Our Outdoors

By Nick Simonson The practice of tying my own flies began almost as soon as I was introduced to the sport of fly fishing. Though even the first woolly buggers and simple nymphs were a bit rough looking, they caught fish the following season and that was enough to hook me on the process.  Since then, each winter’s efforts at the tackle desk have spilled over from the vise and sustained me in a variety of spring outings with more flies than I’d need in a season, or maybe five, stashed in containers throughout my basement office and boxes in […]

By Nick Simonson My enjoyment of baseball, particularly Twins baseball, began in my grandfather’s red party cruiser, or the bright blue paddleboat just off the shore on Big Detroit Lake.  My dad would bring an old battery-powered radio with a long silver antenna, set it between us and tune it to a Fargo station to pick up an afternoon or evening game.  As I would fish for sunnies or maybe throw a spoon for pike, he would jig the edge of the weeds and we’d listen to the play-by-play.  Oftentimes, throughout the game in his generation’s pre-internet fashion of memorized […]

By Nick Simonson In the waning afternoon light of a warm Friday where the high temperatures spiked into the low forties between last week’s bone chilling outbreak of Polar Vortex media hype and the next cold slap forecast to hit the area, I stood on the edge of open water.  While it felt like spring in the calm of evening’s onset, I knew it wasn’t and the open water that spilled out before me wasn’t anything natural as the cooling canal from the nearby powerplant kept the lake at an artificial 55 degrees or so.  With its warmth though was […]

By Nick Simonson With a two-year-old and a just-turned-five-year-old running my house now, things go missing, particularly the remote lovingly named “Alexa” that connects to the Amazon-based lifeline of twenty-two minutes of peace and quiet in the form of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, which for those of my generation without kids is an animated spin on the Mr. Rogers Neighborhood we all recall.  She’s fallen through the couch, been set on top of the microwave, left in a sweatpants pocket, and even made her way onto the ice in my jacket in recent weeks.  I’d like to blame the boys, but […]

By Nick Simonson For a quick-tying and fun addition to any lure with a treble hook, such as a crankbait, in-line spinner or  spoon, that also ups the odds for catching fish, dressing a few spare treble hooks in colors that set various species off and seal the deal when they come in for a look is something that long winter nights were made for.  Through the addition of hair, flash, hackle and other materials to a standard treble, those factory lures can have some extra attraction, extreme customizability and a horde of ready back-up hooks when things get going […]

By Nick Simonson Along the lure-making learning curve, the trout spinner is a versatile bait that’s easy to create and fun to customize for salmonids in any lake or stream.  A dressed treble hook and a few components come together for an easy-casting compact lure that triggers brutal reaction strikes and covers water to help catch active fish.  Employ these lures in spring or fall for stocked rainbows and browns throughout the state, and tie them up in colors that you know will catch fish. Materials: Size 10 treble hook (dressed) .026” Pre-bent shaft (3” long) Nickel body (1/16 oz) […]

By Nick Simonson It used to be that the middle of January was a dead time for me, a melding together of quiet post-holiday nights ticking away in front of the tying bench punctuated by frantic weekend searches for perch or walleyes on hardwater in an attempt to overcome the slowing mid-ice bite, all while counting the days toward March and my estimate of when the first openwater angling options would come to be. Over the last five years, however, January has become much busier since I became involved in Clay Target League.  Sure, I still sneak a few nights […]

By Nick Simonson With the recent passage of the Farm Bill by Congress and its execution by the President, three million more acres have been added to the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), bringing the total under the set-aside system’s cap to 27 million acres to be phased in by 2023.  Stuck at around 24 million acres for the last handful of years, the impact of marginal lands being put into this reserve program has been most notable, but only under the age-old adage of “you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.” In the first decade of this century, […]