By Nick Simonson I watched the gallon and price counters on the pump slowly tick up, up, up.  I estimated that I’d need about 28 gallons, with the tank of my pickup sitting at just below a quarter and impatiently ticked off each one.  Unwilling to test the limits on the back portion of the…

By Nick Simonson The dark wood of our living room floor is the color of coffee, making it easy to disguise my spills when the replacement pot I bought this spring leaks a few drops down there on my first pour of the day.  But since getting Ole, my new yellow lab puppy to replace…

By Nick Simonson I grabbed the pink-and-purple deep running crankbait off the floor, almost as an afterthought.  It had sat, stashed away for years in the miscellanea that most anglers have – lures, baits and other items of tackle that don’t quite make the cut, aren’t of any sort of confidence color, or just don’t…

By Nick Simonson   The art of lure making and fly tying results in a good deal of B flies and seconds that, after a few tries on the water are relegated to the bottom of the box, and are filed away for future reference, simply because they failed to connect with the trout, walleye…

  By Nick Simonson   There’s a sort of silent excitement in watching the chartreuse top and orange spindle point of a slip float slide under the surface of the water, knowing (or maybe not knowing) exactly what comes next.  The sweep of the rod tip to set the hook, the protesting pull on the…

It was fitting that the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band blared through the back doors of the pavilion, where the 10:30 crowd at the wedding reception sang along with each verse of “Fishin’ in the Dark” with growing rowdiness, especially on the well-known choruses of the song.  Just down the sandy shore of the lake, my…

By Nick Simonson Not every aspect of angling is as easy as sitting on the bank, casting out a bobber over a hook full of worms and hoping for a bite, the way many of us started out fishing.  With each varying twist on the sport, there is more to learn and practice than there…

By Nick Simonson Coffee for the outdoorsman is more than just a morning drink.  It’s the dawn-delivered lifeblood of adventure, that sip that puts some pep in each step and kicks the adrenaline up a notch when that initial fish taps the line on a gorgeous spring day or the slightest crackling of leaves echoes…

By Nick Simonson   The conditions and even the dates have varied greatly from year-to-year for the trout opener on the small stream in the state park south of my home.  In some seasons, the water has been so low that the stocked browns still remained stacked by the dozens in the deepest pockets under…

By Nick Simonson Having spent a good deal of the weekend scoring for the local high school trap team and doing yard work in the unseasonable 80-degree highs, I hoped the rain scheduled for Sunday afternoon would hold off long enough to let me loosen my arm for the approaching stream trout opener with some…

  By Nick Simonson Catch and release angling isn’t anything new, in fact the conservation tool has been around long enough to have its own acronym of C&R, which is universally known in fishing circles.  At the outset, providing the length or maybe the length and girth of that monster fish of the day wasn’t…

By Nick Simonson The flock rose and fell like a slow pulse, banking and turning against the southerly gusts. They made the sky look like static on an old black and white TV screen long after the daily programming had stopped and the national anthem signaled the end of the broadcast day.  The growing crowd…

  By Nick Simonson   The rush of first ice is in the rear view mirror, and that stretch of more challenging mid-winter fishing is underway.  While February marks the traditional seasonal slowdown in on-ice action in the upper Midwest, the midseason doldrums rarely prevent anglers from making their way out after fish.  Heightened technology…

By Nick Simonson Case upon case of 12 gauge shells piled up in the safe room at the trap club as a line of volunteers – some of them fellow coaches, some parents and some shooters – daisy-chained the 100 brown boxes of ammo through the snow to their resting place along the wall.  While…

  By Nick Simonson   When it comes to fast moving water, or big fish lurking below the school, nothing gets an angler down to business like the addition of a heavy, flashy bead at the front of a fly.  Whether it is a rapidly-flowing stream harboring trout in deeper pockets or tucked into the…