ice fishing

Spreading the word on this: Note:  Saturday is in the classroom, bring your questions!  Then, hopefully you can also venture out Sunday morning for hands-on, on-the-ice application of what we spent Saturday afternoon talking about!  Be sure to pre-register, NO CHARGE! Hope to see you there, looking forward to it.  This clinic is always fun and guaranteed you will learn something too!

Ice fishing. Tis’ the season for it. I sure enjoy ice fishing but admittedly I don’t do much of it. I don’t quite have all the equipment needed for it. So, I guess you would consider me an amateur ice angler. Nevertheless, when there’s an invitation to go with seasoned veterans of the hard water fishing lifestyle for a day, you can bet that I will jump at the opportunity. Such was the case a couple years ago in January …

LINCOLN, Neb. – Anglers can learn the basics of ice-fishing or pick up a few new tips from experienced anglers at three Discover Ice-Fishing clinics this month. The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission’s Youth Fishing Program will host two on-ice events and one classroom event. From 1-5 p.m. Jan. 15, the Nebraska Fish and Game Association will host a classroom clinic at Kearney’s Yanney Heritage Parks Environmental Resource Center. This will feature presentations by some of Nebraska’s top ice fishermen. …

I was “out of the office” a little over a week during the holidays.  Man was it hard to go back. During that time I managed to cover a large portion of the state, dried a few off while I was at it. Christmas day was low-key.  I slipped out for few hours of fishing–on open water.  Caught a bunch of trout, none of the big ones I was hoping for, but certainly was not skunked. New Year’s Day, the …

We are getting closer, but depending on where you are we still are waiting for safe ice and ice fishing.  Might as well at least read about it!  One of my buddies here at Game & Parks, Jeff Kurrus, had a good ice-fishing story in the recent issue of Nebraskaland.  He even got the cover! Check it out, Tales and Tips From the Hardwater.

I am trying to patiently wait for ice.  I am about out of patience.  Pretty much every day I check, double-check the forecasts and long-range forecasts.  It ain’t looking good. I am ready.  The tree is up. The lights are hung. Even the missletoad. I am ready for ice! And this is all we get: “70 degrees in November”????  It is even worse in December!!!!! Don’t tell me how great this weather is.  I am losing patience. Cannot come soon …

You all know that we have a whole list of urban and parks waters where we stock “catchable”, 10-inch rainbow trout in the fall.  There are a handful of those waters where we follow-up with some additional put & take trout stocking in December.  Now, there is NOT a whole list of waters that get stocked in December, so there is not going to be as much publicity.  Here is what I have been told has happened in the past …

Like many of you this time of year, I am counting the days. . . . No, silly, I am not counting the days until Christmas.  I am counting the days until the “New Year”.  But, remember, my “New Year” starts the minute I step on the ice for another season! Right now it ain’t looking good.  I have seen nothing to lead me to believe we are going to be on the ice anytime soon.  WARNING:  I will get …

Many of us hunt and fish because of the people we get to hunt and fish with. Some of the best conversations I’ve had on the ice, in a duck blind or while walking through tallgrass prairie have featured topics like family, politics and religion. While stories of greenheads and big bucks fill the air, they often are replaced by more serious topics. This is when true hunting and fishing partnerships — friendships —are formed. When reminiscing through a set …

I know some of you are thinking about it already!  I am!  Yep, cannot wait for ice! I am old enough to have ice-fished in a time when there was not a plethora of ice fishing products on the market.  Believe it or not, there was a time when if you wanted an ice-fishing shack, you made your own.  There were some ingenious designs and creativity.  Everyone tried to make shacks that could haul as much as possible and yet …