Our Outdoors: Here Comes the Sun(glasses)
Our Outdoors: Here Comes the Sun(glasses)By Nick Simonson It’s been a long mix of chilly winter and underwhelming spring. Cold temperatures, snow, rain and general nastiness extending into May have built up a longing for the warmth of the later stretch of the season and the start of summer, and maybe with recent changes in the pattern, just possibly, that warmup is coming. With it comes the search for one vital fishing tool that not only reminds me that even in the cloudiest, coldest stretches, the sun is up there and getting stronger and a set of sunglasses is or […]
Our Outdoors: Gotta Catch ‘Em All
Our Outdoors: Gotta Catch ‘Em AllBy Nick Simonson On the Pokemon cartoon series, there’s a character named Goh, whose ambition is simply to encounter and capture every single type of fighting creature in the Pokemon universe. From the grub-like Weedle to the majestic azure legendary horse-like being Suicune and all sorts of different ones in between, that’s his only goal – to experience the variety of what is available to him, and take part in it, collecting the varied species of Pokemon along the way. He truly embodies the franchise’s motto of “Gotta Catch ‘Em All!”I know all this because […]
Our Outdoors: Great Debates
Our Outdoors: Great DebatesBy Nick Simonson In the outdoors, there are always points of contention among anglers, hunters and just about anyone else with an opinion on anything that swims, flies, or falls for a lure or decoy. I’m not talking about the testifying in front of the legislature type of interactions, or the courtroom conservation battles handled by high priced attorneys in Washington D.C., either. Rather, those greatest of the great debates in the outdoors are the important ones: the best way to rig a plastic, which caliber is the ideal deer gun, and which shotgun shell simply puts […]
Our Outdoors: It’s Terminal
Our Outdoors: It’s TerminalBy Nick Simonson In the process of fishing, I’ve seen a good deal and done a lot of it. I’ve read a ton, watched some more, and through trial and error learned quite a bit, but most days it feels like it’s never enough. Through trial-and-error with new ideas, patterns, and processes, I trade frustration for elation and vice versa on a variety of streams and lakes for the seemingly unlimited species available. Perhaps the greatest leap in all of that learning which any angler makes is gaining the understanding of how and when to utilize terminal […]
Our Outdoors: Hard Work
Our Outdoors: Hard WorkBy Nick Simonson There’s chilly, and then there’s spring fishing on the Missouri River chilly. No matter how I’ve fished it in the past couple of years, that stretch in March and April when the walleyes start to move on the flow provides its own unique challenges. The wind seems to always be blowing upstream, pulling with it the cold from the fast-flowing water below and depositing the bulk of it directly on my hands as I struggle to wrangle a squirming fathead minnow from a scoop, or fumble through the reclipping process of a crankbait on […]
Our Outdoors: Headshakes and Eyerolls
Our Outdoors: Headshakes and EyerollsBy Nick Simonson In the depths of the cold channel, I felt my line slowly pull away from the bottom and gave a steady tug back on the jig below. The end of my rod bowed in a long arch as the heavy fish moved along as if it hadn’t realized it had been hooked yet. The weight below was far cry from that of the 12-to-14-inch lethargic walleyes we had been dredging out of the reach upstream from us which required a 10-, 15- or even 20-count to ensure the hook was in their mouths […]
Our Outdoors: Working with the Wind
Our Outdoors: Working with the WindBy Nick Simonson “It’d be a great day…if it wasn’t for the wind.”If I had a nickel for every time I heard this, I’d have enough for a season’s worth of bait, but such is spring in the upper Midwest. The jet stream yaws and the days oscillate in turn: gusts from the south, gusts from the north, gusts from the east and then a chance for chilly rain or late season snow. Then it all repeats. Even now as I write this with bright red lips chapped by the southeasterly breezes that blew in […]
Our Outdoors: Get Set for Spring Shooting Sports
By Nick Simonson Spring is in the air, and if you get a whiff of it in the coming days, it likely will bear with it the scent of gunpowder. Across the country and the region, USA High School Clay Target Leagues are kicking off their spring season, bringing tens of thousands of student-athletes in grades six through twelve to the trap and skeet range as well as the five stand and sporting clays course. Thousands of those shooters will be new to the pastime of shooting sports, and undoubtedly a little nervous for their first time behind a target […]
Our Outdoors: Turn of Phrase
Our Outdoors: Turn of PhraseBy Nick Simonson I’ve never been much for coincidences, believing that all things are connected, particularly those in the natural world. While luck, chance and odd occurrences do exist, everything happens for a reason. Preparing for a long weekend trip to see friends in northern California and the redwood trees near the state’s northern border, the phrase that kept running through my head, as we prepared for the air travel and drive up the coast to see the towering giants was: “better do it before they’re gone.”It’s a pessimistic way of looking at our natural world, […]
