By Mike Peluso I’ve seen a lot of things over my 40-plus years of fishing the Missouri River. But the May 6 Big Muddy Tournament was one for both the record books and the memory bank. This spring has been a tough one. The walleyes were slow to arrive in the Missouri River around Bismarck,…

By Nick Simonson I first saw our new neighbors in the dim light of an early February morning.  As I walked the dogs past their driveway, they cautiously eyed us over but, unlike the residents who had been on our block for a while, they didn’t take off when both my large lab and German…

NDG&F Release North Dakota’s 2023 deer season is set, with 53,400 licenses available to hunters, down 10,800 from last year. In addition, muzzleloader licenses decreased by 146 and restricted youth antlered mule deer licenses by 145. Residents age 11, 12 and 13 who hold a youth antlerless white-tailed deer license are no longer restricted to…

By Nick Simonson Success in fishing, as in life, comes down to doing the little things right.  If you’re not familiar with the cautionary tale dubbed “for want of a nail,” it’s well worth the ten second read in any of its poetic forms.  The base lesson is that due to missing the smallest detail…

By Doug Leier  Where are the fish biting? How are the deer numbers? These are the two most often asked questions I get.  Along those same lines, the most popular licensing inquiry deals with the firearms deer lottery and bonus points.  Let’s establish from the start these are “bonus” points and not any kind of…

By Mike Peluso Confused, frustrated, and depressed are all words that can be used when to describe what is happening on the Missouri River near Bismarck right now. You could probably even throw in a couple swear words. If you have fished the river as hard and as much as I have for over 40…

By Nick Simonson The water was cold, fast, and dingy rushing out of the gates of Baldhill Dam, as atop the spillway the ghostly blue-gray ice still held fast to the shores of Lake Ashtabula at its generally widest and deepest point of the 12-mile reservoir, despite being a single day away from the month…

By Nick Simonson With our increasingly condensed spring, the spawning runs of fish are beginning to stack up.  Pike have just begun in earnest, well behind normal.  It’s likely walleyes across the region will get going shortly as well.  Behind both of those species, smallmouth and largemouth bass will next stake out their nesting sites. …

By Nick Simonson While the late ice-off for much of the state’s waters is delaying spring angling for many sportsmen, it is also hampering some of the North Dakota Game & Fish Department’s (NDG&F) efforts when it comes to egg collection and stocking. With many lakes just beginning to lose their ice cover, however, processes…

By Doug Leier  One of the most unique seasons in North Dakota’s outdoors is the paddlefish season. For some the season is an annual reunion of family and friends, sort of the spring version of deer camp. And if you can’t make it, your excuse better be good.  For those who don’t know, here’s a…

By Mike Peluso I wish I had more news on the fishing end of things for this week’s Missouri River Fishing report, unfortunately the update is not much in the form of catching fish, but hopefully we are trending in that direction. The ramps are all pretty much usable up and down the entire river…

By Nick Simonson I’m not a huge fan of the saying “less is more.”  I mean, MORE is more, right?  Raised in the go-go-Reaganaut 1980s capitalism environment that I was, Gordon Gecko and just about every other big screen role model said greed was good, faster was better, biggest was best and certainly more is…

By Nick Simonson Business End To complete the rig, tie on a chosen hook or jig.  There are many options that can be fished under a slip float for all sorts of species.  An octopus hook in size 2 or 4 works well for walleyes, and smaller hooks like the size 6 will do the…

By Cara Greger While taking a walk at the Belfield “Dam” Park (some locals told me they want to change the name, but my kids and I kind of like it), my ten-year-old Chocolate Labrador Retriever Muffin and I were looking at last year’s prairie skeletons. 2022 must have been a good moisture year for…

NDG&F Release A total of 47,590 North Dakota deer hunters took approximately 25,093 deer during the 2022 deer gun hunting season, according to a post-season survey conducted by the state Game and Fish Department, down from 57,086 hunters and 32,793 harvested deer in the 2021 firearms season. Game and Fish made available 64,200 deer gun…

By Doug Leier While working the Outdoors Show in winter one of the more frequent discussions centered on electronic posting of private land for hunting.  For example, one landowner didn’t appreciate a neighboring hunter/landowner accessing land left unposted by others before returning to hunt his own posted property. While few would support the morality of…

NDG&F Release North Dakota’s paddlefish season opens May 1, and snaggers should note that the sale and distribution of tags are similar to last year. Paddlefish tags are available for purchase online at the Game and Fish Department’s website, gf.nd.gov, at license vendors, and during normal business hours at Game and Fish offices in Bismarck,…

By Mike Peluso With the winter we had I was hoping Mother Nature would have at least given us a little break this spring. Unfortunately, she has other plans. As of April 16, the Knife River, Heart River and all the smaller tributaries are roaring. The Knife is the number one culprit of the muddy…

NDG&F Release The North Dakota Game and Fish Department’s 2022 bighorn sheep survey, completed by recounting lambs in March, revealed a record 347 bighorn sheep in the grasslands of western North Dakota, up 4% from 2021 and 15% above the five-year average. The count surpassed the previous record of 335 bighorns in 2021. Altogether, biologists…

By Nick Simonson Spring brings with it a change in the air, and where rain begins to pour down to bring those May flowers out on the landscape and fill the banks of streams, ponds and lakes with a recharge of something other than snow, so too come other additions to those waters.  Stocked trout…

By Nick Simonson While spring has just arrived and most of the region’s lakes remain ice covered, and only a few rivers have broken free of winter’s grasp completely, it’s hard not to think about the gamest fish that swims – the smallmouth bass.  When the water warms, smallies become more aggressive, and with their…

By Nick Simonson As rivers open with a swell of meltwater, bringing the first openwater fishing action of the season, anglers are hooking up their boats and heading out. With that spring rush of angling excitement comes watercraft traveling across the North Dakota prairie between those first open rivers and then the lakes as the…

By Doug Leier I’ve always appreciated the complexities of nature, including the connection of individual fish and wildlife species to food, water, space and where they call home. If you hunt upland game, the importance of grassland habitat and pollinators is mutual to game and hunters. Much of the information the North Dakota Game and…

By Mike Peluso There is a lot happening here in the Bismarck, North Dakota stretch of the Missouri River. As of April 8, the ice in town has finally moved out and I would anticipate Fox Island boat ramp being opened up shortly. As far as my guiding is going, we are getting on the…

By Nick Simonson A full 30 inches of snow drift lined the banks of the small creek just down the road from the cabin in drifts that clung to and overhung its edges.  Under the heating sun of mid-morning, however, they had already begun to add to it from the white extensions dripping meltwater, making…

By Nick Simonson One of the earliest fish providing anglers a warm water experience is the bluegill.  From small ponds to the shallows of big lakes, sunnies look skyward for any of the season’s first insects to hit the surface for an easy snack.  Likewise, anglers looking to connect with those rises on the fly…

By Doug Leier  I don’t remember the year I bought my first North Dakota fishing license online. I intentionally tried to block it out with respect to an ongoing tradition. Prior to that, my first initial trip of the spring included a stop at the gas station for some worms, Diet Mountain Dew, my fishing…

By Nick Simonson Following an early April snowstorm and continued cold conditions across much of central and eastern North Dakota, concerns for extensive winterkill events on many lakes, particularly those in the southeastern portion of the state, continue to grow.  As of March 24, the North Dakota Game & Fish Department (NDG&F) listed 85 waters…

By Mike Peluso I’m glad I took a little drive up River Road north of Bismarck this morning. Rumor had it the Wilton Boat Ramp on the Missouri River had recently been opened.  Burleigh County equipment has not been in there yet. However, the city of Washburn has! That boat ramp is open and ready…

By Nick Simonson One of the earliest fish available to anglers, even in the latest of springs, is the crappie.  They’re ubiquitous, found on flows of all sorts from small farm ponds and mesotrophic rivers of the Dakota prairies, to the wandering chains of lakes in Minnesota.  In the latter state, where pike and walleye…