By KW

 If you stop over on Mount Blogmore from time to time, as most of the civilized world does, you’ll note a recent thread about Russell Means and pals asserting treaty rights by fishing without a state license at Sheridan Lake.

Apart from the fact that the picture shows that Russell has a limited familiarity with the workings of a spinning reel, it raises an interesting issue in my mind: Will GF&P officers do as they say and pursue an investigation to issue citations to those who broke the law?

Beyond that, how valid are the treaty rights in question? Were they not abrogated by Congress? Wasn’t that abrogation upheld by the Supreme Court? And did the court not grant damages for the reprehsensible way the Black Hills were taken from the Lakota?

Isn’t that sum something like $1 billion now?

Beyond that, Native anglers - gill netters in many cases, I think - have been granted fishing rights the the courts that are not granted to non-Natives. Should those rights apply in the Black Hills, to waters that didn’t exist at the time the treaties were signed, and to species that are not native to the Black Hills and weren’t stocked in streams - and, later, man-made reservoirs - until after the treaties had been signed, and initially abrogated?

I’ve been thinking about that stuff lately as I fling ridiculously small dry flies at finicky trout in Rapid Creek.

 And it makes my head hurt.

 Mitch Rockwell spent a couple days in the 2705 Massey Ferguson helping Holarbird farmer Nick Nemec move hay bales this month. For that, he gets a place to hunt pheasants this fall.

By KW

Mitch Rockwell still can’t quite believe he was the only one to take Nick Nemec up on his offer: a little farm work in exchange for a place to hunt South Dakota’s fabled state bird.

Nemec, a Holabird area farmer who also happens to be a Democratic super delegate hanging out these days at the Pepsi Center in Denver, made an offer last year on Take It Outside that Rockwell couldn’t refuse.

Even from way off in Indiana.

“We were having a discussion on the blog and people were complaining about how there wasn’t any place to hunt,” Nemec said. “And I said if anybody would come out and do some work on the farm, they could hunt here. The only guy who took me up on it was from Indiana.”

 Central Indiana, actually, about 25 miles north of Indianapolis. That’s where Rockwell, 33, lives and makes a living hand-crafting wood cabinets. He loves woodworking, but is also mighty fond of hunting prairie dogs and flyfishing for trout.

He’s been coming to South Dakota for several years to do both. And he keeps track of the happenings back here by reading the Journal online, including Take It Outside.

“Mr. Nemec basically threw out that offer on Take It Outside: ‘Instead of coming up and asking to hunt, come out early and do some work,’” Rockwell said. “He said he could be found in the Highmore phone book.”

Rockwell found him and made the call. And last week he stopped at Nemec’s for a couple days work on his way to fish in the Black Hills.

“He’s a good worker,” Nemec said. “He earned his hunting.”

Rockwell can’t wait. There aren’t many pheasants in Indiana, other than the ones released on state hunting areas during the season.

“They do put-and-take pheasants on the state areas here. You pay $15 , and they release birds in the morning. You can kill two for that, either sex,” Rockwell said. “I’ve never hunted wild pheasants.”

They’re plenty wild at Nick’s place. Rockwell will get to find out just how wild this fall, all for the price of a little summer sweat.

Pretty cheap hunting, I’d say.

 

The license plate says a lot about group of folks who gathered at the Jones County Sportsmen’s Club last weekend for the South Dakota Wildlife Federation convention - an unusual location for the gathering.

By KW

When Jon Lauck, a state staffer for Sen. John Thune, first e-mailed me to say that his boss would honored as conservationist of the year at the South Dakota Wildlife Federation convention in Murdo, I said, quite naturally:

Murdo?

Usually, the federation holds its convention and awards banquet in Pierre or Sioux Falls or Watertown or Rapid City, places like that. Murdo? No way.

Yes, way, I would find out. SDWF Executive Director Chris Hesla said it was an unsually small town for the group’s annual gathering. But it made sense for a couple of reasons.

First, Thune won the federation’s biggest award, and coming home to receive it would be fitting. Second, the Jones County Sportsmen are an active bunch with a good clubhouse worthy of a convention.

“And it worked out great,” Hesla said.

Indeed, Thune flew in for the event, shot a quick round of golf with his dad, Harold, and got to shoot the outdoor breeze with old pals, including his former science teacher Mike McKernan of Murdo.

McKernan, former president of the SDWF, is bad crazy nutty (that’s a compliment, Mike) for hunting and fishing and wildlife conservation. He also has a bit of a reputation for having cooked just about any wild critter that lived - including rattlesnakes.

“He’d have them at the football games, and they’d always sell out right away,” Thune said, mulling a flavorful memory.

There were memories aplenty for the senator during his conservation homecoming. And awards, too, for Thune and for Rapid City’s own Harvey Malon, for exemplary conservation work on his ranch near White Owl, and former state CO Bill Antonides of Aberdeen, for continuing to speak out - and write out - on behalf of wild things and wild places.

All told, it was a pretty fine evening.

All it lacked was a cooked snake or two.

Rapid City’s renowned pheasant slayer Ken Schroeder, left, presented the wildlife conservation award to Harvey Malon of Rapid City, center, with some help from South Dakota Wildlife Federation President Rieck Eske.

Over a plate of hearty West River chow - centered by a man-sized pile of beef - the senator recalls Mike McKernan’s fried rattler and other outdoor delights as mom and dad beam.

Harvey Malon, John Thune and Bill Antonides show off their hardware after the awards banquet at the South Dakota Wildlife Federation 63rd Annual Convention in Murdo Saturday.

Little creep. Little Jerk. Little, wait that’s not very nice. So, OK, pretty decent 20-inch trout the kid caught, I guess, if you happen to like catching big wild brown trout, on the surface.

By KW

OK, maybe slappin’ him would be an overreaction.

Still. Shouldn’t we do something about a 15-year-old who keeps hauling in huge trout, at the expense of his elders’ egos?

We could break his flyrod. Or steal his flies. Or get his dad to ground him until he’s 18.

Or, uh, I suppose we could imitate him.

The kid seems to know what’s what in the trout game. (All those hours he spends with Hans Stephenson don’t hurt…)

So, in lieu of inflicting corporal punishment, I’ll suggest we take some tips from Ryan Gabert.

And today’s tip is: beetles. BeetlejuiceBeetlejuiceBeetlejuice (for all you Michael Keaton fans…)

But actually, we’re talking High Vis Beetles, like those pictured below, fresh from the tray at Dakota Angler. Ryan used them to hammer the brown trout this week - on the surface, under a full sun.

The biggest was 20 inches, shown above.

I’d like to tell you where he caught it. But Ryan won’t tell me.

Can you believe that? He won’t tell ME!

Now that I think of it, maybe I will break his flyrod.

Three bugs in the hand are worth a brown trout in the net, or something like that. Hi Vis Beetles: They’re a good thing.

With 12 days to go until the dove season, these mourning doves - one of which might actually be a Eurasian collared dove - reflect a peaceful, easy feeling that will change when the 8-shot starts to fly. And remember: You can’t shoot ‘em on the sit…

By KW

All summer long we’ve had doves in our backyard. Lots of them.

About a week ago, they disappeared. Coincidentally, or not, that’s about when I started talking to my wife about my plans to hunt doves with the other KW here on Take It Outside: Keith Wintersteen.

Is that why the doves at my place did their disappearing act, even though I won’t actually be firing away in the back yard? Or maybe it’s those cooler nights, sending them south or bunching somewhere else up for the migration to come.

That’s what always seemed to happen when I was a more serious dove hunters years back. You’d scout the little buggers for weeks, and pick the perfect opening-day hunting spot, and a few days before the season opened, they’d take off.

Wintersteen assures me that he’s got a sure-thing location for September 1, and it’s not my backyard.  And believe him enough to dust off the 20 gauge and by a box of shells (25 rounds ought to get me 15 doves, shouldn’t it? What? Huh?) .

But I’m also taking the flyrod, just in case.

By KW

Oh, they were going wild up on Spring Creek.

Surface fish. Smacking the grasshopper pattern with reckless abandon.

I caught one after the other. A hit a cast, sometimes two.

It was a gas. Except that they were creek chubs.

Rumor has it there are some decent stocker rainbows up Spring these days, now that it’s running some water. I couldn’t find them. I did see a couple of small brown trout, which I think were stocked earlier, too, in hopes the flows will continue for a few years.

But the real puzzle - apart from the fact that they aren’t running any water at all out of the valved pipe coming from deep, cool Sheridan Lake depths, which seems like a good idea this time of year, as Spring Creek warms up - was those big orange fish in the basin at the base of the spillway,

What the heck were they, anyway?

Gold fish on steroids? Day-glow suckers? Radioactive pike?

Not just a golden trout, but a first-trout-ever golden trout. Christine Stephenson holds the golden while her husband, Hans, snaps a photo.

By KW

Hans Stephenson gave us a pretty good fish story below on the golden trout of the Bighorn Mountains.

But he left out something pretty important: his wife, Christine, and her first ever trout on a fly - which just happened to be her first-ever golden trout, too.

Hans is an exceptional fly fisher, but he’s also a guy. That means he sometimes forgets some of the details.

So here’s the rest of the story…

Showing that Hans isn’t the only Stephenson who knows how to fish,, Christine works a rocky dropoff in Fortress Lake in the Bighorn Mountains.

A close-up gander of Christine’s golden trout, which looks a bit like a Pete Max creation.

Is that a pretty fish, or what? Hans Stephenson says “pretty.”

By KW

When Caster Don goes after the Golden Salmon of the Prairie, he tends to be a sucker - nyuuck-nyuuck - for old Buglemouth.

Nothing wrong with carp on a fly.

But Rapid City flymaster Hans Stephenson went golden in a different way way up in the high ground over in the Bighorn Mountains, and sent proof, too.

This particularly lovely golden trout came from Fortress Lake, which - Hans tells me - is just above Misty Moon Lake, somewhere up the West Ten Sleep road.

I’ll take his word for it. I’ll also take a gander at a fine high-country trout.

Nice.

And Caster Don, if you happen to be within cell service, you’ve caught a few golden trout, too, haven’t you?

Location, location, location: It’s not that good for GF&P’s regional headquarters at the somewhat-difficult-to-find  3305 W. South St. It’s also too small and outdated for life in the new millenium, the GF&P folks say.

By KW

Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?

That’s what GF&P Secretary Jeff Vonk is doing these days about land on and near the Cleghorn Springs Fish Hatchery.  If he closes his eyes and lets his mind wander, and the soon-to-be-retired George Vandel isn’t distracting him with his own dreams of autumn duck hunting, Vonk can see a new regional office complex and outdoor learning center at the hatchery, possibly with a little spillover into city land nearby.

NO, NOT THE DOG PARK!

Rein in the pit bulls, unload the schnauzers and holster the chihuahuas, all you pug-bearing villagers, and back slowly away from Vonk’s dream. It’s got nothing to do with you and your pooch and your beloved Braeburn Park.

The city land in question is apparently across Rapid Creek from the hatchery. And if it’s the stuff I wandered around on today, it’s a sweet little parcel - as you can see below.

Vonk says the plan can proceed even without the city property, although a little land across the creek would create more development options.

Of course, that’s all dream stuff for now. But Vonk - who always seemed to prefer to the hatchery site to the once-favored Stan Adelstein property, which now seems to have fallen from the lead - is doing some pretty serious dreamin’.

And so is the GF&P Commission. Typically, when the secretary and the commission want to get something done at GF&P, it gets done.

We’ll see.

I still haven’t talked to Mayor Alan Hanks. That’ll come Monday, I hope.

Unused land at the west end of Cleghorn Springs Fish Hatchery property is now the first choice by GF&P Secretary Jeff Vonk and the agency’s citizens’ commission for a new regional office and outdoor learning center.

Although the photographer was often distracted by shadowy trout movement, he paid just barely enough attention to surmise that this land on the south bank of Rapid Creek across from Cleghorn Springs is part of Jeff Vonk’s dreams for an outdoor learning center.

The Lahardy Fire in Yellowstone National Park looks positively beautiful in this photo by the inimitable Caster Don.

By KW

Nobody chases forest fires much better than Don Polovich.

Nobody chases trout much better, either.

TIO’s main flyfishing man, Caster Don, mixed his two loves in capturing some fine fire photos while on one of his regular flyfishing sojourns to Yellowstone Park and the Cody area.

He hit the Bighorns along the way (I think I know the spot…sssshhhhhh), but apparently nothing flamed up there enough to inspire a photo.

The fishing was fine there, however, as it was in Yellowstone.

It always seems to be fine when old CD is involved.

Keep on fishin’, buddy.

And keep clickin’, too.

A firefighting chopper  fills up with fluids at the Shoshone River between Cody and Yellowstone.

The Gunbarrell Fire sizzles through the lens of Caster Don.