Rain Puts A Damper On The Stream Trout Opener

April 16, 2005
Fishing
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Last night I was pumped to do something that I haven’t spent much time doing during the past few years…in fact, I haven’t really been serious about stream trout fishing for almost 20 years. Still, it seems this spring I have been fighting off the urge to revert back to some of my old sportsman ways and activities. In particular, I have been anxiously awaiting the opening of the stream trout season in Minnesota.

Now trout fishing in the Gopher State is by no means as mystical or fabulous as it is out West in states like Colorado or Montana, yet it holds a very special appeal to me. It is in the streams of Goodhue County where I cut my teeth, so to speak, on this fascinating and sometimes frustrating sport.

I’ve been lucky, however. When I was growing up the stream that runs through my family farm had trout transplanted in it by one of the local sportsman’s clubs. It seemed at first the fish were somewhat easy to catch immediately after being released into the stream…but within a week or two they were as canny and difficult to coax into the landing net as any of the native fish the stream might have held.

This year I had a special motivation for the trout opener. About six weeks ago I got married to a wonderful lady who admitted to me last night that she had NEVER before had a fishing license. Oh sure, she thought she would like to fish and would be more than willing to give it a chance…but in the previous years of her life it just wasn’t an opportunity that presented itself.

Well, I was about to change that. No wife of mine is going through life without ponying up annually for a fishing license, or so I thought. Last night I marched right out and purchased my first ever Combination Sportsman’s License which in Minnesota allows both a husband and wife to fish (and also one of the spouses to hunt small game). I then dusted off my old trout equipment, made sure the line was new and everything was in working order…and we waited for this morning to make our debut marital casts.

Much to our chagrin, last night the TV weathermen were not sounding too optimistic for today…but hey, they are weathermen I figured. With their poor accuracy record as of late I would rather have them predicting rain than pleasant skies and be painfully proven wrong. Well, this time they weren’t wrong. Today was one of those absolutely miserable days to be a trout fishermen. Heavy overcast and rain that varied from light to not-so-light almost all day. In fact, at 2pm it was so dark and gloomy down in the trout valley that vehicle headlights were necessary for travel just to be safe.

As planned, my wife and I packed our gear and headed off toward Hay Creek near Red Wing. This place holds a special allure for me because it was in this valley where I cut my teeth on turkey hunting (see Tuesday’s blog). I also had special plans to go hunting for a wildflower called the pasque flower which is one of the first flowers to bloom in the springtime in Minnesota. This location is the only place I have ever seen such a flower bloom naturally. But to no avail. The trails were miserable, everything about the day appeared to be a total washout.

Now typically I am not one who would let a little rain scare me away from hunting or fishing. On the other hand, today the adventure was not all about me. My wife would have been fixated on the fact she was getting cold and wet and realistically she would not have enjoyed the outing. So instead, we drove through the area and looked at the hearty trout fisherman, made some future plans for fishing on another day, and went to our favorite little hangout in Hay Creek called Dressen’s Saloon for lunch.

Even though I did not wet a line fishing today it was a special time to just pass through an area recalling all the memories it holds. Next time when we visit we will be sure to heed the weatherman’s advice a bit more closely. Still, there’s a long season ahead for trout fishing and undoubtedly there will be more promising days to wet just a line and not our entire bodies.

Bait & Switch? Don’t Allow This To Happen

April 10, 2005
Fishing
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Okay, let’s face it…the Minnesota Fishing Opener is still about a month away but with the recent warm weather thoughts are already turning to this rite of spring for most upper Midwest sportsmen. Certainly, I am no exception as I have caught the spring fever bug, too.

But today in Chris Niskanen’s column, in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, he chronicled an important outdoor issue that many of us need to consider closer. The fact is, the mom and pop bait shop is about to become a thing of the past in many locales. The economies of owning such a business along with the changing world and our buying habits just do not make the local bait store such an invaluable place…at least not like it once was for all fishermen.

Twenty years ago we would not have considered buying bait at a department store or a big chain outdoors store (such as Cabela’s, Gander or the like). Truth is, many of these stores did not exist in our neighborhoods like they do now. Furthermore, the advice on where the fish were biting as well as drooling over the braggin’ board were tasks you just couldn’t achieve by going anywhere else except the local bait shop where the man behind the counter was “the expert.”

Times have certainly changed. Today, the Internet gives us message boards and forums to overload on information about nearly any body of water, if that is what you want to do. You can get information directly from other fishermen without the bait shop owner being the middleman, of sorts. Essentially, the local discount chain (whether it be Wal-Mart, Target, etc.) has the ability to sell you the lures and equipment you need…as well as the bait. The punk kid behind the counter who rings up the purchase likely doesn’t know the difference between a fathead minnow or a shiner, but does it really matter? Convenience and favorable price of buying at the newer stores seems to drive the purchase for many of today’s fishermen.

What a shame. A good friend of mine, Mark, owns an awesome bait shop in northern Minnesota and even though he is in the heart of fishing country it is a struggle even for him. When the new Gander Mountain moved into town the new competition gave customers options they didn’t have before. You won’t often hear Mark complain, but I’m sure given his druthers he would rather have seen his prospective customers with fewer “options.” Especially when those choices are the big-name, mega-stores.

The truth is there is something a bit nostalgic about the small bait shop. Sure, their prices probably don’t compare with those you can find elsewhere…but should that really matter? If a business owner has devoted his livelihood to purveying leeches, minnows and crawlers why should we as sportsmen abandon such noble efforts? Is convenience and low price really that important all the time? Shouldn’t the experience of walking into a closely confined shop reeking of fish odors also have some merit for preserving into our future?

I know as a kid some of my fondest memories spent with my dad fishing were the few minutes we stopped at the local bait shop before the outing. Inside that simple building was a sense of hope you could feel as well as a character that is just too sanitized in the big mega-stores. Nope, in reading Chris’ article today it reinforced in my mind the importance of patronizing the local bait shop on your way to the lake this year. The price of failing to do so just might cause you to lose that option in the years to come.

Controversy Over Cormorants

April 7, 2005
Fish/Wildlife Research and Management Fishing
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If there is a bird more despised by fisherman than the cormorant I surely do not know what it is. Simply bring up the word cormorant to a fisherman and you will likely hear a litany of reasons why this bird should not exist anywhere on the face of the earth. In other words, the bird is simply evil and the prime culprit of many of our fishing woes.

My first introduction to this bird’s negative impact on our aquatic ecosystem was each time we would catch a stringer full of nice yellow perch in the spring. The hope always was that if the fish were caught early in the season they wouldn’t be too “wormy,” but later, on as the summer progressed, far too often the perch were so full of parasitic little grubs that they were unfit to eat by most of our standards.

The reason? Cormorants. It is told, whether total fact or fiction, that their digestive tracts are so laden with parasitic worms that the excrement and regurgitations pass this undesirable nemesis to the aquaculture…where it inflicts the fish in unpalatable ways. Literally you can filet a fish with these parasites and you can see dozens of little white grubs destroying the otherwise nice looking filets.

But the main problem with cormorants seems to be their numbers. Not only do these birds pass along their parasites, but they are voracious consumers of young walleye fry and other game fish, as well. To most fisherman, enough is enough. War is about to be declared on the Double Crested Cormorant despite the fact it is a Federally protected species under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Plans are currently underway with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Minnesota DNR, and other agencies to reduce the population of cormorants by 80% on Leech Lake in northern Minnesota. The effort, while applauded by the sportsman community, is now being protested by folks who dispute the need for such culling. One researcher at the U of M wants to conduct more studies to further strengthen this cause and effect decline in certain fish populations on one of Minnesota’s premier fishing waters. These stall tactics seem a little self-serving for the researcher. The point is, even with a flock reduction the research can go on…but prolonging the inevitable only serves to do further damage to the water resource around where these birds tend to congregate.

So are sportsmen being unfair to a bird that has been hated through the ages by many fishermen? Maybe so, but when we put a restitution value on our fish of $30/fish or more for law violators who take too many fish…why then should a species that is famous for “taking more than their fair share” not also be held accountable in some manner. True, fishermen who take too many fish must pay with their pocketbook…whereas the only way the cormorants can pay is with their life. That is the way nature works…and when an over abundance of birds occur population control is necessary to prescribe.

During the upcoming weeks I’m sure we will be hearing lots more on this very volatile issue. If we look to what has happened in other states over this very matter, usually it is sportsmen clashing with protectionist groups such as The Humane Society of the U.S. who look to spoil these wildlife management efforts. Ultimately, who knows what will happen.

In Minnesota, fisherman have a very strong voice that can be heard by the DNR in several ways. One of those ways is the traditional complaint process with phone calls, letters and e-mails complaining that something needs to be done to protect and bolster our fishing resources. The other way is much more subtle, except to the DNR. When sportsmen become frustrated to the point they stop buying fishing licenses…I do believe this action speaks louder than words. And in the process, it looks to be necessary that a few cormorants must die to prevent this from happening.