Our Outdoors

Our Outdoors: Juice It By Nick Simonson Some of the most memorable fishing trips I’ve been on have been the result of disaster. Okay, not disaster in the terms of life-threatening circumstances, but, it would probably be fairer to say major inconvenience.  Whether motorless in the flow, or without power on hard water, finding the silver lining hasn’t been difficult when things look bad but the fish start biting.  It’s simply knowing how to make juice those sour days that life hands us, and saving the recipe for future challenges. A Floating Find While fishing the Sheyenne River north of […]

Our Outdoors: Colorblind By Nick Simonson In the modern era of fishing tackle, lures are as much designed to catch the eye of anglers as they are fish.  How else are the 95 different models of Rapala crankbaits explained (and that’s just the ones found on the company’s “best sellers” portion of its website)?  Ultraviolet paint, reflective prisms, baitfish ball techni-seal skins and more sell the angler as well as the fish on the realism of the offering.  While matching the hatch is important, the insanity as to how real these offerings appear is mindblowing.  Certainly, if the lure looks […]

Our Outdoors: Dress It Up By Nick Simonson In the heart of winter, while all of Hollywood’s brightest stars make their way down the red carpet in an endless array of award shows, dressed in the latest fashions from the world’s top designers, it’s not unusual to find a die-hard lure maker deep into the night dressing up his or her creations.  But instead of designing offerings in silk and sequins, it’s bucktail or flashabou, because now is the time to prepare those lures which in spring and summer will land a variety of fish across the region. No canvas […]

Our Outdoors: Not So Fast By Nick Simonson With a click and plop, the gray splitshot tugged at the payload of three mousies on the tiny red hook which spun haphazardly on its way down into the clear waters of the impoundment.  In the moment it took to put the bail back in position and watch the yellow foam bobber go upright, the float was already following the bait-and-weight combination, but not due to the pull of gravity.  A large bar had joined the marks on the Vexilar screen and I did a confirmatory check of the far hole as […]

Our Outdoors:  Season to Season By Nick Simonson The dust from an autumn’s worth of traveled gravel roads coated the inside of the bed of my F-150, despite the topper with the loose passenger-side screen providing ample coverage for the mix of dog gear, field kits, gallon jugs of water and an assortment of bungee cords and ratchet straps.  As I unlocked the latter from the side of the well-worn beige and brown kennel and slid the unit out, I took stock of the seven remaining plastic hasps that held it together and figured a scavenger hunt was in order […]

Our Outdoors:  The Greatest Teacher By Nick Simonson “The greatest teacher, failure is.” In the newest installment of Star Wars (sorry…spoiler alert, skip this paragraph if you haven’t seen it yet) the wisdom of Yoda shines through once again as he counsels a conflicted Luke Skywalker struggling to overcome the self-imposed exile from society and the force, which resulted from his mistakes and perceived weaknesses that in turn gave rise to the new trilogy’s villain, Kylo Ren.  Rising up and embracing who he is as a result of those errors, Skywalker faces off with his former student to set right […]

Our Outdoors: Give the Gift of Safety By Nick Simonson Few firearms symbolize the holidays more than the Red Ryder BB gun received by Ralphie in the classic yuletide movie A Christmas Story. While his first experience with the peacemaker does not go well – nearly shooting his eye out as forewarned by his mother, teacher and even Santa Claus – the movie ends with the boy falling fast asleep with the gun in his hands, as the narrator recalls it being the best gift he had received, or would ever receive. For many boys and girls around Ralphie’s age, […]