Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
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In the blur of March and April when missions at the lure-crafting table and forays on the water begin to meld together, in addition to now wondering where my cheaters are (often on top of my head) I find myself flipping back and forth in the pages of my memory to locate vital tools that pull double duty in both locations. From handling the tasks at hand on the hardwood of the desk to dealing with in-the-moment upgrades and field surgery in the boat or on shore, there are tools I hate to be...
In the dreamsicle light of dusk on the backwater bay, I led a line of young anglers out onto the snow-covered water in hopes that a few willing crappies would fill the couple of hours between our afternoon of sledding and a planned pizza dinner back at the cabin. The line, however, was longer this time as my oldest son and the three kids of two of my wife's friends joined me. Among them was my godson, Gavin, and his younger brother, Lincoln, now three years older than when I had last seen them...
With the detection of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in sampled deer from three units where the disease had not been found before the 2021 firearms season, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum executed the most recent installment of the state's CWD proclamation on Mar. 1, relating to the prion-based disease and restrictions designed to limit its spread. Therein, the post-harvest transport restrictions on deer carcasses expanded to nine units, including units 3C, 3D1 and 3E2 where the new detections...
The wakeup temperature on Saturday morning was seven above. Slackjawed, I stared at the readout in the upper right corner of my watch and laughed. I thought no way was that single digit reading ever going to reach the 48 degrees promised on the far side of the curve as I stepped into the garage and wistfully looked over my puddle jumper parked in my truck's usual spot to defrost. The dogs whined with excitement for their morning walk as I clipped the leashes to their collars and opened the...
Like many other youth-oriented activities, the National Archery in Schools Program (NASP) powered its way through the pandemic year, with virtual events serving in place of the state tournaments normally held each March in North Dakota. With more than 15,000 participants in grades 4 through 12 in the state and an in-person season-ending event in Minot on the calendar for Mar. 18 and 19, the program now appears back on trajectory in 2022 to bring more archers into the fold, and to recruit more bo...
Through the magnification of the reading glasses which middle age now requires me to wear at the lure making desk, I caught sight of the hook point on the most recent in a series of streamer patterns I was tying for crappies. More accurately, it was the blunted end of what should have been a hook point. Taking the fly dressed with brightly-hued bucktail out of the vise, I held up my thumb for the scratch test, a confirmatory process where the business end of any lure leaves a slight white trail...
The final weeks of February are a crucial time for fish under the ice across the northern plains. It's at this point in the winter when dissolved oxygen levels are typically at their lowest and the risk for winterkill on smaller bodies of water increases. With heavy snow cover on lakes throughout the eastern half of North Dakota for much of the winter, agents of the North Dakota Game & Fish Department will begin their annual assessment of dissolved oxygen content on those at-risk waters in the...
I recognize a strange duality in the way I approach the outdoors with technology – going low teach or high tech - and the options I'm provided for any given trip on the water allow me to indulge either side of that coin. On the ice, I was an early adopter of sonar, begging and pleading for a Vexilar FL-8 for Christmas one year and not fishing the first week of holiday break until I'd received it in my stocking, deeming the inability to see what was below to be such a handicap to a successful o...
To help anglers better connect with an array of fisheries information complied by the North Dakota Game & Fish Department (NDG&F), the agency recently upgraded the search functions associated with its "Where to Fish" page. Where previously the landing page provided separate links to various pages and files containing information, it now allows anglers to find data for a lake all in one place, from locating waters near a certain city or town, to reviewing stocking reports and survey results. By t...
A heightened wind gust flapped at the canvas of my flipover shack as my youngest son, Jackson, sat next to me sounding out the longer words in his brother's book, which I had tucked into the pocket of my ice fishing jacket and provided to him, after our run of fishing had quieted down some and the in-between doldrums settled in. My older son, AJ, had found a spot between my brother and my buddy helping to reel in the last flurry of perch that had rolled through, as the northwest wind peaked in...
Midwinter is the trough of the natural world, and the challenges above the ice reflect what's going on below it. Conditions are rougher, colder and there's less movement out there. Everything that runs, flies or swims sometimes seems to be saving up its energy for the warming days coming in just a few short weeks. But all of those creatures have to eat, and there are times when movement is required, and the same holds true under the ice. By adjusting presentations, tweaking lures and making...
The Holographic streamer came about as a modification of the Holographic wet fly, a smaller pattern used on eastern waters for trout. When modified to the tastes of crappies and white bass - with its highly customizable components of tinsel, marabou, ice dub and hackle - the Holographic streamer can be tailored to fit the colors that these fish and others prefer in a specific water. MATERIALS: Hook: Tiemco 200R, Size 10 to 6 Thread: 6/0, Choice of Color Underbody: Mylar Tinsel Wing: Marabou...
You don't hear much in the way of hymns from a congregation of alligators, which is the name for the reptiles when they're found in a group. Likely, you don't turn to a shrewdness of apes for advice as they'd most likely be chasing you off, especially if they are of the bigger varieties. Society has come up with a number of odd names for when animals get together, but the common ones and those seen most frequently in our neck of the woods are easy to remember: a flock of geese, a herd of deer,...
They're out there under the ice, scattered throughout North Dakota's slough country; jumbo perch that just a couple of decades ago were limited to major reservoirs in the Peace Garden State along with the noted population in Devils Lake. With the onset of the wet cycle experienced in the upper plains since the mid-1990s, sloughs that were either entirely dry at one point, or were mere potholes of stagnant water expanded and connected, forming lakes with depths that went over 10 feet. With the...
In college, at the local grocery store, was one of those old-timey scales from the 1930s or 40s with a large dial at the top displaying weights from 0 to 300 pounds. Each time I'd step on it, I'd watch the needle zip up to the high 200s, then back down to 100, then up to 220, then back down to 180, before settling in the mid-190s where I was most of the time. It provided a fun sort of gasp-and-sigh moment before displaying my real weight and was certainly more of a process than the immediate...
The traditional image of a hunting dog on the prairies of the upper Midwest may suggest the statuesque shorthair holding point over a covey of grouse, or the staunch vigilance of a chocolate lab watching the skies from the cover of a duck blind. A growing number of hunters, however, are taking to the field after furbearers and more dangerous big game, such as mountain lions, on the heels of their trusted hounds of varying breeds that don't typically come to mind when field dogs are mentioned....
The whir of wings on the far side of the stand of pines caught my attention, as my hardworking lab sniffed out the row’s only resident. From the sound and the urgency, I guessed it was a pheasant as we had put three hens up on the walk down the valley, before turning our backs to the wind and wandering up the hillside. While I never saw it, my mind was comfortable on this final walk of the year in presuming it was of the fairer sex that seemed to exclusively inhabit the near side of the w...
This autumn, upland hunters found good success where habitat remained intact because it congregated birds in those locations. In places throughout the state which received little rain and stands of grass grew shorter and sparser than normal, upland birds such as pheasants and sharptailed grouse were harder to come by. Add in the fact that emergency haying for livestock was authorized in the extreme drought conditions, many areas where much of the cover was mowed on a parcel hunters found their...
I’m a Christmas carol guy through and through, which generally makes coming out of the holidays a little hard on my psyche. The satellite radio stations that I’ve been listening to since the day after Halloween are all returning to their regularly scheduled programming for the next ten months. The last scraps of wrapping paper I picked up from where the cat had them stashed in her corner of the living room from Christmas Eve, are signs the season of joy is quickly coming to an end. All we...
If you've ever watched the top of a tip-up spin after a pike has taken the offering below, be it frozen smelt, herring or perhaps even a hot dog, you often wonder when the metal circular blur is going to stop. Sometimes the process takes well over thirty seconds before the whirring T slows down and the force of nature on the other end takes a break from its underwater jaunt. That's because pike are creatures of speed, sprinters capable of blasting across a short distance at an incredible pace...
Give me an expanse of cattails in December, with a little snow on the ground and a lot of pheasants scattered throughout it, and that's about the best gift the outdoors can provide. Even in those years where I did not yet have a dog, I can recall serving as my own flushing machine, stomping over the three-toed tracks of pheasants weaving through a frozen slough. My buddies were often content to hug the edges, but I enjoyed the sweat-inducing, high-kneed tromp through the crackling reeds and,...
The ice fishing market has exploded in the last twenty years. Where once only a couple of companies dominated the auger, fish house, and sonar categories when I started this column detailing the annual advancements in on-ice technology, now hundreds are present, creating better competition across all hardwater product classes, and a free-market economy that would make Adam Smith proud. This year sees that continued expansion with new products such as the growing electric auger market, and...
While water levels are down about two feet after a dry spring and summer across southeastern North Dakota's prairie lakes country, the opportunities to find fast ice fishing for perch and walleyes are up, as record opportunities to catch both species exist this winter. Record rains from the fall of 2019 have helped keep waters fishable and expanded the number of lakes stocked with popular winter species according to North Dakota Game & Fish Department (NDG&F) Southeast Fisheries District...
The lure of that first ice fishing opportunity has lost some of its pull on me. Where in the past I’d be one of the first anglers sliding out onto the newly-formed ice, these days I’m more comfortable taking my time getting out there. In part, due to my cautious nature, having felt the chill of ankle, thigh, and knee-deep winter waters in my younger years, and also due to my love for late-season pheasant hunting, which usually ends when the ice is more than stable for a stroll out to my fav...
While many hunters were gearing up for the 2021 firearms deer season, agents of the North Dakota Game & Fish Department (NDG&F) were completing aerial surveys of the state's mule deer populations in the western portion of the state and compiling the data tracking the numbers and health of the state's popular herd. Unfortunately, a number of factors including lack of forage, lack of cover and a spike in EHD mortality for the state's muleys likely impacted the results of the survey and well being...
