Our Outdoors

By Nick Simonson As my buddy John and I drifted over the transition area of mud, rock and gnarled tree roots that popped up and grabbed our bottom bouncers which surveyed the underwater scene for walleyes on the Missouri River impoundment, our eyes turned to a shore angler along the backside of the bay.  His nine-foot rod was doubled over, and while some of his lifting suggested his bait had found a snag in the curve of deep water that ran next to shore, the pounding of the rod tip in response to each crank on his reel proved otherwise.  […]

By Nick Simonson Kids these days! There’s nothing they can’t destroy from any angle and they do it no matter the conditions: in the rain, in the wind, and in the sun, it just doesn’t seem to matter.  When they’re not actively smashing something, they’re talking in hushed tones among their little groups of four or five, pointing out what other sets of kids were doing and jockeying for position to figure out who’s better than who. It also goes without saying, that when they’re not doing any of the above, they are on their phones – CONSTANTLY.  They’re a […]

By Nick Simonson The pop-up clouds bubbled on the western horizon, fueled by the hot southern winds that brought the first real sensation of summer to the region.  With the truck’s digital thermometer bouncing between 88 and 90, I hooked up the puddle jumper and turned extra-wide through the pre-rush traffic to grab my boys from daycare and haul them and the aluminum craft into the warm evening west of town and toward the small trout lake just over the first break in the hills. As we pulled into the dusty lot of the boat launch, a few large drops […]

By Nick Simonson Each bend in the river spilled spring out in front of us and with each moment on the ride through the winding valley, the memories of growing up on the flow and learning much of what I know about fishing came back with them.  Whether it was the rising geese fleeing the hum of the boat motor, the squeaking call of a wood duck rising into the air, or simply the finally-green trees of this late-developing season that bent lightly in the breeze, every turn was a reminder of past days on the soft, chocolate waters of […]

By Nick Simonson The late spring was no more evident than when the water passed my waistline while wading out in the delta of the inflowing feeder creek, looking for walleyes.  The chill was dampened through the stocking feet of my waders and the jeans I wore underneath, but as I reached into the floating yellow-and-white minnow bucket looped through the right shoulder strap of my waders, I got a good feel of the lingering cold this season has held on to.  My fishing buddy, Einar from Norway had come over to join me for what I had hoped would […]

By Nick Simonson As I staked out the long-term forecast and searched for some bright spot in the near future – hopefully for the upcoming holiday weekend – I caught a fragment of the interview with David Letterman that was going on in the background noise of the television morning show, in which he and the host were talking amidst the waters of a small stream in upstate New York, fly rods in hand but no fish to show for their efforts.  In the snippet that grabbed my ear and pulled me away from my hunt for a warming trend, […]

By Nick Simonson The running joke every Sunday, when the more than 200 students on our six area Clay Target League teams get together, is that it’s easy to tell it is our shooting day.  This spring, conditions have been, without fail, the worst of the week on our designated afternoon at the gun club.  Winds of 20 to 30 miles per hour (or stronger) have been the norm.  High temperatures that can’t break out of the forties and those in the first four weeks of the season stuck in the thirties with spitting rain and the occasional sweep of […]

By Nick Simonson As with all rivers, the flow, action and environment can change from day to day. The Rainy River, which drains the lake of the same name, along with dozens of tributary rivers and creeks, down an 85 mile stretch of the Minnesota-Canada border to Lake of the Woods, is no different.  On our second day, that fact was more than evident as branches, stumps and even a few large deadheads which were infrequent the day before bobbed and rolled their way with regularity toward the lake a mile down from us, where we were held in place […]

By Nick Simonson It had been five years since I had been on the Rainy River in northern Minnesota and flung the weight-swivel-circle hook combination full of crawlers in that overhead style of a surf angler, made all the less graceful by the rocking of the current and the wakes of the passing boats that were headed out in search of lake sturgeon with us.  With me to start a new tradition was my friend Tory and his son Gavin.  Now 11, the youngest in our crew was ready to take on the challenges of angling for these prehistoric fish, […]