Outdoorsmen Adventures, The Outdoor Television Series That Gives You Less Talk and a Lot More Hunting and Fishing!
Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal.
A few weeks ago, on South Dakota’s Enemy Swim Lake, I stepped back in time nearly 70 years.
I laid down my fine graphite casting rods and, instead, picked up a five-and-one-half-foot handmade split bamboo casting rod.
My nod to the past stopped with the rod. I was using a modern free-spool casting reel spooled with 10-pound-test mono.
I tied on a two-and-a-half inch Big O in Smokey Joe color, my favorite bass crankbait, and fired out a cast.
The lure literally flew over the boulder-studded flat and I thumbed the reel a bit to avoid overcasting the target.
The rod performed just as it had when lawn casting. Bamboo, I found, loads quickly and literally throws the lure for you, something a graphite rod does not do.
I made three cranks of the rod handle when the lure just stopped.
The smallmouth did what they usually do when caught in shallow water. It came up, one, two, three times in quick succession, and then avowed to slug it out.
Smallmouth never come to hand easily, and this one was no exception.
I finally was able to slip my thumb into his mouth and lift him from the water. He was nearly four pounds and was to be the largest of over a dozen smallies I caught on the bamboo rod that day.
I also landed a few largemouth, some of them over three pounds.
Watertown artist Joshua Spies has plenty of talent and he just might have created his own luck on his way to the 2008 win of this prestigious contest.
“There are 270 plus entries and only the best of the best enter,” he says. “You have to have a little bit of an edge in what you do.
“My thinking was the long-tailed duck was a species of bird that probably wouldn’t get painted that much because finding reference for it is actually kind of difficult,” he continues. “I thought painting the male duck with a Mason-style decoy, which are pretty rare and very collectible, just might grab the judges’ attention.”
And it did. It probably also didn’t hurt that one of the judges owned a Mason decoy that looked just like the one Joshua painted.
Long-tailed ducks, originally called Old Squaws, are sea-faring birds found in the North Atlantic and other areas around the world.
Les Kouba, the renowned Minnesota wildlife artist won the contest for the 1967-1968 stamp with a painting of a long-tailed duck.
“Interestingly, Kouba was a friend of my grandpa, so whenever grandpa and grandma went to Minneapolis, grandpa stopped by Kouba’s downtown studio to have some drinks and some fun,” Joshua smiles.
“They have both passed on now,” he says. “It would have been nice to see what their reactions would have been when I won with that painting.”
Winning the contest, of course, brings the artist worldwide fame and a huge demand for prints, remarks, editions, interviews and other pressures.
In fact, that first year after winning, Spies’ entire attention had to be devoted to that one work.
“I was 100 percent married to that competition,” he says. “Everything else had to go on the back burner. And, it’s still going on. I still have some remarks to get done.
“It is a neat thing, not only because of the historical aspect of it but just being part of it. It is the most successful government program in history. It was one of my main goals to accomplish, and I have a lot of them.
Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal
Slip bobber fishing may not have originated on Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota, but it certainly was refined there.
It’s many rock reefs jutting a foot or two above massive mud flats are made-to-order for bobber fishing.
They are, however, too deep at 18 to 28 feet below the surface for normal bobber fishing. Enter a bobber that slides up and down the line and is “stopped” by a knotted piece of Dacron which can be slid up or down the line.
An ice fisherman’s “bomber,” a hunk of lead with a metal clip on it is attached to your hook, most commonly an eighth-ounce jig and lowered to the bottom. The knot is positioned to pull the bobber a foot or two under the water. Now it is set to hold your bait, often a leech, a foot or two over the bottom.
Slip bobber magic.
But slip bobber use shouldn’t stop there. Anytime you need to fish a bait anywhere in shallow to deep water, over the tops of weeds or over the tangles of submerged timber, reach for the slip bobber.
Lighted slip bobbers are not new. They have been used for years by night fishermen on the walleye reefs. But Thill’s new Splash Bright bobber brings a new technology to the system.
The bobber contains a battery which causes the bobber to “ignite” when it hits the water.
Each bobber has a battery life of 30-in-the-water hours. When that expires, you still have a float which is one of the best for daytime fishing.
I predict catfishermen will be quick to pick up on the advantages of this float in our local waters. Drifting baits under floats at night in shallow water on Brown’s Lake, Snyder’s Bend, Storm Lake, East Okoboji Lake or Spirit Lake is a great way to catch catfish. A fat night crawler, a leech, a freshly killed minnow, stink bait on a ribbed worm or chunks of fresh cut bait would be baits of choice.
Like all successful fishing systems, there is more than one way to get the job done.
There are many designs of slip bobbers and bobber fishing has been refined into a near-science by its many advocates.
You can buy bobbers in many different sizes, styles and colors.
Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal
AKRON, Iowa – The Big Sioux Cat Anglers Club began like most others. A bunch of guys sitting around a table talking about fishing and suddenly the idea of forming a club comes up.
For this group, it was back in November of 2008 when the club formed.
“A bunch of us were just talking in Dad’s garage,” Bobby Walrod remembers. “Darrell Carter brought up the idea. There were nine of us there and we thought that was a good idea.
“That’s how the club came about,” he says.
“We wanted to be more than just a group of guys with like fishing interests,” he continues. “We wanted to organize tournaments, but we also felt there was a lot of good a club could do up and down the Big Sioux River.”
Access points along the river are few and far between and that would be one area where an organized club might make a difference, the group felt.
“We would like to do some community service projects,” he says.
“There is grant money out there for projects such as boat ramps that would improve our river and access,” Bobby says. “That’s what we would like to grow into.
“We’d like to work with the IDNR and county conservation groups to have a river clean-up day on the Big Sioux next year,” he says.
From that initial group of nine guys, the club has grown to over 40 members today. Most are from Akron, Hawarden, Elk Point, Sioux City and nearby areas.
The charter members include Bobby, his father Bob, Akron; Carter, Elk Point; Austin Walrod, Sioux City; Dick Hendricksen and Stacy Rabey, both of Akron; Keith Copenhaver, Hinton, Jeff Nohava and Carl Harry, both of Hawarden.
The group held their first tournament in 2009 and have now grown to five tournaments a year. Those include Brown’s Lake; Pro Sport Bistro (the club runs that tournament in cooperation with Pro Sport Bistro Restaurant in Hawarden); the Sioux City Missouri River tournament (canceled due to high water); the Skily Slam (a memorial for Bobby’s brother Chris “Skil” Walrod); The Lewis and Clark Tournament (Aug. 14 out of Weigand Marina) and the Big Sioux Triple Crown (Sept. 18 on the Big Sioux).
Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal
Travis Carter, Elk Point, S.D., and Dan Foss, Onawa, Iowa, captured first place in the Seventh Annual First Class Cat Attack Saturday.
Forty-five teams of catfish anglers headed out into a rain-swollen Missouri River from the South Sioux City Public Boat Dock at 7 a.m. for the competition.
A heavy rain the night before, put the Big Sioux River at nearly bank full and foiled many angler’s plan of fishing that stream.
The high water made this the toughest fishing of any of the events, but Carter and Foss brought in eight channel catfish for a total of 26.40 pounds.
The pair took home a check for $1,373.
The 45 teams from six states weighed-in 98 channel cats and eight flatheads for a total of 106 catfish.
Total weight of all fish was 210.30 pounds. No blue catfish were caught this year.
No team weighed a limit of 10 fish. Two teams weighed nine and five teams weighed eight.
Second place went to Shane Jones, Westfield, Iowa, and Adam Conlon, Sioux City, $968, 14.15 pounds.… Continue reading
Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal
WEBSTER, S.D. — Our plan was to hit two lakes a day and take full advantage of the variety of fishing to be found in the Glacial Lakes area of northeastern South Dakota.
Mother Nature threw us a curve, however, and rather than fight 25 to 30 mile-an-hour winds, we fished mornings and motored off the water pounding against a spray of white caps each afternoon.
The first morning was the worst.
A south wind was blasting at 20 miles an hour by 10 a.m. We parked at the boat ramp on Reetz Lake, just south of Webster.
“We won’t last long, out there,” I said to Fran. “We might be able to get out of the wind along that west shoreline.”
I had not planned to fish Reetz. Less than a month earlier I had fished it and caught several walleyes over 20 inches there. But, with the wind I thought our chances were better here on a lake where all walleyes under 28-inches have to be released.
We lasted about an hour and a half and boated two nice walleyes on bottom bouncers and spinners fished in 12 to 14 feet of water.
The rest of the afternoon we spend prospecting other lakes and checking out boat ramps for the next day.
With the wind forecast to blow again, we launched the next morning on Enemy Swim Lake, long one of the northeast’s glacial gems.
It’s a beautiful lake. Clear water, wooded shorelines and a couple of islands. It’s 2,150 acres with a maximum depth of 24 feet. All bass between 14 and 18 inches must be released with only one over 18 allowed in the daily bag. That just about guarantees good bass fishing and that is just what we found.
We started on one of the main lake points casting crankbaits and spinnerbaits in water nine feet and less, but never brought up a bass. We moved deeper on the same point and switched to bottom bouncers and spinners with crawlers.
Again, nothing. Only perch.
We left that spot and headed for a small rocky island nearby and that’s where we found the bass.
Smallies were laying in the shallow, boulder-studded water and were more than willing to take our Big O crankbaits.… Continue reading
Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal
TEKAMAH, NEB. — It probably wasn’t the kind of day you would pick for catfishing, but nobody told the cats.
Pat Carter, Elk Point, S.D., and I arrived at Summit Lake in the middle of a morning rainstorm, but when the downpour turned to sprinkles, we launched my boat and headed out.
Pat had fished the lake a couple times before and was impressed with the channel catfish to be found there. When he suggested we give it a try, I was quick to agree.
For the past seven years, Pat and I have gotten together prior to Sioux City’s one and only catfish tournament and spend a day or an evening chasing “ole whiskers.”
It’s a tradition now and what began as a U.S. CATS sponsored tournament is now a local tournament with Pat as the director. Strong sponsor support from local businesses, headed by First Class Credit Union, and individuals is quickly making this event one of the premier catfish tournaments in the country.
Last year the First Class Cat Attack attracted 51 teams with entries from a seven-state area. This year Pat hopes to top 60 boats and is well on his way. Current entries exceed last year’s.
This year, the boats will blast off from the South Sioux City boat ramp with waters of the Missouri and Big Sioux Rivers eligible.
Last year’s event was won by Dean and Bruce Strobman of Sioux City with a single catch — a 56.60-pound blue catfish. Second was taken by Keith Copenhaver, Sioux City, and Chris Sharp, Merrill, Iowa with 10 fish weighing 40.90 pounds.
In all, anglers weighed in 155 fish totaling 500.15 pounds, the highest weight in the history of the tournament.
This year’s event will be July 24 with anglers fishing from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event has a $5,000 guaranteed payout. Cash awards will be given for first through 6th place with additional cash placements for over 30 teams. Seventh to 15th place teams will win door prizes. Additional door prizes will be offered including a trolling motor, depth finder and rods and reels.
Entry automatically qualifies teams for the 2010 Night Tournament from 7p.m. to 8 a.m. Sept. 4.
The public is welcome to the weigh-in at the ramp. A free cookout and drinks will be available beginning at 3 p.m.
Entry fee for the event is $100 with an optional $10 for the big fish Pot. Entries are being accepted at the Bacon Creek Country Store at 2520 Gordon Dr. Entries will also be accepted, cash only, the morning of the tournament. A mandatory rules meeting will begin at 6:30 a.m.
Reprinted from Sioux City Journal
ISLE Minn. — “Inch for inch, pound for pound, the gamest fish that swims.”
That’s a quote from Dr. James Henshall’s “Book of the Black Bass.”
Dr. Henshall’s book was published in 1881.
That was 129 years ago.
And you know what? It still holds true today.
The smallmouth bass is, without question, the gamest fish that swims.
Dr. Henshall, a midwestern medical doctor and devotee of bass fishing was writing at a time when trout was the kingpin of angling endeavors throughout the populated East.
Fly fishing was the method of choice and native brook trout was the quarry. German browns were soon to take over the limelight, but they were not stocked in any numbers until 1884.
Henshall’s book was the measuring stick of all books written about the black bass through the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century.
But trout fishing held sway until the mid 1950s when another writer, Jason Lucas, angling editor or Sports Afield magazine, finally swayed public opinion towards the black bass.
In the South, largemouth bass is king. In the North, the walleye holds sway.… Continue reading
Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal
WEBSTER, S.D. — It was early morning, but there was no sunrise.
We sat in the parking lot at the boat ramp on Bitter Lake, my boat still on the trailer.
Across the western horizon an angry mass of blue clouds hung like a curtain, and sharp streaks of lightening occasionally ripped across its dark tapestry. So far, the rain was light and most of it would move north, but we waited.
It was afternoon before we felt safe enough to venture out. Les Rowland, a local, and longtime friend, had joined Gary Howey, Kyle Nickolite and me for this morning adventure.
We dragged bottom bouncers and spinners across a sunken bar and I took a 17-inch walleye right… Continue reading
Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal
ISLE, Minn. — It was a 14-mile run from our resort to the sand bar where Brett King had found the walleyes the day before.
As Lindy Pro Jon Thelen guided his Deep V Ranger across Mille Lacs choppy surface at 50 miles an hour we laughed about how many thousands of walleyes we were passing over to get to the “honey hole.”
Gary Howey and his cameraman Kyle Nickolite, King and I were hanging on as Jon, a former PWT pro wasted no time getting us to the north end of the lake.
Howey and I, among others, were guests of the Lindy Tackle company, LakeMaster fishing maps and Offshore Tackle for two days of fishing on the big lake. We were headquartered at Hunter Winfields Resort at Isle on the southeast corner of the lake.
King, a walleye tournament fisherman from Claremont, Minn., was guiding for the writer’s event, but his boat was on the trailer today.
He had found the fish the day before and we were on our way to reap the rewards of his efforts.
It didn’t take long.
We tied on new Lindy Spinners behind two-ounce bottom bouncers and began trolling with the bow-mounted electric motor.
Thelen showed us the bar on his Humminbird depth finder which held a LakeMaster chip containing a map of the lake.
“Here’s a rock pile we never knew was here before LakeMaster mapped the lake,” Thelen, who has guided many years here, said. “We’ll follow the top of the bar, go alongside the rock pile and then motor back for another pass.” … Continue reading
