“Big, big weekend up at the lodge this weekend!”  Yep, it’s opening weekend of the Nebraska firearm deer season.  No, I am not going to blog about fishing today.  I am betting many of you are getting ready to hunt tomorrow. I love to hunt too, but admittedly do more fishing than hunting.  A lot of that is because there is so much to do and so little time.  I have done a little big game hunting, but not a …

Some Loup River anglers caught a notable fish last month. . . . No, it was not a catfish as big as a bus.  It was a pallid sturgeon, a federally-listed endangered species.  Pallid sturgeon are similar to shovelnose sturgeon, but larger and much rarer.  Nebraska Game & Parks Commission research crews spend a lot of time monitoring pallid sturgeon in the Missouri and lower Platte rivers in Nebraska, but none have ever been documented in the Loup River. That …

My thoughts are turning more and more towards ice-fishing, and if your thoughts are the same, you will love this. . . . I found this TV news report on the interwebs. . . . How did that guy end up in Oklahoma?  OKLAHOMA????  Of all places!  I would tell you he has to have been from someplace north of Oklahoma originally, but he has the Oklahoma accent!  At the least, he needed to travel “up nort” during the ice-fishing …

A long, long time ago, I used to do some bow-hunting.  Actually, I started shooting a bow before I ever went to school, kindergarten that is.  Back in those days, bows did not have wheels and wires, and arrows had cedar shafts.  The only thing I ever knew was a Bear recurve, and the arrows my Dad manufactured. Along about grad. school, I really got into fishing in the fall.  Oh, it is not that I do not love to …

Our fisheries field biologists are busy in the fall.  That is the time that we do most of our fish population sampling on waters across the state.  I say all the time that the data we gain from that population sampling is worth its weight in crankbaits.  Simply put, this is how we monitor the health of our fisheries and evaluate our fisheries management strategies.  A really nice secondary benefit is summarizing that data to produce the annual Fishing Forecast. …

Quick blog post here on Halloween.  Do not know about you, but while trick-or-treating, I will be looking for this place! If you see someone who looks like Red Green, that will be me. Don’t worry.  I will only take one. Happy Halloween from the mink with evil eyes!

It has been a while since I have done a state record update.  I usually do an update about this time of year, and usually I have some spearfishing and bowfishing records to report.  This time I only have one. . . Daniel Nelson of Ogallala took a 1 pound 12 ounce redear sunfish by underwater spearfishing back in June.  That fish was taken from a private pond in Keith County. Congratulations, Daniel, your state record certificate will be coming …

Many of you were aware of and participated in our Take ‘Em Fishing challenge this past year.  Obviously, this was another way to encourage more folks, new folks, to discover angling and get hooked on it (pun intended).  Recruitment of new anglers is important for the sake of the sport and for the sake of our fisheries resources! I have also always been a proponent of fishing organizations as a great way for anglers to meet other anglers and learn …

Many times I have blogged about some serious behavioral issues in our aquatic biota, stoned fish, and crayfish that are getting drunk because they are anxious.  Recently, I have been made aware that our aquatic critters may not have behavior issues as much as they have personality disorders: Mighty 4-inch crayfish can be bold or shy These revelations from research leave so many questions swirling in my head:  First, why did I do the boring research I did back when …

I have been blogging for a number of years now.  Many topics come around seasonally year after year, and I am always reluctant to offer up “re-runs”.  Then again, one way to learn something is through repetition. . . . So, I am going to return to a topic I mention pretty much every autumn, but maybe use a different approach this time. . . . I have often said that I am a believer in big baits for big …