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With duck hunting season opening on September 10 in Sunset Country, plans had been made to embark on a hunting trip in the Fort Frances area with family and friends this past weekend. The area experienced a severe heat wave early last week, where daytime temperatures reached the upper 80's and shattered previous records for the area. Needless to say, conditions were not ideal to get the ducks moving, but cooler temperatures were forecast so we remained optimistic. My Uncle ar

Over the past 7-10 days, we have had several different weather changes that have had me scratching my head. Went from cool weather to very hot and humid and it really had some of the panfish patterns somewhat poor at times. Fishing has been good, but you'd have to do some homework to figure out the "new" pattern. Water temps. went from 74degrees to 69 degrees to 72 degrees and now today it was 66 degrees. What a roller coaster ride and you wonder what the fish were thinking..

Though I had spent most of the summer months using it, I still hadn't actually used my SonarPhone T-Pod bobber from Vexilar for my intended purpose when I purchased it and that was for trolling. By that, I mean using cranks, lindy rigs, bottom bouncers, or other means that didn't involve any casting as I've done most of the summer. With the bite still hard across the region, I decided it was time to actually do it. I picked Sheridan Lake, where I'd done some trolling last sum

Up in the North Country, our water temperature stays pretty low year round. However, that doesn’t stop the smallmouth from having an aggressive attitude. I love to fish fast and throwing a swim jig is the name of the game for me. I have experimented with the “free swinging” style jig head and I pretty much love it. I’ll swim it just inches under the surface and sometimes even pop it on the surface. I’ll fish it in less than a foot of water or even as deep as 7 or 8 feet. Fish

When trolling crankbaits for walleye’s, there are several key items to look at that you may not be paying attention to. How deep are the walleye’s your trying to target? What are the walleye’s feeding on? How fast do you need to go to get a strike? These are just the first few steps you as an angler need to be asking yourself. Sometimes, the little details that I’m going to explain, can make a big difference in your catch at the end of the day. Spring, Summer, Fall I firmly b

With the hot summer nights fading into cool fall evenings, muskies are starting to change their patterns. This transitional period creates the opportunity for one of the peak bites of the year. There are a couple key factors that make this such a window of opportunity to catch a giant musky. Tullibee and Whitefish are starting to prepare for spawn and are staging in shallow waters. These fish like to spawn on structure that muskies already have been relating to most of the su

There is a cool crispness that is starting to come over the Black Hills region at night now, perhaps signaling the coming of fall and better fishing conditions. Some warmer weather is still on tap though, so we can't start getting our hopes up too much quite yet. As such, some fishing spots have shown an improvement in the numbers of fish being caught, but overall, conditions are still pretty tough when trying to find a consistent bite. The two walleye lakes, Angostura and Be

This year my hunting party and I have been watching and patterning the geese for 3 weeks now. Some days have been more challenging than others but it seemed there were a good number of birds around for the 2017 opener but definitely a lot of hunters as well, which makes things a little harder. However, we had to just make it work. Opening day came around finally and the birds seemed to have changed on us. We only pulled the trigger once to start off the season, but we still h

When you're short on how long you can be on the water, it's always best to cover water fast, then have a back-up plan should your primary species refuse to play the game. I always look to maximize the time I have on the water when I'm on it and hope that the fish will respond in kind. But it's called fishing, not catching and sometimes plans require changing or you need to have another idea in order to get on active fish, be it bass, walleye, perch or bluegills. If you have a

Funny how it seems that we just had summer start and all of a sudden, the waters are cooling, the air is cooling and that feeling that fall is coming. With that comes end of the season vacations and that is exactly what we had done. We have a favorite campground that we like to go to which has a small lake but definitely has some good fish in it. It is a very shallow lake and has no structure and with no contour map, using the Sonarphone, we were able to find isolated clumps