Question : I have heard that you can catch trout in the Cuyuna mine pits. Are these native trout? Answer : Yes, there are trout in the old iron mine pits near Crosby, but most of the trout are not native to Minnesota. Minnesota has two native trout species: brook trout (“brookies”) and lake trout (“lakers”), both of which belong to the char family.
The other common Minnesota trout are brown trout and rainbow trout, which were introduced to Minnesota in the 1800s. Browns are native to Germany, while rainbows are native to western North America. Together, rainbows, browns, and brookies are known as stream trout, because that’s where they usually live, while lake trout are — you guessed it — found in deep, cold lakes.
In the Cuyuna mine pits, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has stocked all four species of trout, though by far the most common are rainbow trout. According to David Lockwood, a fisheries specialist at the Brainerd DNR office, the stocked rainbows come from hatcheries in Outing and Lanesboro. The Outing fish are the Kamloops strain of rainbow, which originated from British Columbia near the town of Kamloops, while the Lanesboro trout are the Arlee strain, originally from Montana.
In the mine pits, most rainbows stocked are around 10 inches after spending over a year in a hatchery. The pits are intended to be a “put and take” fishery, and Lockwood reports that in some lakes 90% of the trout are caught in the first year. If you catch a s.