Outdoorsmen Adventures.com

It may not look like it right now, but the Spring Snow goose season is underway.

With all the snow thats covering the upper Midwest, many are wondering if there will be many geese coming through our area.

Today the tempoerature is in the mid 40’s, which will help cut the snow as will the rain that’s predicted this weekend.

Right now it sounds as if a lot of Snow geese are stacked up in northern Kansas and Southern Nebraska waiting for the snow to melt before they head north.

Snow geese unlike their darker cousins don’t need open water as they’d just as soon set in a flooded field as on a lake or pond.

What they do require is food and all of… Continue reading

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

This is the painting of the Hooded Merganser
which will become the Iowa Duck Stamp for 2010. (Submitted photo)

Darren Maurer, Sioux City, has won the Iowa Duck Stamp Contest for an unprecedented fourth time.

Maurer’s painting of a Hooded Merganser drake was judged the best from entries from around the nation on Feb. 12 in Des Moines, Iowa. It will be featured on the Iowa duck stamp for the year 2011. The painting will also be the Iowa Ducks Unlimited sponsor print for the same year.

This win earns Maurer the honor of becoming the only artist in the thirty-eight year history of the Iowa art contest to win the Iowa Duck Stamp four different times.

Maurer was previously tied with artists Paul Bridgeford, Dietmar Krumrey, and the legendary Maynard Reece with three Iowa stamps each to their name.… Continue reading

Holly Chow, Winnipeg, a full-time guide for Cats

on the Red at Lockport, Manitoba, nets a catfish for a client. (Submitted photo)

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

LOCKPORT, Manitoba — When Holly Chow steps into her guide boat, she has to catch fish.

After all, anyone with the nickname, “Mama Cat” has to live up to her reputation.

And she does. A lifetime of experience in waters throughout the country sees to that.

But she didn’t really begin to fish for catfish until last spring. That’s when she began guiding full time for Stu McKay’s “Cats on the Red” resort.

“A typical day would be eight guys standing at the dock and they’d see two boats there and they’d see the girl and they’d go, ‘Oh, god, somebody’s got to fish with the girl,’” she said. “Then we’d come in with 24 fish and they’d go, “We were with ‘Mama Cat!’”

The Red River below the Lockport dam is recognized worldwide as a premier big catfish river in the summertime.

“The average size channel cat is about 20 pounds,” Holly said. “I would be ashamed if I took you out and we didn’t get three over 36 inches weighing between 24 and 26 pounds.”… Continue reading

Donny Daughenbaugh, Bondurant, Iowa, got this nice buck with a shotgun on the opening morning of first season shotgun. A Marine, he was wounded in Iraq. (Courtesy photo)
Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

When Trent Wright bought 35 acres of woods along the East Fork of the Des Moines River near Humboldt, Iowa, he envisioned a private hunting spot.

Then he heard an ad for an organization which helped disabled veterans and, as they say, the light bulb went on.

Now he envisioned a special place where disabled military veterans could realize their hunting dreams.

“I just decided there were those who deserve to hunt more than I do,” Trent says.

But it wouldn’t be easy. The land was rugged.… Continue reading

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

It was a quiet, late November afternoon when Ron Peterson, publisher of the Journal walked into my office in the newsroom.

He sat in the chair across from my desk where, as editor of the newspaper, I was scanning our news budget before heading up the meeting with the floor editors to decide what the next day’s paper would look like.

“What would you think of producing an outdoor tabloid which we distribute free throughout our area?” he asked.

As the paper’s outdoor writer since 1973, it didn’t take long for me to answer.

“I think it would be a great idea,” I said.

And so it started, a free tabloid devoted to teaching Siouxlanders more about hunting and fishing in our area and throughout the upper Midwest.

The first issue, one of six to be published each year, hit the streets in late January of 2004.

The cover photo was of Dave Genz, known as the father of modern day ice fishing. He was on the ice holding a walleye. I had taken that photo a year earlier on Devil’s Lake in North Dakota.

The whole issue was devoted to ice fishing .… Continue reading

The Big O crankbait is a fishing lure with a storied past going back nearly 45 years. It’s still my first choice of smallmouth crankbaits on the channelized Missouri and elsewhere. (Journal photo by Larry Myhre) Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

I’d like to have a penny for every time I’ve cast out a Big O crankbait.

Oh, I’d still be sittin’ here writin’ fishing stories, but the view would be a lot better. West Okoboji lakefront is what I’m thinking.

But, back to reality. Back to the Big O, one fine fish catching machine.

I first used the Big O back in the mid 1970s. In those days I opened the bass fishing season on Lake Geneva in Minnesota every year.

The Big O was my go-to crankbait then and, I’m here to tell you, it still is today.

The Big O has a long and proud history.

The lure, which is made of plastic today, was originally carved of Balsa wood. Fred Young carved the first Big O lure in 1967.

Fred’s brother Odis field tested the lures. He was six feet, six inches tall so it is easy to see how the lure got its name.… Continue reading

It had finally arrived, the day that my daughter Mieke Slaba, Wagner, SD and I had set aside for our “not so annual” snagging trip.
I ‘d filmed a Mieke snagging three years ago, but we’d never had the opportunity to fish together as she hadn’t had the best of luck drawing a tag.

Since the border for South Dakota and Nebraska is the river, both states have a limited number of tags available with a drawing being held for those permits

Well this year would be different as we’d both received tags. I had my resident Nebraska as well a South Dakota non-resident paddlefish tag and she had a non-resident Nebraska tag.

When I headed out the door that morning, I couldn’t believe my eyes it was only October 12th and everything was covered with a heavy wet snow and it was still coming down.

Being the optimist that I am, I just knew it would quit shortly and gone before I knew it.

The snow was already disappearing as Larry Myhre, Sioux City, IA. and I headed north to meet our guide Marlyn Wiebelhaus, Wynot, NE and Mieke.

Arriving at the boat launch, it was good to see that Mieke had made the trip down, as she was all ready to go.

Marlyn arrived shortly there after and we launched the boat, preparing for another great day on the water.

As we pulled up below the dam at Yankton, there was only one boat there and he was already fighting a fish

Since the season is only open in October, we knew that it wouldn’t be long before more boats would be showing up.

Since Paddlefish are plankton feeders, the only way to catch them is by snagging, which is a much different method than most fishermen are used to.

Marlyn snags a little bit differently that a lot of folks, those that cast out yanking and cranking their line, heavy sinker and hook back in.

Marlyn’s method is more of a gentleman’s sport as he simply has the snaggers in his boat drop off line until they feel that they have enough line out and their weight is on the bottom at which time, he slowly trolls through the area that holds the fish. The anglers keep yanking on their rods until a hook up is made.

Since fish generally face into the current, our best luck came as we trolled across the current, giving us a larger target to try and hook with our small treble hook.

Just as the boat started to move, I gave a yank on the rod and was immediately pulled up from my seat by a solid fish.

I fought the fish in to the boat and it measured out 34” just below the 35”-45” slot where the fish need to be released.

Marlyn indicated that that was a pretty decent fish to tag, but since we were filming a show I didn’t want to quit after one fish, so we decided to release it.

We hadn’t gone too far after my fish when just as Mieke pulled on her rod, lifting the weight off the bottom her rod bent over hard.

For a minute or so, we weren’t sure if Mieke had the fish or if it had her as she wasn’t gaining a whole lot on the fish.

It didn’t take her long to start gaining on the fish and when she did, a nice fish came on board, another just below the slot, which also went back in the water.

It seemed like every pass, one of us would hook up and bring a fish into the boat, several were small hammer handles while others we’re larger 40”-41” fish, those in the slot.

There’s some big fish out there as one that weighed 67 pounds had been weighed in at Captain Norms.

Mieke tied into one fish that she could hardly move and after a short battle, the fish decided that he had enough of this and broke her 40-pound line.

Looking around at the 8 boats that were now below the dam, it appeared as if everyone was doing well as it wasn’t uncommon to see one or even two anglers in a boat hooked up and fighting a fish.

Along both shorelines, there were numerous people fishing from shore and they too were having very good luck.

Throughout the year the paddlefish stack up below the dam and will stay there until there until boat pressure forces them down stream or over into the closed area in the fast water below the turbines.

We were finished in a couple of hours snagging a total of 14 fish; with the fish we tagged being just over 30” from the eye to the fork o the tail.

They’ll both be excellent eaters as once cleaned properly, and with no bones in their body, they are one of the finest eating fish around.

Snagging may be a little work, but once you tie into one of these powerful prehistoric fish, you won’t be disappointed as they are one unbelievable fish. Continue reading

For those of us that have been waiting all year for pheasant season, well, it’s here!

Reports indicate that the pheasant outlook is good with those states that have a lot of habitat really crowing about their pheasant numbers.

Over the years, I’ve hunted with hundreds of hunter and was surprised how some of them hunted and amazed by others at how well they would look over the situation, hash things over, approaching each field differently.

Here are a few tips that I’ve learned that have helped me to become a more consistent early season pheasant hunter.

• Once you arrive at the field that you plan on hunting, keep the noise down to a minimum as all wild game has a very acute sense of hearing.  This means, don’t slam your car door, keep the noise to a minimum.

• If you use a whistle to control your dog, don’t keep blowing the whistle, as this will surely put the birds on alert, the last of a loud whistle is a foreign sound. If you use a whistle, try using a hawk call as this is a familiar sound and many times when the birds hear it will cause them hunker down, allowing you to get closer before the bust from the cover.

• Let your dog do the hunting and follow him wherever he leads you, as his sense of smell is the key to locating the birds.

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

YANKTON, S.D. – The allure of holding a prehistoric fish which swam 50 million years before the dinosaurs ruled the world is hard to resist for Mieke Slaba, Wagner, S.D.

Each year she looks forward to pursuing paddlefish below the Gavin’s Point Dam with her father Gary Howey of Hartington, Neb.

Of course they have to be lucky enough to draw one of the 1,600 paddlefish tags issued annually by Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks. This year they were.

Mieke is not alone in her quest for paddlefish. Snagging is so popular that special regulations had to be put in place years ago to protect this valuable resource.

Although the chance to catch a really big fish, Nebraska’s state record paddlefish weighs 93 pounds and was caught from the Gavin’s Point Dam tailwaters in 1998 by Kathy Reiman of Yankton, is undoubtedly one of the reasons. Another is that this fish is incredibly tasty, if you remove all the red meat from the fillets.

And in late fall, paddlefish congregate by the thousands below the dam, jammed up here during a prespawn migration urge eons old.… Continue reading

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal.

“When you see Mac’s boat on the water, you take notes on where and how he is fishing. He’s that good.”

I wrote that back in 1977 while endorsing Jim McDonnell’s book, ‘Explosive Fishing Techniques.’

Well, here we are 32 years later, and I’m telling you. Nothing has changed.

Jim called the other night and said, “Let’s go fishing.”

I was ready.

I met Jim at his place in Royal, Iowa, at 9 a.m. and, with his 20-foot Ranger in tow we headed for Big Spirit Lake.

As we eased out of the Templar Park lagoon and into the big lake, Jim said we’d be pulling spinners over the weeds along the west shoreline.

Walleyes were our target, but these weeds hold all kinds of fish, as we were to find out later.

It didn’t take long to put the first walleye in the boat, a keeper just under the 18 to 22-inch slot limit.

Here’s how we were fishing.

We used Northland spinners on both two-hook and three-hook rigs. We used cone sinkers in 1/16, 1/8, and 1/4-ounce sizes placed above a small barrel swivel to which the spinner snell was attached.

Cone sinkers slip through the weeds without fouling. Surprisingly, most of the time the spinner hooks do too. But it is a good idea to keep checking for weeds on the hooks.

Crawlers definitely produced better than leeches so we soon had all rods rigged with worms.