Bois Brule River
A river in Wisconsin
About Bois Brule River
The Bois Brule runs 22 miles north through Douglas County to Lake Superior, past Winneboujou and the village of Brule. The survey gives it 301 acres of surface and 70 miles of bank. Forty-four miles across its system are classified as Class I trout water — the state's designation for a self-sustaining population, applied along essentially the whole river — with an Outstanding Resource Water listing on top of it.
It was already regarded as one of the finest brook trout streams in the state by the 1850s, and it still holds brook, brown and rainbow trout resident in the river alongside the lake-run fish that come up from Superior. The DNR has maintained a wild strain of steelhead here since the 1890s.
The river is really two fisheries. The upper water above Highway 2 is resident trout, and the stretch between County B and County S is described locally as slow, wide water that suits a fly. Below Highway 2 the fishing is lake-run: steelhead from late March through May and again from August into November, and brown trout from early July with the peak from mid-July to mid-September. Around 33,000 angler visits a year is the DNR's own figure, most of them for the lake-run fish.
Seven public accesses are on record. This is one of Wisconsin's most heavily regulated rivers, with rules that differ by reach and by season and change more often than most. Check the current DNR Bois Brule regulations before going.
Written from Wisconsin DNR hydrography and fisheries data, and from Fishing the Brule River — Wisconsin DNR, Brule River fishery facts — Wisconsin DNR. State water ID WBIC 2861800.
How the state manages it
- smallmouth · Wadable Cool Water; Wadable Warm Water
- trout · CLASS I
Wisconsin DNR fisheries designations. These describe how the water is managed, not what is in it on any given day.
Fishing license
Wisconsin sells them online. Buy one from the state. We don’t know whether you need one — that depends on your age, where you live, the water, and what your guide’s own license covers.