Salmon run in St. Joe, but your hook might catch a few other species that Indiana has been stocking in local and statewide waters.
Trout and salmon have continued to arrive in St. Joseph below Mishawaka’s Twin Branch Dam, though salmon are “declining,” according to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources’ Oct. 14 fishing report.
“Some really big kings are still showing up in South Bend,” the report states. “Anglers report catching them on a variety of presentations including spinners, spawn, live baits, beads, and plugs. So far in September and the first week of October, a total of 844 steelhead and 619 coho, and 114 kings have gone through the fish scale in South Bend.”
From the Lake Michigan shoreline, the October 14 report says, “A few run-of-the-mill salmon and a couple of steelheads have been caught by dock anglers. Even a couple of pike have turned up, somehow many bass and lake trout. Shiny spoons, spinners, deep diving cranks, and Oslo spinners are good baits to try. Lake trout will be showing up around docks and harbors in greater numbers over the next two weeks.
Indiana DNR planned to stock about 200 rainbow trout in South Bend’s Pinhook Lagoon in late October. Trout averages over seven inches in length. The bag limit there and in inland waters (except Lake Michigan and its tributaries) is five per day, with a minimum length of seven inches.
The Indiana DNR is stocking 147 sites across the state this fall with about 63,742 channel catfish, each between eight and 10 inches, all from state hatcheries. The stocking should be complete by early November.
These include 320 at South Bend’s Pinhook Lagoon and 500 at Tamarack Lake in LaPorte (Kingsbury FWA) and in LaGrange County: 1,700 at Messick Lake, 900 at Meteer Lake, 1,750 at Nasby Mill Pond, 2,200 at Westler Lake and 2,040 at Witmer Lake.