A Little Rust and Dust... It's Roadtrippin', Right?

Rehan Nana flipped me the pheasant as I pulled into the gas station on the outskirts of town.  He sat with a wry grin on his face.  I was two minutes early.  7:13 am on the nose.  We were meeting a couple hours west of the Twin Cities for a fall ringneck hunt.  Rehan had along his buddy Bruce for the hunt.   Huh?  I'd never met Bruce.  All I saw were Rehan and buddy Derek Harwood sitting in Rehan's old Toyota.  Bruce?  Only later would I find out the name represented Rehan's favorite hunting buddy. His Toyota Land Cruiser.   A well-loved FJ60 with 193,000 rough and tumble miles.  Half the guts of the thing had been either sawed, duct taped, dropped or replaced   Exactly why Bruce makes the perfect hunting truck.   As Rehan says, " The name reminds me of an old northwoods uncle who farts, says incredibly inappropriate things, is generally hungover/still drunk, but somehow you know he can fix anything, gets his work done, has seen just about everything and has enough grit to get through anything." 

Rehan Nana And His Buddy Bruce...

Six of us hooked up at the gas station and caravaned west, out of the greater Montevideo metropolitan area.  We headed for a quiet piece of public hunting property our other two hunting buddies had dug up.  Andrew Vavra and Brian Essling had seen birds there a week earlier.   I figured this was the perfect fall tv hunt, documenting what I call the "Under 30 Club".  Think the next generation of Pheasants Forever members.  The guys who will, no doubt, someday write the checks.

Headed To The Field...

Flocks of fall honkers surrounded the walk-in area we hunted.  The first half of the day we flushed up very few pheasants.  In fact, two hens to be exact.  Pretty frustrating for the crew consider we could see dozens of roosters just across the dirt road, lounging in cattails on  private property.  It seems our honey hole had been hunted just one too many times...

Interviewing Andrew Vavra

After lunch behind the wheel, we stopped another forty miles up the road to hunt a couple of spots Derek suggested.   In an hour,  Andrew managed to drop the only two roosters we saw.  His dog flushed 'em both.   Just before sunset,  we added a third bird to our harvest.   This is how many young hunters scratch their itch.   Long roadtrips to small out-of-the-way spaces where at least a few wild pheasants hide and the hunt doesn't break the bank.  Classic public hunting...

Our Harvest...

After a few high-fives, I jumped into my truck to head further West for a few days of South Dakota hunting.    I chuckled as I did the math.  Each of the guys on the shoot qualified for the "Under 30 Club", even Bruce, but JUST barely.   Being a 1983 Toyota,  I called him a late-year model and called it good. Bruce,  a hunting truck full of dust and a little rust.  Who cares?  It's hunting, right?

Thanks to Derek for the very cool shots of our Friday hunting trip! 

TV History Hangs On My Wall...How 'Bout Yours?

Packing up a media guy's office is a lot tougher than you might think.  Holy Hannah, try it sometime. Last time I had to fill cardboard boxes,  I had a pink slip from my last newsroom (that slip was like a badge of honor at the time) in one hand and a fistfull of media passes in the other.   A decade later, our little outdoor television production house is on the move.  Packing, once again, leaves me with one of my toughest decisions as a media type.  What do I do with my old wall of media fame/shame?   For some reason, folks in television like to save their media passes.  Here's mine.

My Collection...

 Maybe it's how we tv types protect our memories.  Show where we've been.  Somehow remember the things we've seen, good and bad.  Maybe we hope someone might someday thumb through the tangle of dusty lanyards and scrappy paper passes and see our accomplishments. Maybe they won't.  Heck, my menagerie  has been hanging on walls for 20 years and the only person to take a moment to thumb through the memories has been me...Really??? Thanks PGA....

I've got piles of media passes from all kinds of sporting events;  US Opens, Super Bowls, Frozen Fours, Final Fours, Baseball games, you name it....  The tangle contains plenty of news events too.  Presidential visits, crime scenes, hurricanes, trials, all kinds of stuff.  

Thanks for the Memories Brett!

I chuckle as I look at the random stuff. Remember August 9, 1995? The pass to get onto Madison, Wisconsin's  State Street was a peculiar little Grateful Dead keychain.  Volunteers handed them out to the media as we covered Jerry Garcia's death.

How about the patch from Guilford County?  The crime lab folks gave me one of those to gain access to sensitive areas during my tenure in North Carolina....

This Got Us To President Bill Clinton, Amazingly unofficial.

One too many snow storms...

Badmiton anyone?See the badmiton birdie?  A momento.  Three network news crews actually played badmiton while we waited, day-in and day-out on a long-lasting trial on the East Coast.  I'll leave it at that. 

In another week or so, I'll walk out of my empty office.  I'm wondering if I'll still have a fistful of passes. If not, I'm guessing the garbage guy might waste ten minutes of his day picking through a pretty interesting piece of one tv guy's history, no matter how dusty the pile might be.... 

"Cut The Pickle"....The Perfect Pheasant Opener!

Every outdoor father dreams of their child's first hunt. My five-year-old son, Brady Michael, has been fishing steadily the last two years.  But, guns and birds are a whole 'nother story.  While Brady's little 40 pound frame is still a bit lean for tall, grassy pheasant fields, I decided this October pheasant opener would be his first.  Of course, I burned up Brady's brand new pair of boot Thursday night using a torch to melt in the mink oil I had minutes earlier applied.  Guess I forgot I had soaked his little boots in silicone spray a bit earlier in the evning.   Torch met Buster boots and *poof!*.  Quite a scene with Brady screaming over the small bonfire in the garage while I ran for the hose.   After a sleepless night pondering where I might find replacements on short notice,  I awoke to find Brady already up and in the kitchen waiting on a bowl of Fruity Pebbles.  He had his burned up boots, a clean blaze orange vest, his favorite Pheasants Forever hat and a pile of snacks already packed in his new field bag.  After a stop at the  local boot store (yes! they had one pair his size in stock),  we arrived in St James, Minnesota where a quick stop at Grandpa's house turned into an afternoon of shooting at the gun range.

Headed to the gun range

It's pheasant opener so kids ride up front (Don't worry.  It was just a couple blocks on the dirt road). Brady had a chance to pop off a few boxes of .22 rounds under the watchful eye of Grandpa Becker.

It appears he mounts his gun just like Dad does. Ha!

 Brady decided we needed to save his first target.  Hmmmm, I wonder how long it'll take Grandpa to find it.  

Next morning, we packed up and drove dirt roads over to the next town to take part in Minnesota's Governor's Pheasant Opener.   Our crew hit a birdy-lookin' piece of CREP just north of Madelia.  There, Brady fit right in with our mostly adult hunting party.  He wasn't a fan of deep grass, so he spent most of the hunt out on the edge of the habitat or riding on my shoulders.

 While shouldering Brady took me out of the shooting game, it didn't keep us from kicking up a lone rooster we eventually brought to hand.

 The best story came from Madelia's lunchtime land dedication.  Brady and I pulled in to the makeshift parking lot and hopped out to head to the lunch tent.  Suddenly,  Governor Dayton's motorcade pulled alongside us and the Governor hopped out for a "photo op" with Brady.   The Governor dropped to one knee while a couple photographers lined up the shot and Brady proceeded to tell the Gov "No way."   A bit chagrined, Mr. Dayton hopped back up and Brady swung around, both pointer fingers together and  said,  "Hey,  cut the pickle."  The Governor didn't quite know how to react.  Brady held up his fingers and repeated, "Cut the pickle!"  Finally, the Governor gave in and gave a quick chop.    Brady proceeded to grab Dayton's stomach and giggled, "Tickle! Tickle! Tickle!"  The whole scene made my weekend.   Governor Dayton chuckled a bit and  threw Brady a quick high-five.    Not bad kiddo.

A hi-five for the Governor

Brady spent the rest of the afternoon back at Grandpa's house lounging with a couple Lego kits while I headed back to the field with a few friends.  We had an INCREDIBLE afternoon hunt putting up, at best guess by the crew, more than 100 birds on the same piece of property we hunted in the morning.   Just had to wait until the birds left the corn fields for the habitat.

Hats off to Madelia, Minnesota's Pheasant Capital, for a GREAT 2013 Governor's Hunt.  I never knew pickles and pheasants would go so well together.....

FINALLY! Trout on Open Water! 2013...

8:30 AM MONDAY:




Monday morning and I'm back in the office. I've got a headache, my back hurts, and my hands are chewed up. The Jeep is COMPLETELY trashed and still packed with a pile of wet gear. The truck smells of a lightly pungent fragrance of beer, mud and coffee. I guess that could be proof that Trout Opener 2013 might have been worth our troubles....




9 AM FRIDAY: "It begins"

Fishing buddy Todd Nibbe and I set out to find clean water in Southeast Minnesota. We knew the spring runoff was a bit of a problem in areas, but we also thought we could find some water worthy of a little trout fishing. Todd manned the map books. I drove and played DJ. The Sheepdogs were a good start...




4:15 PM FRIDAY "Still at it...":



In all, fishing buddy Todd Nibbe and I checked out 17 streams between Red Wing and the town of Houston. All 14 were completely blown. Not so much real high water, but COMPLETELY turbid. Think Cumulonimbus mud in the water. No offense to the farmers out there, but AG is just killing our trout waters.  Take the drive we did (276 miles on Friday) and it's pretty easy to see what I'm talking about. By mid-afternoon, Todd was still on the maps and we were considering throwin' in the towel on this trip-gone-to-hell...

By early Friday evening, I'd called just about every resource I had in SE Minnesota and it sounded like we might have one clear trout stream in Southern Minnesota. I called a farming buddy who lives on the creek and he said, "Well, I'm standing at the kitchen window and I can see the bottom of the creek". Todd and I smiled....
We knew we were in good shape when we stopped by to check out a local brookie haunt in the area and it was also gin-clear. 



8:30 AM SATURDAY "Fish our tails off"



Photojournalism buddy Aaron Achtenberg joined the crew and as he and I walked to our first spot on the stream, Aaron smiled, "Know what I love most about this moment?" "I've got nowhere else to be in this world but on trout water, all day long..." 

It was pretty clear we were about the first people to fish the stretch of river we tackled. We caught too many nice browns to count. If the Goat would have been around, his fishy trout counter would have been smokin'...

1:15 PM "Yep, it starts.."




Nymphs and midges were killer all morning. Without weight, you weren't catching fish. One piece of weight wasn't enough. Two and the fish just ate and ate... After lunch, I spotted a single BWO skittering around on the water. A moment later, a brown trout sucked it under. I snipped and re-tied and until dark pushed us off the water, we caught fish of all sizes on BWOs. Heck, we caught so many fish we actually got kinda "bored"... 

4 PM SATURDAY: Who'dathunkit





10:40 "Celebrating a Michigan win"




10 AM SUNDAY MORNING: "Post-rain fun"





The moral of this story, we stuck at our game plan and took the time to look around. I bet 99 percent of anglers gave up. We didn't and found our 2013 opener turned into one of the most memorable on record....

FOX SPORTS *NORTH* OF THE BORDER!

        
Me and Bob Joyce with the Due North/Rapid Marine Lund

My poor boat....  The Due North Outdoors/Rapid Marine Lund sits in the garage completely trashed and in desperate need of some serious TLC.  The carpet is soaked in a foul stew of splashed leech water, spilled Diet Cokes, layers of pungent pike slime, lots of human sweat and a layer of Canadian rain.  As a diehard angler,  I couldn't be happier.....  

Lake of the Woods...

Sunday, we headed north to Lake of the Woods to check out the hot summer walleye fishing with a few of our good friends.   The crew included Ryan Sirvio and Jim Denn, two of our partners from Fox Sports North who help make Due North Outdoors happen.  Ryan and Jim don't get a chance to fish as much as I do, so they were kinda hopin' for a highlight kind of trip.   I'd say we ALL got it.   We had temps in the low 80s and almost zero wind as our crew of 10 fished Northland jigs tipped with Northland Impulse plastics.  Let's just say the setup worked.  We had a hot pattern of fish.   Every person on the trip caught new personal bests for walleyes ('cept for me- Remember that 34 inch Tobin Lake monster?).

The Fox Sports North Boys Doubled Up! *again*

Jim and Ryan both caught personal records for pike too!  

       Another BIG pike for Jim!Ryan with another Dandy!
The numbers were astonishing.  Between three boats and three days, we had more than 100 fish over 24 inches.  Other friends on the trip included Bob Joyce of Radco Truck Accessories fame and Rick Kezar, who helps run Central Boiler.  Rick and Bob had no problem doubling up with big fish too!

Rick and Bob!

 Rick and Bill Double Up!

The coolest moment came when a pike snapped off Rick's last walleye jig (or so we guessed).  Five minutes later, Bob had a nice pike in the net.  He had Rick's jig back too!

After three EPIC days of fishing, I pointed the boat east for our 37 mile haul from Wiley Point Lodge back to the Totem Lodge launch. Skies looked heavy and Grey.  Bob Joyce had time for a quick "thumbs up" as we got the bimini top up just in time.

Heck, I could barely see as cold rain and wind kicked. Both pelted us on the ride back. I have to admit, the Rapid Marine Lund cut through HEAVY water as our best fishing trip of the year came to a sad end...


The Lund Wrestles Tough Conditions...

Leaving Lake of the Woods Behind...

My Big Fish of the Trip!

If you love walleyes, you love Lake of the Woods.  Experience a trip like this through a stay at a place like Wiley Point and you'll understand the lure of Canada's wild places......