Our Outdoors: The Show and the Showy
Our Outdoors: The Show and the ShowyBy Nick Simonson In the grasses along the ditch that drains to the small trout creek down the road from the family cabin grows a reminder of the summer solstice. While I’m not always there to see them in full bloom, and sometimes they’re not yet at that stage due to seasonal timings and conditions, I often look back on the find I made one chilly and damp summer while moving some shoreline weeds out to the pickup area along the road. Amidst the curls of green swamp grass, the purple-and-white bulbs of a […]
Our Outdoors: On a Mission
Our Outdoors: On a MissionBy Nick Simonson Through the valleys and hills of the sporting clays course east of town, we tracked the movements of our five high school shooters logging their final rounds of the season. Sunday’s rounds were different, in that they comprised the last 100 targets of the year and the first to be entered into the tournament scoring system for the USA High School Clay Target League (USA CTL), with the inaugural season nearing its completion. Five participants from two schools put on a shooting clinic, with the scores ranging from 79 to 89 on some […]
Our Outdoors: The Trifecta
Our Outdoors: The TrifectaBy Nick Simonson On the final day of vacation in the Black Hills, I knew it was possible. Having landed my first brook trout along with many more and discovered swarms of willing and readily biting large rainbow trout in the same lake-and-stream complex near our cabin over the week; and staked out a small tributary of Spearfish Creek with browns seemingly tucked under every bank and fallen log, all three targets were in sight. Sure, I’d caught them all over the week we had spent under perfect conditions, but the goal now was to catch all […]
Our Outdoors: Deep Recollections
Our Outdoors: Deep RecollectionsBy Nick Simonson My first experience with wild trout came in Montana just before my senior year of high school. There, alongside a ditch that we were told was a trout stream by the man at the shop in the nearby town, I wandered out toward the bank and looked down to see a dark, missile-shaped body holding at the bottom of a blue-green run of water. With my flyfishing days far ahead of me, I slashed at the fish deep in the pocket. It barely flinched as my Mepps spinner burned back time and again to […]
Our Outdoors: Home & Away
Our Outdoors: Home & AwayBy Nick Simonson I’ll be the first to tell you that I’m a homebody when it comes to the outdoors. It doesn’t take much for me to get lost chasing walleyes along the river winding through town, casting after trout in the nearby lakes, or picking off a few hungry bass as summer progresses on nearby waters for largemouths and smallmouths alike. In the fall, I don’t travel far for hunting, heading a few minutes northeast for a readily available shot at sharpies in September, and southwest about a tumbler’s worth of coffee to chase pheasants […]
Our Outdoors: Cream of the Crop
Our Outdoors: Cream of the CropBy Nick Simonson A shellacking. A beatdown. A butt-whooping. All these terms paled in my young mind when describing a drubbing on the baseball field when compared to the term “getting creamed.” That descriptor suggests that the opposing team had swung their bats so mightily and so frequently and with such success that they converted our pasty-white, pre-summer milky makeup into slow-moving whipped cream on the diamond. While disappointing to be on the end of such a creaming, it made the idea of a slice of apple pie and some Cool Whip seem like a […]
Our Outdoors: A Chance to Learn
Our Outdoors: A Chance to LearnBy Nick Simonson We buzzed along the inside of the breakline, my buddy Kevin and I, watching the rhythmic ticking of the tips of the trolling rods strung out alongside his Alumacraft, with a second eye toward the graph behind the console he was manning for the blips and arcs which symbolized the post-spawn walleyes lurking below. In the blue-green waters of the Missouri River, our firetiger crankbaits bumped and scraped along the beige bottom as things got shallower, and then swung back to their pulsing cadence as the bottom gave way to a deeper […]
Our Outdoors: Keep It Clean
Our Outdoors: Keep It CleanBy Nick Simonson Amidst all the discussion of global warming, climate change, and pollution on a level so great that a second landmass made of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean can be seen from outer space, it’s the smaller areas where I encounter garbage that stick with me each spring. After a winter under ice, and snow-covered shorelines opening up to spring anglers, the water is where our impact – hopefully not so much as fishermen, as I like to think we have a special connection with the water, but as society in general – […]
Our Outdoors: Words of Advice
Our Outdoors: Words of AdviceBy Nick Simonson Perhaps it was because the spoken-word piece by Baz Luhrmann was in such high rotation on MTV’s video lineup in the summer of 1999 when I had just afternoon classes and the TV in my fraternity house room was just on all morning, but the newspaper column dubbed over instrumental music that is Wear Sunscreen has resonated with me throughout my life. I highly recommend everyone look it up on YouTube, as the advice contained in it is simple, fun, and always reassuring. As it has randomly shown up on the satellite radio […]
