Our Outdoors: An Old Adage
By Nick Simonson This has been perhaps the windiest spring I can recall since I became a dedicated angler several decades ago. The scattered calm days seem to come at a rate of one in ten or so, but the balance of the spring has been dominated by gusty conditions and stretches where even when the wind shifts, it comes out of a new direction at an equally fevered pace, wasting little time in transition. Going through the motions of correcting a slow troll with the bow mount motor on the water, or bracing the steering wheel white-knuckled against the […]
Our Outdoors: The Ecstasy of Gold
By Nick Simonson It was one of those spring days we’ve had an abundance of: warm but not quite hot and just windy enough to make it feel cool. As a result, the river was quiet. The fact that it was midday left only me, following a long morning run that ate up most of the front half of my day, and a couple of boats scattered up the two-mile stretch I patrolled under clear blue post-frontal skies, propelled one way by the rising gusts and slowed as I turned back against them. All the while the click-and-wiggle of the […]
Our Outdoors: Seeing Spots
By Nick Simonson There’s a compromise reached in every relationship. My wife loves to cruise on the open water and I love to fish, so much so that the idea of being on a boat without a rod in hand is what I imagine hell must be like. So while I manned the helm of the party boat as we moved up and down the river under the warmth of the newly-minted summer sun over the holiday weekend, my eyes shifted from the bouncing rod tip that telegraphed the motion of the firetiger crankbait clicking along the bottom to the […]
Our Outdoors: Close to Home
By Nick Simonson I’m not much for travel, even in the outdoors. Though it’s the safest way of getting from point A to point B, I sweat profusely while aboard just about any airplane, regardless of whether there’s fishing or hunting on the other side of the trip and often start dreading the flight back with three or four days to go in my vacation. While far more comfortable, there are few trips I make in the car for hunting or fishing that are more than an hour away, unless there’s a farmhouse or a cabin that serves as a […]
Our Outdoors: On Guard
By Nick Simonson Spring brings with it the first trips out into a greening countryside. Whether sneaking off to a favorite shore fishing spot or hanging up some trail cameras to catch the first glimpses of a buck caught on a memory card, spring adventures often set anglers and hunters up against flora and fauna that can be challenging. While we’re not exactly talking murder hornets in this neck of the woods (yet), a sampling of pesky plant and insect species should be examined and avoided, or at least warded off, at this time of year. Ticked Off While there […]
Our Outdoors: The Point of Return
By Nick Simonson This week marks an important point of return. I don’t know if that’s a real term, but it’s far less ominous than “the point of no return,” which has had its share of dramas, dark songs and thriller type novels written about it. The point of return, however, is that point in time where we’re now closer to the start of a hunting season than we are to the end of the previous one, and it should be celebrated. With New Year’s Eve typically the last day of bow hunting in most northern tier states, those final […]
Our Outdoors: In the Wind
By Nick Simonson I’ve been on both sides of the wind in many of my outdoor adventures but none more notable than last week, when the well-worn mooring rope on the cleat of my boat broke and my boys and I had the stunning experience of heading down from the parking lot to the launch dock to see the old Lund about 40 yards out in the bay, with a portion of the red tether dangling off the side and the other part still attached to the dock. (Yet one more thing to throw in my hole in the water, […]
Our Outdoors: Holes in the Water
By Nick Simonson Wedged into the narrow corner under the removable jumpseat in the big boat which had just come out of storage this weekend, I struggled to aim my headlamp and balance the beam from my phone light at the connectors on top of the battery terminals, the snap of electric sulfur and scent of gear grease heavy in the transom compartment. Unable to figure out why the hydraulic pump for the trim on the motor would not work when just the day before it had, it took me several attempts, before out of the corner of my eye, […]
Our Outdoors: Right Behind
By Nick Simonson Seeing a fish come in behind a lure is one of the most exciting moments in angling. When the water is clear and the shadow of a pike or muskie becomes a distinctive, magnified image of what I’d imagine Leviathan looked like in legend, few things in the outdoors get the heart racing as fast. When the wake forms on a largemouth zeroing in on the plop-plop-plop of a surface popper, it’s hard to tune out the adrenaline rush. Even on a recent outing for crappies, angling over a shallow rocky area for pre-spawn fish that were […]
