Fish Finders – An On-Ice Epiphany

By Nick Simonson I recall clearly many days where an “ah-ha!” moment changed the way I did things forever.  One such moment happened on December 26, 2000, and it altered the way I fished through the ice permanently. The converted trailer shack that my buddy Holmes, his cousin Adam and I were fishing out of [...]

Deer Hunting – North Dakota Winter Gathering

by Doug Leier As a biologist I deal with aspects of fish and wildlife behavior on a routine basis. Hardly a week goes by that I don’t get at least one phone call or email from someone who witnessed an odd, strange, or erratic animal behavior, or saw something in an unusual location. Especially when [...]

Ice Fishing Rigs – Big Bluegills

Ice Fishing Rigs – Big Bluegills By Nick Simonson For the past few weekends, I have been exploring a small impoundment about twenty minutes from home.  Rumor had it that big bluegills roamed the basin out from the public access, but all my efforts had produced over the past month was a plethora of puny [...]

Pheasant Feathers for Fly Fishing

By Nick Simonson This year, it seemed that every pheasant was a trophy.  Whether it was those early birds on opening weekend with half-colored feathers, or that lone rooster coming late in the season, each one provided a welcome warm meal and a new crop of pheasant feathers for fly fishing.  With one season behind [...]

Outdoor Activities Sharing Memories

by Doug Leier Over the holidays I bumped into an old high school friend, and true to form for a couple of guys who love the outdoors and also have young families, we began sharing memories of outdoor activities. Living in Montana, Jon has had the opportunity to hunt elk in the same manner we [...]

Ice Fishing Tip Ups

By Nick Simonson I often think back fondly to my times while ice fishing tip ups growing up in North Dakota.  For those anglers who love to chase a waiving flag across the ice, there’s no better place than the Peace Garden State, where on hardwater, fishermen are allotted four lines with no restrictions as to [...]

Winter Current Walleye Fishing

By Nick Simonson My prediction from last month – that winter would eventually get colder – was way off; so much for making the safe bet. The ice in most areas hasn’t grown much, and with unprecedented January temperatures crossing the 50- and 60-degree barriers across the upper Midwest in recent days, it has receded [...]

Fall Turkey Hunting – Small Game – Deer Questionnaires

by Doug Leier After a couple of cups of coffee and the usual bantering about weather at my favorite corner convenience store, a recent discussion turned to Game and Fish Department surveys. Not the kind for which biologists annually count deer or ducks, but the kind that just about every hunter or angler receives from [...]

Ice Fishing Shelters – Ice Anchors

By Nick Simonson The noise in the pines behind me grew until it sounded like a rushing spring waterfall on the North Shore.  I had been on the ice just long enough to set up my hub-style ice fishing shelter, drop my Vexilar transducer and land my first fish of the new year when the [...]

Ice Fishing for Northern Pike – Darkhouse Spearing

by Doug Leier When it comes to trying something new, I’ll admit I usually need a good reason to change or replace anything in my routine. From breakfast to fishing, after nearly four decades on earth I still gravitate toward my preferred options – sausage and eggs for breakfast and worms and bluegills for fishing. [...]

Ice Fishing Tips – Early Ice

By Nick Simonson While taking those first nervous steps onto the ice this weekend, I stared down into the weedy shallows with their vegetation frozen in place, the last respiration of openwater photosynthesis trapped in the tiny bubbles just inches from the surface of the frozen water. I traced my way along a small crack [...]

G+H Weather Vane Decoys Deal

Buy 3 six packs get free shipping!! These words are music to all waterfowlers’ ears. G+H Canada Goose Weather Vane Decoys are the ticket for realism in the field. Simple to set up, light for travel, and they move with the slightest wind always realigning themselves. No more days of getting up and moving the [...]

Recreational Fishing – Fish Transportation

by Doug Leier In the early 1990s I was attending junior college in Bottineau, and enjoyed many trips to other parts of the state to visit friends and relatives. It was a great time to explore different corners of the state around Bismarck, Fargo and Napoleon, but a couple of observations during that time are [...]

Tebowing – Late Season Pheasant Hunting

By Nick Simonson It’s December, it’s cold, it’s tough going in the field. But somehow, as the season wears on, I find myself out there, still grinding away, searching for a last chance bird or deer with a never-give-up attitude I hoped I’d have at this time of year, way back in October as I [...]

Bow Hunting with Trail Cameras

By Nick Simonson I feel like Sauron from the Lord of the Rings trilogy; with my all-seeing eye looking out over the land – well at least 100 square feet of it. With my new trail camera set up overlooking the entrance to a watering area about 50 yards from my favorite bow hunting stand, [...]

Ice Fishing Techniques – Cameras

By Jason Mitchell The education we get from ice fishing techniques such as underwater cameras is invaluable. Having the mental picture of how the presentation or lure looks in the water, how the fish approach the lure and what actions caused particular reactions from the fish sets some anglers apart. Anglers who have this education [...]

Mild Fall Hunting

by Doug Leier Each year without even having to review, I can count on a few standard column topics finding their way onto my screen, like spring fishing, deer season questions and answers, and the pheasant outlook. At the end of the year I take a look back at the previous seasons and often look [...]

Deer Hunting – CWD Q & A

by Doug Leier Chronic Wasting Disease Questions and Answers In the last two years, two North Dakota deer have tested positive for chronic wasting disease. These are the first two positive cases discovered in the state among thousands of deer tested over the last decade or so. Here’s a closer look at CWD with some [...]

Deer Hunting Tips

By Nick Simonson “Wait…what…how did she, where did she come from?!?  Aw crap…no wait, maybe she doesn’t see me, she’s looking…does she? “WHHHHHT!  WHHHHT!” “Guhhh…” My heart never sinks so low as when I know the jig is up; when all the scent killer in the world isn’t enough to cover up a stupid mistake [...]

Deer Hunting in Windy Conditions

By Nick Simonson Rarely does a strong wind factor into a good day outdoors.  Sure, there are those times where the right wind whips across a reef or a point, roiling the waters and bringing schools of walleyes in to feed on discombobulated baitfish.  And maybe a breeze catches  a rooster’s scent and wafts it [...]

Deer Hunting Tips – Meat Preparation

by Doug Leier Each year it seems I somehow wind up as part of a large number of hunters who receive a recycled email joke about making beef taste like venison. Most who read it find themselves nodding their head and chuckling, as the masses who’ve hunted deer can relate to the uneasy truthfulness of [...]

NDTRAX 2011 Gets Even Better

NDTRAX 2011. It keeps getting better! Kirsch’s Outdoor Products is announcing the immediate release of additional options to the TRAX family of products. TRAX maps continue to evolve making it the most complete line of GPS solutions available empowering sportsmen and women with their outdoor activities including fishing, hunting, hiking, horseback riding, camping, and traveling. [...]

Ice Fishing Essentials for Crappies

By Paul A. Nelson The best time to search for winter crappie spots is in the fall, when anglers can capitalize on the mobility of a boat and onboard sonar to cruise around marking spots mentally, preferably with GPS, too. Once the lakes freeze, though, assuming you didn’t conduct autumn reconnaissance, your tools are a [...]

Ice Fishing Tactics for First Ice

By Jason Mitchell We do much of our filming on late ice. We take a lot of our photos at late ice as well. The reason is simple, long relatively nice days on the ice where you can expect sweatshirt weather. When the sun begins to rot the ice, you can expect to get some [...]

Retrieving Upland Game

By Nick Simonson While finishing up a walk for ruffed grouse along the Saint Louis River in northeastern Minnesota this weekend, I decided to skirt the edge of a stand of young aspen trees which came right up to a stretch of sixty-year-old red pines. I weaved in and out of the last row of [...]

Where I Hunt

By Doug Leier I live in a great neighborhood. While most people think their neighborhood is the best, I know mine is. I’m not trying to pick a fight, but it’s the best I could ask for, with a mixture of ages and backgrounds probably not much different than many neighborhoods in the state. When [...]

Fall in ND

By Doug Leier Most kids grow up looking forward to the Christmas season. Even before Thanksgiving turkey is served they are counting the days before they can open their share of the wrapped boxes beneath the tree. Many hunters feel that way about October. While September offers its archery and dove and grouse and crane [...]

PLOTS Guide

Doug Leier Over the past two decades the North Dakota Game and Fish Department has emphasized wildlife habitat enhancement and hunting access on private land through its Private Land Initiative. Most North Dakota hunters are familiar with the Private Land Open to Sportsmen program, which provides walking hunting access to more than a million acres [...]

Ruffed Grouse Opener

Our Outdoors By Nick Simonson Opening day in the northwoods of Minnesota generally isn’t the ideal time to chase after the booming wingbeats of a ruffed grouse.  The weather is hit-or-miss, with some mid-September weekend temperatures climbing into the 80s, limiting the time afield for my lab, Gunnar.  There’s still a great deal of foliage [...]

Projects with Antlers

Our Outdoors: DIY Rattling Antlers – Projects with Antlers By Nick Simonson Do you hear that tick-tick-ticking? It’s either the second hand of the hall clock marking off the moments until I’m up in the stand on bow opener or it’s the beginning of field combat between this year’s herd of whitetail bucks in an [...]

Fishing in the Fall

by Bob Jensen Labor Day 2011 has come and gone.  For some folks, that marks the end of summer, and to some people that means it’s time to put the boat and their rods and reels in storage.  If they want to pull the plug on fishing in early September, that’s certainly their decision, but, [...]

Trolling Crankbaits

Our Outdoors By Nick Simonson In cooler waters of May and June the shallows can seem almost bare.  Nothing but the occasional waterboatman or roaming bluegill disturbs the water bordering shore.  Then as summer peaks, it seems the shallows are suddenly alive and teeming with small fish, as if the table was set for a [...]

Bass Fishing Technique

by Bob Jensen Largemouth bass can, at times, be pretty receptive to whatever bass fishing technique you might put in the water.  On some days they’ll eat pretty much anything you throw that’s appropriate for where they’re hanging out.  If you throw a bait that’s made to work in shallow water, and if the bass [...]

Legendary hunting awaits you in North Dakota

North Dakota has all the ingredients for legendary hunting: thousands of potholes produce the most ducks in the nation, millions of geese fly along the most intensely traveled migratory paths, upland game birds and big game thrive in abundant habitat, and seemingly endless expanses of public and private land offer plenty of land to hunt. [...]

Fresh Live Bait

by Bob Jensen Fish in the summertime can be a finicky bunch. Some days they want a crankbait moved quickly halfway between the surface and the bottom, other days they want a jig tipped with soft bait bounced aggressively right on the bottom. And then there are the days when they want something worked very [...]

Free Buck Knives Up For Grabs

“LIKE” BUCK KNIVES ON FACEBOOK FOR A CHANCE TO WIN A FREE BUCK141 PAKLITE FIELDMASTER! Pack Light, Cut Easy Three Knives for the Weight of One! Developed by hunters to provide hunters with the essential field dressing tools they need, the PakLite FieldMaster kit is the newest, lightweight addition to the Buck Knives broad line [...]

Leadcore Walleye Fishing

With Jason Mitchell Over the past ten years, trolling with lead core line has gained in popularity amongst the walleye crowd. Lead core enables anglers to put any crank bait in the tackle box in front of fish regardless of how deep. This in itself is a huge advantage but you can also accomplish the [...]

Fishing Mudlines

By Jason Mitchell Wind and chop on the water often makes or breaks walleye fishing success. As wind directions and velocities change through the course of a day, adapting to the opportunities created by wind requires some flexibility. Mid summer often finds extended periods of stable weather with varying wind. One of the top patterns [...]

Snap Shot Ruler Review

Now you can prove the big one didn’t get away! The new SNAP SHOT RULER easily attaches to any fishing line, grip, or scale and measures fish length vertically so there is less handling of your prized catch. Accurate and photo friendly, this innovative ruler is great for anything from catch and release measurements to [...]

Drayton Catfishing Tourney

_____________________________________________ September 17th, 2011 Rod & Reel Rally Catfishing Tournament Hastings Landing Recreation Area Downtown Drayton, North Dakota 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm Cash prizes and a special $30,000 bonus for breaking the ND channel catfish record The Red River of the North’s only WHOPPER catfishing tournament Call 701-454-6184 or 701-454-FISH Go to www.draytonnd.com Email [...]

Female’s Tree Stand Experience

By Debra Nelson Last year I joined my husband at the archery range with my new Mathews Mission compound bow.  I hadn’t really planned on hunting until I used a judo point on a gopher!  Now, there is disagreement on whether I actually hit it or not but that gopher did not show up anymore [...]

Northern Pike Slime

Our Outdoors: Slime Time By Nick Simonson While unhooking my second pike of the morning, the two-pound fish slipped quickly out of my wet hand and back into the water with a splash. All that was left as evidence that I had even caught it was a chewed up plastic tail and a small coating [...]

Shallow Bass Fishing

by Bob Jensen The month of June provides some of the best fishing of the year in many areas of the Midwest. One style of fishing that is popular and productive is chasing largemouth bass in shallow water. When the bass are done spawning, they’ll hang around the shallows for awhile. The females take a [...]

Time to Go Fishing

by Bob Jensen It used to be that anglers planned their fishing trips way in advance, and many still do. However, in conversations with resort owners and tourism people, more and more, anglers are becoming very spur-of-the-moment planners. They decide on Tuesday they want to go on a fishing trip for the upcoming weekend, maybe [...]

Walleye Master

Our Outdoors – by Nick Simonson I heard the audible click of a bail opening at the front of the boat and the whisper of line being played out and I chuckled. I turned and watched the same scene that I had observed multiple times last Sunday night. There in the spotlight was the star [...]

Live Bait Rigs for Walleyes

With Jason Mitchell Live bait rigging is all about angles.  The amount of weight on the sinker combined with the amount of line out determines the angle that the line takes from the rod tip to the water.  The direction that you hover or move either across structure or up and down through structure determines [...]

Fishing Walleyes on Flats

By Jason Mitchell If there is one spot, one pattern that is capable of producing a lot of walleyes for us each season early in the summer, my vote would go to large shallow flats that protrude to deep water.  Shallow is relative along with deep but what we are looking for are flats that [...]

Fishing Paddlefish

By Doug Leier Given North Dakota’s geographic location, sort of on the fault line between east and west, and north and south, it’s easy to understand the state’s diversity of fish and wildlife species. Few states can claim such a variety of critters in terms of roosters, bucks, ducks and pike. In fact after a [...]

Catch More Fish This Year

By Bob Jensen Although the lakes across the northern section of the Midwest are still covered with ice, anglers are fishing almost everywhere else. There’s a feeling in the air that anglers are anxious to get fishing. They want to be on the water chasing whatever it is that they like to chase, and nothing [...]

Aquatic Nuisance Species

By Doug Leier It feels like just yesterday, when in fact it’s been over a year and a half, since the first official discovery of zebra mussels in the Red River watershed. First, these aquatic nuisance species were found established in a Minnesota lake upstream of the Red River. Then, to no one’s surprise, they [...]

Canadian Night Crawlers

With fishing season coming to light, it’s a great time to start looking into cheap bait.   You can now buy premium Canadian night crawlers for a lot cheaper then your local bait shop.  Canadian night crawlers are considered the highest quality, largest crawlers available.   One of our newest sponsors now has a special [...]

Early Season Fishing Success

By Bob Jensen More and more, anglers are getting on and in the water. Some folks are fishing from boats, some are wading, and some are fishing from docks or shore. Some anglers are catching fish, some aren’t catching too much. If you want to catch more fish early in the fishing season, following are [...]

Blade Baits

By Eric Olson Water clarity can be such an important variable that affects our success regardless the time of year.  Walleye and sauger both can be affected by poor visibility.  On rivers in particular when heavy rains or sudden run off can dirty the water and create poor visibility, anglers have to make the adjustments [...]

Long Lines for Spring Walleye

By Jason Mitchell Over the years, an incredibly effective tactic for us is to long line a light jig or split shot rig through shallow water.  In states where we could use two rods in particular, we often used the long line rig on the extra rod in the rod holder.  There are probably several [...]

Early River Walleyes

By Bob Jensen Across the Midwest, March and April mean one thing to most walleye anglers: Rivers! In some states, walleye season doesn’t open until early to mid-May. If you want to go fishing for walleyes, you need to go to a border river where walleye season is continuous. In other regions, the lakes are [...]

Smallmouth Bass Jigs

Our Outdoors: Smallmouth Bass Jigs By Nick Simonson Learning how to fish on the Sheyenne River in southeastern North Dakota during my late teens and early twenties allowed me the luxury to go after smallmouth bass from the first warm-up in early April until the fish really got going in May. Throughout the years, my [...]

Open Water Fishing Is Here

by Bob Jensen I drove on the bridge over the Mississippi River at Prairie du Chien Wisconsin this past weekend. The ice was gone and there were boats on the water. Reports were that fishing for walleyes and sauger was good. The open water fishing season for 2011 has started. When you get the chance [...]

Wildlife Biology Career

By Doug Leier Sooner or later – most likely later – what feels like spring will arrive. Just looking at the calendar makes that a pretty safe prediction, but I also know that spring is getting closer because of a bump in the volume of calls I get from students and parents looking for guidance [...]

Sharing Fishing Success

Our Outdoors  - By Nick Simonson I had promised to take a coworker, Dane, on a number of fishing trips this past year, but it seemed as if fate was aligned against the idea of getting him exposed to the different niches of angling he wanted to learn about. Our muskie adventure in August was cancelled [...]

March in ND

By Doug Leier We’re each afforded our own perspective on the beginning of spring. Sports fans point toward baseball’s spring training, turkey hunters anxiously await the April 9 gobbler season opener, and you could fill up pages with other events or notable milestones that people consider as an unofficial arrival of spring The calendar, of [...]

ND Non-Game Species

By Doug Leier Biologists categorize more than 80 percent of North Dakota’s wildlife species as nongame, or those that don’t answer to the name of rooster, buck or sprig. And yet, the few species for which hunting or fishing is allowed attract the lion’s share of concerns from people who enjoy the outdoors. This winter [...]

New Fishing Gear for 2011

by Bob Jensen While there’s still lots of ice-fishing to do, open water fishing is getting closer every day. I’ve enjoyed the ice-fishing season, but am also looking forward to putting a boat in the water. When the time arrives that we’re casting a lure instead of dropping it through a hole in the ice, [...]

The Plight of the Partridge

By Doug Leier When it comes to winter and wildlife, we give much time and attention to pheasants and deer. While I won’t begrudge the attention for arguably the two most popular hunted species in North Dakota, there’s a host of other critters working their way through winter with us as well. Some, like the [...]

Shallow Water Fishing

By Jason Mitchell The fact that shallow water fishing is productive during the early part of the open water season is no secret.  This general pattern is fairly universal with both warm water and cool water fish that spawn in the spring.  Whether the targeted species is bass, walleyes, northern pike or even pan fish, [...]

Open Water Fishing

LOOKING FORWARD TO OPEN WATER FISHING by Bob Jensen Winter arrived in the Midwest early this year and has hung on pretty aggressively. Everything has looked clean and white for a good number of weeks, but now it’s time to move on. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still lots of ice-fishing to do. In fact, [...]

180 Ice Holes

Our Outdoors: 180 Ice Holes By Nick Simonson 180 ice holes make an area about the size of a football field look like a giant slice of Swiss cheese. 180 ice holes feel like a P90X doubles workout day followed by a lactic acid soak for the shoulders, back and triceps, even with a lightweight [...]

Feeding Wildlife in the Winter

By Doug Leier I haven’t checked my archives, but even if I wrote last year about the human desire to feed wildlife during a difficult winter, it’s a topic that bears another look. Years ago in specific scenarios, feeding of wildlife didn’t send up red flags to biologists. Nowadays, however, the best information available tells [...]

Spring Walleyes

By Jason Mitchell So often when targeting big walleyes early in the season, less is more.  The most productive techniques are often simple and subtle.  On natural lakes in particular, we often find fish shallow, relating to the shoreline.  Good locations might include protected shallow bays or shallow gravel and sand flats that warm up [...]

Ice Fishing Tip Ups for Pike

By Ted Pilgrim with Tony Roach There’s something satisfying about setting a well-planed network of tip-ups across the icy expanse of a frozen lake. Strategically placed “fish-traps,” each rigged with a robust, frisky live minnow or intentionally motionless stinker like a herring to snare freshwater predators. Get a bunch of dudes together, throw a pile [...]

Ice Auger Drilling

By Jason Mitchell When you look at some of the best ice anglers, there often is some strategy in how and where they drill holes.  Ice anglers might not be able to drift or troll but they can drill holes in a pattern and discipline themselves to fish the holes in a set time to [...]

Downsize Your Ice Fishing

By Nick Simonson As the seasons pass and I have become more adept at ice fishing and technology has bolstered my ability on the ice, I have drifted away from those species I once pursued primarily in winter. Walleyes and northern pike, though tops on the food chain, take a back seat these days to [...]

Late Season Pheasant Hunting

By Doug Leier For those of us who like to spend as much time as possible on the outside of the window, October is a sort of early Christmas present. Hunting seasons for just about everything are open, and fall fishing can be just as hot as summer, but without humidity and mosquitoes. While crunching [...]

Waterfowl Industry Gets a Black Eye

After years of rumors and speculation, a federal grand jury returned 23-count felony indictment today charging Jeff Foiles of Foiles Migrators.  This is a huge black eye in the waterfowl industry.  Jeff Foiles, a well known representative of the waterfowl industry, is looked up upon by many and is affiliated with many products and companies.   Whether [...]

When The Ice Gets Tough

By Jason Mitchell There is something to be said for swimming down stream, pushing the ball down hill… the path of least resistance.  With fishing, we often have much more success by following these same basic principles like fishing when the fish are biting, fishing lakes that have good populations of fish and using lures [...]

Nodak Outdoors and Buck Knives Waterfowlers Knife

In the past couple decades, I’ve seen the waterfowling industry become cluttered with more gear then any crew could ever afford or keep track of. Products designed with the sole purpose of making your waterfowling trips more productive and comfortable. Without a doubt, waterfowlers are becoming very good at harvesting waterfowl in all situations. But [...]

Ghost in the Grove

By Nick Simonson As sundown approached one evening, I heard a loud series of crashes in the ten acres of old elms behind me. The repeated footsteps thrashing the leaves and twigs were far more aggressive than those of the doe and fawn that had crept out of the trees a half hour earlier to [...]

ND Trax for your PC

TRAX PC – The Adventure Continues! Kirsch’s Outdoor Products is announcing the immediate release of TRAX PC. This product takes the power of TRAX GPS maps and overlays the GPS sportsman map details on the satellite imagery of Google Earth. “The feedback of the TRAX maps has been amazing,” said Korey Kirschenmann, Owner of Kirsch’s [...]

Greenheads

By Doug Leier North Dakota has such an array of duck species nesting in the state there’s a good chance most hunters will remember a teal, gadwall, pintail or shoveler as their first duck and instead of a mallard. And there’s nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with bragging about the first duck regardless of [...]

NDTrax 2010 Released

NDTRAX 2010 Released Kirsch’s Outdoor Products completed the fall release (v3.2) of NDTRAX 2010 in mid-August. “The feedback from the 2009 version and spring 2010 versions (v3.0) has been remarkable.” said Korey Kirschenmann, Owner of Kirsch’s Outdoor Products. “In the 2010 fall update, we were able to include both additional features as well as land [...]

2010 Duck Season

By Doug Leier The NFL season opened a few weeks back with many teams having high expectations for a banner year. Such is the case for the North Dakota waterfowl season, which opens Sept. 25 for residents and Oct. 2 for nonresidents. High expectations, however, are not always realized due to factors that no one [...]

Fishing Grand Slam

By Nick Simonson While growing up on the Sheyenne River, I’d make it a weekend effort to complete what I called the Sheyenne Slam. It wasn’t necessarily tough to do, despite the parameters of seven species in two days, considering that most of them were willing biters and after a few weeks on the water, [...]

Hunter Safety

By Doug Leier For many of us, the transition from summer recreation to fall isn’t as gradual as we’d like. Many of my hunting friends are involved in other activities like softball and golf, and the only valid comparison between those and hunting is about the same as the comparison between fishing and hunting: they [...]

Pierre Ice Fishing

PIERRE, South Dakota – Recreational variety and creative planning are shaping a unique event to be held next February in central South Dakota. The first-ever Winter Fishing Weekend (WFW) is scheduled for the weekend of February 4-5, 2011, presented by the Sports Committee of the Pierre Area Chamber of Commerce The main event of WFW [...]

August Muskies

By Nick Simonson I stood at the edge of the dock and sighed as Sunday’s gusty south wind whipped through the pages in my mental calendar. Next weekend is Labor Day with family up north; the next, dove hunting; the one after that, grouse opener, and then bow hunting. Every weekend was filled with events, [...]

Fall Fishing Bonanza

By Doug Leier It comes as no surprise that when August begins losing to September, for many North Dakota residents hunting starts to win out over fishing in the competition for free-time activities. But I’d also suggest, if you’ve bagged plenty of days pounding the North Dakota prairie, without experiencing the thrill of fall fishing, [...]

Treestand Safety

By Nick Simonson While in the throes of a hotly contested battle with the seat section of a new 15-foot ladder stand, I took a break from what is now becoming a late summer ritual to get a drink of water and my bearings while looking over the assembly manual. It wasn’t the antler fever-inducing [...]

Hunting Doves

By Nick Simonson I’ll take the sure thing before I’ll take the risk. Give me a savings account with two percent over anything on Wall Street these days. I play poker like that too, which might be why I’m not very good at it, and I rarely bet on sports, even when I know the [...]

Freshwater Shrimp

By Doug Leier As a child growing up in northwestern North Dakota, seafood was a special treat, to the point that even fish sticks were considered a pretty rare dinner at home.. Thirty-five years ago “fresh” North Dakota seafood came frozen in a box and was usually deep fried. One of my fondest memories of [...]

Following Smallies

By Nick Simonson It’s a jungle out there. Every man for himself. Greed is good. These mantras aptly describe the competitive drive in the world around us; natural laws that even mankind hasn’t rid from our collective psyche after millennia of becoming civilized. Whether it is in big business or the food web, one thing [...]

Livewell Maintenance

By Doug Leier For the better part of 10 years I’ve written a weekly column, none of which have explored the topic of livewells. The recent discovery of a zebra mussel veliger in the Red River, however, is changing that. Livewells and veligers link together because veligers are the tiny larvae of zebra mussels. They [...]

Fishing Northern Pike

Our Outdoors: A Pike in the Hand By Nick Simonson Not once but twice, the devil’s fork tail turned short just feet in front of the dock at the family cabin. The fish, a muskie of nearly four feet in length had given chase, even bumping the lure halfway through my first retrieve, and exerted [...]

Tying Foam Flies

In my memory banks, I hold a combined blur of countless lazy, sunny afternoons standing in the shallows of the lake, long after more serious quarries have been abandoned in favor of hearing the plop of a fat foam fly and the delayed smack of a never-satiated bluegill rising to pull it from the surface. [...]

Topwater Bass Fishing

Top Water Fishing Lures By Nick Simonson I still remember the first time I watched a surface lure get inhaled and taken into the depths by a largemouth bass. It was a calm, sunny Saturday morning in late May and my buddy flung his Zara Spook about twenty yards off shore over a shallow flat. [...]

Buck Knives Father’s Day Sale

BUCK KNIVES 40% OFF Father’s Day Sale! 40% OFF Any Knife!* www.buckknives.com Get dad a new knife this Father’s Day at an unbeatable price. Buck has a knife for every occasion. Be sure to check out our Father’s Day Special! It’s a limited edition 110 Folding Hunter with Nickel Silver Bolsters, instead of the standard [...]

Drayton Catfish Tourney 2010

Drayton’s 10th annual Rod & Reel Rally Catfishing Tournament is coming up Saturday July 17, 2010 from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at Hastings Landing Recreation Area in Drayton, North Dakota. The Red River of the North’s only WHOPPER catfishing tournament promises to be the best yet with cash prizes to be paid for the [...]

Soft Plastics for Bass

By Nick Simonson Fishing fast is a fun way of covering water and targeting active largemouth bass. Ripping crankbaits and burning spinnerbaits back to the boat triggers reaction strikes and puts a solid bend in the rod when largemouth are in a feeding mood. This fun-n-gun presentation also helps anglers key in on areas that [...]

Walleye Confidence

By Jason Mitchell We all have something we are very confident in. That confidence lure or tactic may vary from lake to lake or change over the years but we all have our go to weapon. One of the most difficult things I encounter as an angler is fishing when I have no or little [...]

Youth in the Outdoors

By Doug Leier The 2009 North Dakota Legislature continued a recent nationwide trend by creating a few new opportunities designed to recruit and retain hunters. A year ago, elected representatives of North Dakota endorsed an apprentice license for hunters who haven’t taken and passed a certified hunter education course. The legislature also reduced the minimum [...]

Homemade Gypsy Jig

By Nick Simonson When I was just getting the hang of what worked and what didn’t on the water, I stumbled on what was, at the time to me, a miracle lure. It was a banana head jig with a fan-shaped skirt made from krystal flash called the Gypsi Jig. For that summer, it was [...]

New Musky Lures

Early evidence that three new muskie baits from Northland are living up to all the hype. Bemidji, MN – Their names are unforgettable. Their performances are undeniable. Not too many moons ago Northland Fishing Tackle broke the news about three seriously savage introductions into the muskie marketplace. Finally, the entire collection is now available at [...]