednesday, hoping for one last looper. He has been coming to the shore here for 30 years. That's the kind of loyalty this strong trout inspired. Kamloops trout, named after a region in British Columbia where they are native, won the fishing trifecta _ willing to bite, incredibly strong fighters once hooked and absolutely delicious table-fare.
"One rainbow is worth 1,000 walleyes," said Ben Stone of International Falls.
