By Kevin Woster

Killing coyotes is never cheap.

But the per-yote cost of predator control jumped Monday in a big way for GF&P, when pilot Tony DeCinco and trapper Dan Turgeon crashed during an aerial hunt on the Tom Trask ranch near Wasta.

After making a pass in the state’s two-seater Christen A-1 Husky, they lost lift and came hard to earth in the rough stuff running to the Cheyenne River. If the plane turns out to be totaled, as it first appeared, it’s a short-term  loss of $150,000 to $175,000 worth of aircraft.

That’s cheap, of course, compared with the cost of human lives. The good news is DeCinco and Turgeon walked away with relatively minor injuries.

And the plane was insured, of course, although not for the full amount. So the actual replacement cost is unclear.

But the mishap is a reminder that aerial predator control is no picnic.

They did, however, get their coyote.

That cut the population to 6,301, 277.

Or something like that.

By Kevin Woster

 That’s almost exactly what our intrepid  field editor Jeremiah Aldo Murphy said when he was paddling around a backwater marsh near Spooner, Wis., and spotted this crazy critter.

Almost exactly. At least, that’s what I heard through the field editor grapevine.

Anyway, JAM was puzzled as to the exact identity of this bird, so he sent a picture of it to me. Now I’m puzzled, even more than usual.

It looks like some kind of heron, but …

Any bird-brained Take It Outside readers out there who can help us with a positive ID?

And we do mean positive.

By Kevin Woster

 For 17 years, Dick Simpson and John Cooper have been going to Rainy Lake on the Minnesota-Canadian border in their hunt for trophy smallmouth bass. They’ve had plenty of luck over the years, and caught plenty of fish - not limited to smallmouths.

But this year, they outdid themselves, and made me wonder if it might be worth a trip to the north woods.

Simpson, a Madison angler who started and for many years published the outdoor tabloid “Walleyes Unlimited,” shows off a 5-pound, 3-ounce smallie caught on a crankbait, left, and a 5-9 smallmouth that crashed a topwater chugger.

Cooper, the former GF&P secretary now doing consultant work for the state, took both these hogs on a popper, pitched with a fly rod. The smallie at left was 21 inches long and weighed 5 pounds, 13 ounces, while the “little” bass at right was a half inch shorter and weighed a mere 5-10.

I got one word, fellas: Wow!

By Kevin Woster

The guys at GF&P want to give duck hunters some help in identifying their targets by delaying the season opener this fall.

A proposal before the state GF&P Commission would set opening day for duck season at Sept. 29 everywhere in the state except for the Low Plains South Zone which includes portions of Gregory, Charles Mix, Bon Homme, Yankton, Clay and Union counties along the Missouri River, which would open Oct. 13.

The later the better when it comes to idenfying ducks. 

“The later opening date will allow hunters to be able to better identify ducks on the wing since the birds’ feathers will have had another week to develop their identifying colors,” GFP game specialist Tony Leif of Pierre said. “Since bag limits are specific to species and sometimes gender, it’s very important for hunters to be able to identify their ducks before they pull the trigger.”

Based on what I’ve seen in the field, many duck hunters could use the extra help. Speaking of which, I’m increasingly convinced that we should have to pass a fundamental waterfowl identification test before we can hunt ducks.

Agree?

By Ryan Woodard

Kelton Claggett caught this 19-inch rainbow trout while fishing with regular TIO commentator Keith Wintersteen at an “undisclosed” Rapid Creek location Friday. Wintersteen also caught a good-sized rainbow, which is probably why the fishing spot remains classified.

Wintersteen caught his on a fly while Claggett used a shallow crankbait.

Claggett nearly lost this whopper, though.“I got it up on the bank and the line just snapped,” he said.

The fish then made its best attempt to swim back to freedom – only to be foiled by Claggett’s desperate lunge.

“It almost got away so I grabbed it and chucked it on the bank,” he said.

This fish is the biggest rainbow Claggett has ever caught. So he figured he’d better grab it if he “ever wanted to see it again.”

He did. So you can, too.  

By Kevin Woster

See the ball, hit the ball.

That’s what Dave Ploof of Post 22 baseball likes to tell his hitters.

It might seen ridiculously simple. It’s not. You can’t hit what you don’t see. So keep your eye on the ball, which is easier said than done.

Same goes for fishing, sort of.

 Find the fish, catch the fish. Seems ridiculously simple, too. It’s not. You can’t catch what you don’t find. And fishing is more about finding active fish and putting a hooked item in front of them than it is about the complicated nuances or color or the confusingly fine points of lure wiggle or smell or shape.

Take this 18-inch white bass, for example. I found it feeding below Big Bend Dam late Saturday afternoon, on the edge of a rush of fast water where it broke and swirled more smoothly back toward the rocks. I found a bunch other whites there, too, all from 14 to 18 inches long, and plenty feisty.

They were surface feeding on stunned bait fish that came swirling at them in fast current. And they were way hot. Way, waaaaaay hot.

But you couldn’t catch them anywhere but in that stretch of water, which was about 10 feet long and five feet wide.  Or, at least, that was where the jig had to land for the fish to hit it. Cast outside it, nothing. Hit it, and you got smashed by a white.

I fished up and down that stretch of shore for a hour, being pestered only by some five-inch smallmouth and a couple of competitive cormorants. I might easily have left that stretch of the tailrace without thinking anything was feeding.

Then I found that active school of whites. Active is an understatement. Each fish hammered my jig when it hit the surface, or a second or two later, then erupted with salmon like strength and runs.

What a gas. And what a powerful fight whites of that size put up, especially in tailrace current.

See the ball, hit the ball. Find the fish, catch the fish.

It’s pretty simple. Sometimes.

By Kevin Woster

The prairie dog seems to be doing OK in South Dakota.

That could make you mad or glad or sad, depending on your point of view.

The state Game, Fish & Parks Department is reporting that a 2006 survey found 625,410 acres of prairie dog colonies in western SOuth Dakota, compared to 404,673 in 2003. Since the state management plan calls for a minimum of 199,472 acres, we seem to be doing OK.

More than OK, many ranchers would tell you. But some folks worry about the cute, often-pesky little rodents. Members of the Prairie Dog Coalition met with U.S. Forest Service officials in Rapid City Thursday to fight increased poisoning on certain national grasslands, including the Conata Basin near Wall.

Coalition spokesman Richard Reading, director of conservation biology for the Denver Zoo, gave this warning: “Prairie dogs are like a canary in the coal mine. If their population declines and dies, others will follow.”

Well?

Tony? rdennis? Anyone else?

 By Kevin Woster

From his kayak in the quiet backwaters of a lake near Spooner, Take It Outside’s intrepid field editor Jeremiah Murphy studies the habits of the great blue heron.

 (He also stays out of the way of his wife, Kaia, who skips the light fantastic on skis out on the open water. But that’s another story)

Anyway, this is the Jeremiah Murphy from Rapid City, as opposed to the one from Sioux Falls - the family patriarch and former state Game, Fish & Parks Commission member who can still tell stories about 10-bird pheasant limits taken within a half hour of St. Joseph’s Cathedral.

Another story, too.

For now, feel secure in the knowledge that no movement in  the backwaters of at least one Wisconsin lake goes undocumented by our vacationing Murphy - affectionately known here in the Take It Outside headquarters as Aldo.

Enjoy. We know he is.

By Kevin Woster

So Thune caught a 43-pounder. Hurray for the Jones County boy.

But I’ve been hauling in some fish myself. Just check out this hog largemouth hooked in Brakke Dam near Presho.

I think that makes it Thune 1, Woster 1.

The Jones-Lyman fishing war is dead even, if you don’t, uh, consider size.

And we all know size doesn’t matter, right?

Besides, I released my fish, even though it would have been great broiled and placed on a Ritz cracker. I’m hoping to return to Brakke and catch it when it’s bigger - at say, oh, about 8 ounces.

By Kevin Woster

OK, that’s a king salmon.

In case you missed it, Sen. John Thune hauled in a 43.5-pound chinook salmon - about twice the size of South Dakota’s state record - July 6 during the Kenai River Classic in Soldotna, Alaska.

Thune was among the dignitaries at the event, which raises money for conservation efforts on and along the river.

Thune told the Anchorage Daily News that he was thrilled by the experience of catching the salmon, which took about 15 minutes to land, and that the angling experience had given him a deeper appreciation for Alaska’s fisheries.

“This was awesome,” he said.

But Thune also told Take It Outide that his Alaska experience didn’t diminish his memories of his old Jones County angling hotspots.

“I knew I had something big when it hit,” Thune said. “But in the end it didn’t compare to hammering largemouth bass and northern pike in Murdo Dam.”

And, really, how could anything compare to that?

Unless, of course, it’s Reliance Dam.