Adri DeBoer, Author at Hunt Southwest Minnesota

Our Outdoors: Summer Bounce

Our Outdoors: Summer Bounce
By Nick Simonson

With the rapid warm-up over the past week and the unofficial start to the summer season in the books, it’s tough not to think about longer days, humid evenings and the slow tick-tick-tick of the metal peg on a bottom bouncer dragging along the substrate of a favorite walleye lake. While normally I turn to trolling as a last resort for my fishing activities, the deployment of dozens of favorite spinners I’ve crafted behind a bottom bouncer is a nice compromise between dragging crankbaits and simply watching the rod tip wiggle and jigging for fish. It seems for this rapidly beginning summer after our particularly long winter I have a few extra dozens of them to work with, and that’s a good thing.
That’s because a bottom bouncer provides an idea of what’s going on below, and a reliable connection to the underwater world, while allowing for the added excitement of feeling the thump of a fish and telegraphing the first round of the fight. On that first take and the dip of the rod tip toward the fish – hopefully a walleye but sometimes a nice perch here and there as well – there’s always a sense of excitement that a school has been found and a return trip over the area will be worth it and add to the day’s catch in the livewell.
While it doesn’t always come with a transition in the lake bottom, more often than not when the steady drag of the lead-and-metal weight below turns into a skipping, ticking, bump in the gravel and rocks scattered below, a bite isn’t often far behind, and that’s when bottom bouncer trolling becomes fun. Having that added facet of being able to feel and confirm what’s posted up on the sonar screen, be it that harder bottom or the occasional rock which likely provides a holding point for fish, is a great draw for this form of angling. In turn, the added physical connection to the underwater world tacks on an element of control to the situation and completes the available sensory elements which help anglers make sense of their presentations and how, where and why fish react the way they do to them.
In the end, trolling spinners or other rigs for walleyes is a proven method to catch fish, particularly as they become more aggressive and waters warm in the summer. Additionally, it adds some action to the lazier angling effort of trolling, providing a hands-on element and the ability to feel and control a reaction to that first bite. Whether it’s a simple slow-death rig with its spinning chunk of nightcrawler or the whirring of a large Colorado blade ahead of a whole one on a three-hook harness, bottom bouncers put favorite summertime walleye offerings in front of fish where they are feeding during the heart of the warm water season. If you haven’t already, consider adding these to your repertoire this season, or try out a variety of different offerings, blade styles, bait options and the many different tweaks bottom bouncer fishing allows for. Whether trolled relatively fast amidst a schooled frenzy of fish or worked slowly along a rocky reef for scattered walleyes, bottom bouncers can be quite versatile.
Put all the pieces of the puzzle together as spring becomes summer, walleyes transition to their mid-season openwater patterns, and you compile various spinners and setups to try out behind the metal clip on these specialized weights. In time, you’ll likely find the arrangement, pattern, speeds, and special locations that make your summer fishing better behind the drag and tick of a well-deployed bottom bouncer…in our outdoors.

Our Outdoors: The Intercept

Our Outdoors: The Intercept
By Nick Simonson

Finding Fish. Smaller largemouth bass were making their moves into the reed beds remaining from last year as waters begin to warm and the spawn approaches. Simonson Photo.

Calculating when fish will be where is as much a part of the angling process as threading a plastic on a hook, switching up the blade color on a spinner, or firing up the boat motor. For most of us, life limits the windows in which we can access our favorite waters, particularly during this busy time of year. Add in a late spring, cooler lakes and shifting weather patterns and trying to intercept fish going in and out of their seasonal movements is an even greater challenge. Even when the fish you’re looking for aren’t in your favorite spring haunts just yet, there’s much to be learned and enjoyed in the process.
While exploring the bent and matted reed edge of a familiar water for the largemouth bass that make their moves right about this time of year, I was happy to find a few healthy males already up in and around the structures staking out their spawning territories. Flinging tubes both far into the brown cattails of last summer, and near along the edge adjacent to the shallow warming basin, my brother and I picked up a dozen as we made the turn toward home to finish out our weekend. While the action was relatively fast for as cool as the water was, we were a few days ahead – all things being equal and all trends hopefully continuing – of the rest of the population and the larger fish making their seasonal shift to the shallows. Where in most seasons, the stretch would also be darkened by the presence of black crappies in every other opening bedecked in full ebony, ready for the spawn, the reeds were by and large empty, save for the scattering of the one-to-two-pound bucketmouths. The late ice out and the struggle for any real spring had delayed their appearance. In warm years, I had seen specks swarmed up in the shallows as early as the first weekend of May. In cold ones like this one, sometimes they didn’t show until Memorial Day weekend for their stake-and-spawn session.
The one thing our limited windows and shifty seasonal conditions teach us as anglers is to adapt. To look deeper, try for other species that are on the bite, or pick out another stretch of a lake that holds fish. Or perhaps it simply teaches us to enjoy the moment of a few scattered fish and maybe plan a return trip the following weekend. At the very least, in the compilation of fishing journal pages and memories of previous seasonal movements, time spent trying to intercept bass, walleyes, crappies and other species, helps keep tabs on how all these factors come together for angling success in any given year and the years to come.
Be prepared this season to adjust to what’s coming, where fish are going and how the recent ramp-up into warmer conditions may suddenly hasten all those movements for the species you fish for. It may mean changing baits, locations, and fishing for something different if the goal is catching fish. Start at a favorite spot and work back from there, exploring the options around those spaces that have traditionally held your quarry. Then again, if you’re just happy to be out on the open water, soaking in some long-awaited sunshine and warm temperatures and feeling the load and whip of a long rod, instead of clutching a short handle over a hole in the ice, that opportunity is the easiest to pick off now that spring in some sort or another has finally arrived…in our outdoors.

Our Outdoors: Six Spring Smallie Spaces

Our Outdoors: Six Spring Smallie Spaces
By Nick Simonson

Smallmouth bass in spring stake out premier spawning sites, with the biggest fish getting the best pieces of territory. Typically, the shallows where they make their beds have many structural elements and knowing what to key in on as these fish make their moves will help connect you with more bass this spring. What follows is a super six-pack of smallmouth haunts to explore with your favorite jig, tube or soft plastic this season.

On the Rocks
Areas of rip rap, boulders, and naturally occurring rock are smallmouth magnets. These spaces warm up quickly in the spring sunlight and attract micro-organisms and small aquatic insects along with baitfish and crayfish. As a result, smallmouth bass are drawn to them as well. When smallies have a nice nook between rocks, or an open area of sand or gravel in a stretch of rip rap, they can be found there in spring setting up for the spawn. Cast over these places with cone-head jigs and Texas-rigged plastics rigged with a bullet weight to avoid getting stuck in the small spaces between rocks.

Good Wood
Downed trees and brush, perhaps pulled in and piled up by recent high waters from record spring snowfall and its subsequent melt, also provide cover for pre-spawn smallies and a place to find a break from the current and set up an adjacent spawning site. The wood has plenty of attraction for the food chain elements addressed above and provides enough cover on at least one side for smallmouth to stage against. Aside from snagging on newer branches and bark, be careful casting around limbs and snaggy sections with jigs and soft plastics. Texas rig a plastic stick, like a Senko, to avoid hooking woody obstructions and instead catch fish.

Them’s The Breaks
Anywhere a river or lake rises up from the depths and provides bass with a quick transition from basin to spawning shallows is a good stretch of topography to explore. When fish are pushed deep by spring cold fronts, check the deep side first and then work shallower as things warm again and smallies head back to the shallows. Find points or inside curves that serve as onramps out of the main lake or river channel to adjacent skinny water. Work the bottoms with football jigs and bucktail jigs, and slowly cast countdown-style crankbaits to locate fish that are suspended in the column.

Docked
Any docks that are in the water early, or are hardy, permanent structures that survive the winter and ice off, are worth being cast at from all angles in the early goings, as they provide structure and shade that fish relate to. Additionally, they are a superior ambush point for items of food flowing by in river current or the first baitfish and panfish that come shallow in spring. Cast jigs and tubes around these structures to find smallmouth bass this season.

Bridge the Divide
Bridges of all sizes draw smallies in spring. From the depths around the center pilings where fish can go for cold-front cover and safety in high light hours, to the shallows and debris that usually settles in the shallow corners underneath, every piece of a bridge is worth a cast for smallies. Upstream pilings on rivers tend to hold on to deadfalls, branches and other structure that washes down in spring and provides cover for fish in addition to the concrete supports. Work them over with a drop-shot rig or tube on an insert jighead to trigger wary bass in these locations.

Go With The Flow
Inflowing water is also a key element for spring smallies. Creeks, springs, draws funneling spring rainwater, and even culverts dumping runoff into a main body can pull smallies up shallow as the spawn nears. Work these points of entry over with suspending crankbaits, jerkbaits, and soft plastics in an effort to cover water quickly and connect with fish. Follow up with a slower presentation if a bass bites but the hook doesn’t connect.

Add It Up
The best smallie spots in spring combine some or all of these elements in close proximity to one another. Knowing what to look for and identifying the structure and the other elements that come with fast fishing are points to hang on to in any journal or GPS. Make a note of these six forms of structure and others this spring in relation to the smallies you catch and odds are you can return to those spots year after year around this same time for more spring success with bronzebacks…in our outdoors.

Our Outdoors: New Neighbors

Our Outdoors: New Neighbors
By Nick Simonson

I first saw our new neighbors in the dim light of an early February morning. As I walked the dogs past their driveway, they cautiously eyed us over but, unlike the residents who had been on our block for a while, they didn’t take off when both my large lab and German shepherd made sudden furtive movements toward them. I found that odd. The next encounter was much the same. Though this time, one of them was up on the rooftop of the house across the street surveilling their new neighborhood, again just before sunrise. He let out an unfamiliar and startling laugh as we approached and paused to offer our own greeting, but he didn’t depart despite the lunging dogs once again trying to make friends.
Finally, while working out in my basement just last week, I happened to glance out the window to the small strip of side yard and noticed both of the new arrivals to our development wandering through the small shoots of green grass a piles of dog poop left over from the long winter. It was then that it all came together.
The reason these two oddball immigrants to our neck of the prairie didn’t take off like the flighty covey of Hungarian partridge that have lived in the gully-fringed stretches of our piece of suburbia was that they weren’t partridge at all, but rather, they were chukars. With a funny obliviousness, they made their way through the yard, hopped up on the fence and down into the next-door-neighbor’s yard and disappeared from sight. It was likely that they were escapees from a hunting dog test, as chukar are often used by hunters to train new dogs, or to keep older ones sharp in the off season. Planted and placed in the grasses of those hills just a half a block away, they had likely avoided detection in one such training session and unlike some of the less-fortunate birds in their covey, were spared the teeth of an aggressive pup looking to prove its mettle.
I texted the sighting to a friend at Game and Fish, and he confirmed not only that a good population of the volunteer upland birds existed around town, likely coming from that hunter-based source, but that there were enough of them in the area to sustain a breeding population as well. Amazed by the development, I’ve kept a sharp eye and ear out this spring, listening for the chuk-chuk-chuk call mixed in with the day’s score of robins chirping, mourning doves cooing, and the dawn-and-dusk call of rooster pheasants clanking through the hillsides of our two-block area. Sure enough, while cleaning the yard, walking the dogs, or relaxing on the deck in the limited spring we’ve had, the chukars are out there too, seemingly enjoying their new digs.
While they more often succumb to the weather and predators seizing on the birds’ naivete from being raised on a farm or in a pen for the purpose of dog training, it appears some chukars have better survival skills than others. I note that despite not being the most wary introductions, they often assume elevated positions, which likely keeps them out of harm’s way from those random neighborhood dogs, and even the den of coyotes just down the draw which still howl in the shrinking darkness of early morning. Whether perched on a rooftop at sunrise, or randomly offering up their cadence of chuks as the mornings warm, they’ve quickly become a notable and enjoyable part of all those things that mix where the edge of suburbia meets the first fringes…of our outdoors.