Northern Minnesota’s ‘Pit lakes’ offer a special variety of fishing

For generations, companies extracted iron ore from northern Minnesota pits, sending it out to build a nation. When mining had largely ended in the latter half of the 20th century, the land looked radically different, with new hills piled up and pits carved hundreds of feet into the earth.
“It fell to different government agencies to take claim to that land and decide what to do with it. So (the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board) was the primary agency that looked at the potential of these lands and found a way they could be incorporated into recreational programs,” said Dave Weitzel, Northeast Region assistant regional fisheries manager for the Minnesota DNR.