March_April 2013.pdf - North Dakota Game and Fish

By Ron WilsonNorth Dakota OUTDOORS’ spring fishing issue has alwaysbeen sort of a yardstick for me, marking the number of yearsI’ve spent behind an industrial green metal desk that you’d crawlunder during a bomb threat.When I do the math, I know that this is my 11 th fishing issue,the first coming in 2003, which means I’ve been at the Gameand Fish Department for 10 years.A decade ago, when the Game and Fish Department managednearly 100 fewer waters across the state as compared totoday’s all-time high of 400 or so, I wrote on this same pagethat “As a reader, outdoor writer … this is one of the issues ofOUTDOORS I always hurried to my mailbox to retrieve. Tuckedsomewhere in the magazine,be it in a story orlist of the state’s fishingspots, I knew I woulddiscover new waters,small jewels that Iimagined received littlefishing pressure.”Today, consideringI read every word inthis magazine over andover before it ever hitsthe press, that senseof anticipation of thefishing issue’s arrivalhas been lost. But thesense of discovery duringthe editing process,stumbling upon a new,must-try water, especiallynow that we haveso many, remains. Thesewaters, some I’ve mostcertainly heard of, buthaven’t considered fishingbefore for whateverreason, are written onyellow sticky notes andscraps of paper andstashed here and thereas reminders.No matter the year, whether we’re writing about droughtor the threat of high water across the countryside, the OUT-DOORS fishing issue signals, depending on Mother Nature,naturally, the start of the open water fishing season, or at leastthereabouts.That doesn’t mean we haven’t thought about it a time or twoprior to this magazine’s release. It’s just that consideration aboutthe open water season in North Dakota, which attracted 146,000resident and nonresident anglers in 2012, have been, out ofacceptance to winter, dormant for months, quietly sulking undertwo-plus feet of ice, below orange-flagged tip-ups, ice fishingshacks and harvested fish tossed atop the snow, some seeminglyfrozen in mid-flop.Anglers around here,devotees of the MissouriRiver and its walleye fishing,are some of the mosteager, hitting the riverbecause the calendar says itsspring, even though it oftendoesn’t feel much like it formore than a couple of daysstraight.They look cold, bundledin basically the same gearthey wore ice fishing, as wewheel by on the interstateat 60 miles per hour in aheated vehicle with thewindows rolled tight. Whileit’s hard not to wonder ifthey’ve excitedly jumpedthe gun a bit, it’s hard notto be a little envious, not tomention feel like a bit of awimp, because they’re fishingand we’re not.If we haven’t already, wewill join them soon enough.RON WILSON is editor ofNorth Dakota OUTDOORS.March-April 2013 ND Outdoors 41