Back to the basics: What to consider when targeting fish from the dock
It was a glorious evening in the middle of June. The weather was warm, the lake was calm, and the daily coronation of the sun crowning the western horizon was about to begin. On the water, in the shallows, small swirls and little boils were everywhere as bluegills were coming to the surface to gulp the mayflies hatching there.
As for me, I sat at the edge of a dock with my feet dangling in the water, a fishing pole in my hand, and several plump bluegills swimming in a five-gallon pail at my side.
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Brian Haines: The biggest catch of all on Minnesota’s Lindsey Lake
To this day, I recall a catch from many years ago, right around the time I turned 13 and was being introduced to walleye fishing. Back then, my family would take an annual late-spring fishing trip to Lindsey Lake, a small backwater nestled in the woods near Backus, Minn.
While most northern-Minnesota walleye lakes are known to be deep, large, and with rocky bottoms and plenty of in-lake structure, Lindsey is but a small and shallow lake with a muddy bottom – the kind of lake more often associated with bullheads. Be that as it may, there was a time when Lindsey was a secret little walleye hot spot.
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With snow gone, it’s time to spring into deer scouting
A few years ago, during spring, I was tramping through some bottomland with my yellow Lab, Daisy.
As we walked a piece of high ground surrounded by a bottomland bog, Daisy, as a good hunting dog should, was about two-thirds of a gunshot length in front of me and was nosing through the grass for a pheasant. Stepping gingerly through the matted-down grass, I felt something push into the back of my calf, creating a dull stabbing kind of pain.
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Twelve decades later, Minnesota’s pheasant experiment still a success
It was the 1930s, and my grandfather’s two older brothers had taken their father on a pheasant hunt. Pheasants were still new to Minnesota at the time, and their father had yet to try to hunt them.
They didn’t have to walk far before they rousted a rooster. The old man lifted his double-barrel side by side, pulled back the hammers, fired, and dropped the rooster before it was more than a few feet off the ground.
“Boy, there’s not much challenge to shooting these,” he was said to have told his sons.
The boys would get the last laugh, however; for the rest of the hunt, the old man missed every bird he tried to shoot.
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Here’s how to get the most out of fishing from a canoe
It was a glorious morning late in the spring. Birds were singing, the sun was shining, and the temperature was in that sweet spot. It wasn’t hot, though warm enough to don shorts and flip flops.
I knew I needed to get to a lake, and some canoe fishing was on my mind. For me, fishing from a canoe on a calm, summer morning is an experience like few others.
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Snowshoeing: a wintertime activity when the white is deep
For centuries, snowshoes have been a mainstay of winter travel. Their origins are not entirely known, but some historians believe they first were developed around 4,000 to 6,000 years ago. The earliest known snowshoes were crude, a far cry from the tubular aluminum-framed, neoprene-decked snowshoes of today. They once were a simply pieces of wide, oval board called “shoeskis” that could be strapped to a traveler’s feet.
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Reasons aplenty to get off the couch and into the fish house
I like to call this time of the season the midwinter lull – that time of year when big game fish become rather lethargic and seem to suffer from a severe case of lockjaw. Through my years as an ice fisherman, however, I’ve learned that regardless of the weather, sometimes you just don’t know when that lunker is going to take the bait.
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The six most common types of darkhouse spearers
Darkhouse spearing is one of winter’s most enjoyable activities. The silence, the darkness with just a green light glowing from a hole in the ice, and of course, the excitement of a big pike creeping up to a decoy make spearing a sport that’s unique, thrilling, and part of our culture in the northland.
Most people who’ve fished have either tried spearing or know someone who has. And one thing is for sure: The spearer is a certain breed of fisher, and within the spearing community, there are different types of fishing enthusiasts who have their own unique traits.
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