ON THE BRULE RIVER, Wis. Bruce Sederberg's fly rod bent in a continuous arc and pulsed under the weight at the end of his line. Sederberg had tied into several pounds of feisty steelhead at a slow bend in the Brule River somewhere downstream from Mays Ledges the morning of March 28.

Like the big Lake Superior rainbow trout that return to spawn in the Brule each spring, Sederberg and a few hundred other anglers had been drawn back to this storied trout stream again. That day marked the early steelhead fishing opener on the river from U.S. Highway 2 to Lake Superior.

Dan Hendershot knows why he makes this annual pilgrimage from his Minnesota home.

"It's pretty good fishing," Hendershot said, fishing just upstream from Sederberg on Saturday. "And the long winter is another reason."

Yes, it was an ice-in-the-guides morning early on. Twenty-one degrees just before dawn. And, yes, there had been the question of whether the river would even be fishable, given high water earlier in the week.

But the cold was manageable and the river was in excellent shape, and now Sederberg was doing battle with his 10th fish of the day. He eventually subdued the brute, a chunky female rainbow with a watercolor wash of crimson along her silvery flanks. She was well over the 26-inch minimum size limit, but Sederberg quickly removed his hook from her jaw and slipped her back into the river.

"Usually, I never kill a fish on the Brule," he said.

Up and down the river, anglers had varying success. Many said they had caught no steelhead, and they attributed that to the cold water, in which fish tend to be less active.

Some anglers must have stayed home. The annual count of vehicles at parking lots was 177 March 28, said Dave Schulz, superintendent of the Brule River State Forest. The opening-day count averages about 250 vehicles, he said.

The river had been flowing at more than 350 cubic feet per second high and turbid on March 25, according to a U.S. Geological Survey water monitoring site. But it had dropped below 250 cfs. on the 28th. Anglers had lots of ways to describe the river's condition and color.

"This is ideal," Hendershot said.

"The water is beautiful," said Bill Fleischman, another Minnesota angler.

At midmorning, Josh Teigen's line went tight, and the 16-year-old from Iron River, Wis., masterfully played a big brown trout to his father's waiting net. He's been steelhead fishing since he was 7 and had already landed and released a 25-incher earlier in the day.

"It's fun," Teigen said. "They sure like to run and jump."

His dad, Gary Teigen, had already kept a nice brown, so Josh released his.

The river wore jewelry for the opener. Ice beads clung to a red osier dogwood over the water. Ice earrings dangled from low-hanging ash branches. Ice pendants hung from midriver snags.

Not everything about the Brule steelhead opener has to do with steelhead.

In the parking lot at Wisconsin Highway FF, a camp stove hissed on a pickup tailgate. Charlie Sundberg of Duluth, Minn., was frying Italian sausage venison patties for his son, Zach, of Two Harbors, Minn., and nephew Nate Aili of Duluth.

They hadn't caught a fish yet, but who knew what the rest of the day might bring to a well-fed steelheader?