Some guy and some kinda hog brown trout.

By KW

I’d like to tell you more about that fish, or even the guy holding it.

Here’s what I know: The digital picture arrived yesterday by way of a deep-pool source up on Crow Creek, which is NOT where this fish was caught. But Wintersteen was only transferring the image. He couldn’t tell me much about it.

Apparently it was caught during that recent warm spell by a friend of a fisheries biologist in Chamberlain. I’m guessing they were in the Pactola Basin, in one of those pools. Maybe the big one right below the dam.

Anybody like to fill in the blanks? Or create new ones?

Back to the depths…

By KW

I’m not saying that Zachary Lars Sandlin will follow Jami Fralick to the Bassmasters Classic.

But he has the right stuff, thanks to his dad, Max, and Spiderman.

Those of you who follow politics, know that Zach is the son of former Texas congressman Max Sandlin and his wife, Stephanie.

That’s Stephanie, as in Herseth Sandlin.  As in the congresswoman from South Dakota.

As in Zach’s mom.

Zach’s a couple months old now, and already he has some fishing gear, thanks to pops, a serious bass angler himself.

“He’s got the Spiderman fishing package,” Herseth Sandlin said Wednesday.

I’ve seen the Spiderman pack. In fact, I bought it for my step-grandson, Logan. He makes a mean-looking angler in those wrap-around shades. His sister, Avery, looks good in her Cinderella pack, too. Bullheads, look out!

Zachary has a ways to go to start flinging hooks around. But I’ll bet his dad was doing some dreaming about future fishing trips with the boy last weekend, while he and Herseth Sandlin checked out the 2009 Bassmasters Classic, where Martin angler Jami Fralick ended up a coupole of solid hook sets shy of the $500,000 first prize.

As noted below, Fralick was leading the classic going into the final day on the Red River down around  Shreveport, La. He ended up eighth, but still impressed Max and Stephanie, as well as the ever-vigilant outdoors reporting staff here at Take It Outside.

“For him to be leading and still finish in the top 10, that was fun to see,” Herseth Sandlin said. “I’m going to try to get word to him, to let him know we were watching.”

Max Sandlin is thinking about a visit to the classic next year. And it wouldn’t surprise his wife if their son went along.

And maybe Spiderman, too.

Martin bass angler Jami Fralick celebrates after a day of fishing that put him in the lead at the 2009 Bassmasters Classic.

By KW

How about that Jami Fralick?

I nearly fell out of my chair Sunday morning when I glanced up over the newspaper at the sound of an ESPN announcer: “And Jami Fralick from South Dakota goes into the final day in the lead.”

 Uh, say what?

A guy from Martin - which is, with great respect intended, not exactly world-acclaimed bass fishing turf - leading the world series of bass angling, on the final day?

Only a few timely hook sets away from the $500,000 first prize - not to mention the even more lucrative endorsement contracts for years to come?

Yeah, that guy.

Well, it wasn’t to be. After opening the tournament on the Red River in Shreveport, La., by weighing in five bass at a total of 19 pounds, 3 ounces, Fralick followed with 19-6 on Day Two.  But he fell to 10-9 on a much tougher Day Three, and ended up eighth.

Which is still mighty impressive.

 Heckuva job, Jami. You did yourself and your state proud.

By KW

Lately, I’ve taken to exploring the Grand Canyon through the eyes and words of naturalists who worked and visited there more than 70 years ago.

“The Best of the Grand Canyon Nature Notes,” a grand little nature log picked up for $2 on the sale shelf of the Rapid City Public Library, is full of thoughtful, personal, science-based reflectionsby park naturalists and visiting scientists on the canyon, its geology, hydrology and ecology between1926 and 1935.

Two bucks. You can barely get a good cup of coffee for that. And I get the Grand Canyon.

The notes examine Mariposa lilies, horned toads, hermit shale, Gambel oaks, crinoidal limestone and catsclaw.

This morning, I read a piece by the park’s first naturalist, Glen Sturdevant, about the water ouzel, a bird that over time - a great deal of time - developed the ability for underwater flight in pursuit of food. Citing Darwin, Sturdevant reflects on the likely process of evolution that took a thrush- or wren-like bird ever deeper into the water, dip after dip, for larvae and tiny mollusks until it finally submerged itself entirely, and beyond that learned the odd power of subsurface propulsion.

Or, as Sturdevant calls it, “the extraordinary power of flying under water.”

Today, we know the ouzels of Sturdevant’s time as American dippers, and we see them - in my case , often while I’m resting on a rock to fiddle with fishing gear or inhale a snack - on upper Spearfish or Whitewood creeks.

They often fly close, land on a streamside rock, dip - and dip, dip, dip, dip - before fluttering off up the creek. I’ve seen one or two emerge from the water, but I’ve never witnessed the submarine trick.

When I do, I intend to yell - Go ouzel! - in honor of Glen Sturdevant, Charles Darwin and the little bird that could.

And still does.

It’s not quite the Belle Fourche or the Redwater. But this tribuary of both takes on the appropriate hues as it cuts through the foothills-to-prairie landscape northwest of Spearfish.

By KW

Actually, the picture above is Crow Creek, a tribuary of the Redwater River, which is a tributary of the Belle Fourche, which is a tributary of the Cheyenne which, well, you know…

But as Andy Thorstenson lyrically points out in his poem ‘Belle Fourche”, it could be the Redwater River, or the Belle Fourche, or Crow Creek.

Each carries the colors of the next. Each makes the other more of itself.

 And makes us more by knowing them.

“Belle Fourche” is one of about three dozen poems in Thorstenson’s book, Crossing the 100th Meridian. And the Hot Springs poet hits home with me because I spend quite a bit of time fishing Crow Creek, the Redwater and the Belle Fourche.

The last few lines of Thorstenson’s poem describe well the pull I feel every time I’m in that worthy watershed, in the northern shadow of the Black Hills, among gentle flows and red-earth tones:

 ”come hither

and sit astonished with need to resort to myth

to find explanation of a great stone risen bodily from the plains

encircled by a stream of clear water,

cradled by a flesh colored cliff reflected

in this beautiful fork

that could as easily be called the Redwater River.”

 

Moving water makes artistic magic in  a sandy Crow Creek bottom a half mile before it hits the Redwater River.

In a red-bottomed creek, a brown trout came to a black woolly bugger.

Nate Buchholz of Parker won best of show in the 2008-2009 South Dakota Junior Duck Stamp Contest with this elegant depiction of a wood duck pair. Deadline for this year’s contest is less than a month away.

By KW

March 15. That’s and important deadline for young outdoor fanciers with an artistic flair.

You don’t have to be as talented as Nate Buchholz to compete in the South Dakota Junior Duck Stamp Contest. You just need to be a South Dakota student from kintergarden to 12th grade, and have an urge to put your mind pictures on canvas.

Last year, 567 kids submitted their work, offering a compelling variety of skills and individual insights into the great outdoors. Organizers are hoping for another good flock of artwork this year.

 So if you’re a kid with a yearning to express, of if you just happen to know one, check it out at http://www.sdjuniorduck.org 

 Prizes will be awarded to the top nine place winners in four age categories.

 Wood duck or pintail, mallard or canvasback, show ’em your waterfowling stuff.

And, in honor of my past gunning successes, I’d like to personally encourage somebody - anybody - to consider painting the mighty spoonbill.

Or as it was so ungraciously known by my hunting “pals” back home: “The Woster Greenhead.”

Qwwwaaaaaaack.

Half way to the frying pan … mmmmmmm.

By KW

Lest there be any doubt, Dick Brown doesn’t spend the entire winner skulking around in the woods with a muzzleloader in hand, playing hide-and-seek with mountain lions.

He packs a fishing rod, too.

A former Sioux Falls businessman who seems to have discovered heaven on earth in the southern Black Hills, Brown has lately been at Stockade Lake, pestering the crappies (that’s pronounced KRAH-PEES, for those of you - Meierhenry, are you listening? - still struggling to shed a  southern South Dakota accent) .

The action hasn’t been wild. But thanks to Brown’s  more leisurely lifestyle these days (how’s that beard feel this winter, Dick?), it doesn’t take hot fishing to make him a happy angler.

Even a handful of hand-sized crappies makes a marvelous little meal. (And speaking of meals, which is better fresh out of the frying pan: crappies, bluegills, perch or walleyes? My friend Tony D used to say bluegills, emphatically. I lean toward perch and walleyes myself.)

Brown is working on all four species - and more - these days. Lucky dawg.

 And last we heard,  there were no missing crappies, cached up in the trees in a scratched-up pile of branches.

And no lion tracks around the ice hole, either.

(Speaking of ice holes, how is it that you catch a polar bear again?)

During a muzzleloader deer hunt near Custer last month, Dick Brown found this clear trail where a lion dragged its kill.

By Kevin Woster

 Dick Brown and his son, Matt, were looking for the doe they hit during the muzzleloader season near Custer last month.

They figured they had the spot marked pretty well. But when they got there, they couldn’t find the deer.

That happens. Thick woods. Odd angles of vision. Lots of excitement. It’s easy to be off by 15 or 20 yards.

And the deer might have struggled off quite a ways before it fell.

So they spread out to look around for tracks or a blood trail.

After a bit, Dick found a trail all right, one where a lion had obviously dragged a deer throuh the snow. And it was pretty clear that the dragging had taken place since the snow had stopped falling - about 10 or 15 minutes earlier.

“I followed the trail for about 30 yards and noticed a very fresh pile of pine needles and other vegetation covering a doe,” Brown says. “I called for Matt to come up the hill from down below and he crossed the (also very fresh) tracks of a mountain lion that had at first slowly left the site and then sprinted across the road.”

The Browns backtracked on the drag line for at least 80 yards. And given the fresh snow, the fresh drag marks, the fresh lion tracks and their configuration within the area where the Browns had walked as they searched through the pines for their deer, it was pretty clear that at one time or another both men had come within 10 yards or 15 yards of the lion.

And since they never found the doe they thought they hit, they’re pretty sure the lion got it,  claimed it and dragged it up the hill to hide.

 Either way, they left it where the lion cached it. Who’s going to argue with a lion?

“Another great experience in South Dakota’s outdoors,” Dick says.

 Indeed.

The lion cache, with the doe in the middle of the scratched-up pile.

 

One of the calling cards left in the snow by the big cat.

“After he buttoned his glove, he would hold his rod straight out in front of him, where it trembled with the beating of his heart. Although it was eight and a half feet long, it weighed only four and a half ounces. It was made of split bamboo cane from the far-off Bay of Tonkin. It was wrapped with red and blue silk thread, and the wrappings were carefully spaced to make the delicate rod powerful but not so stiff it could not tremble.

 Always it was to be called a rod. If someone called it a pole, my father looked at him as a sergeant in the United States Marines would look at a recruit who had just called a rifle a gun.”

 – A River Runs Through It

‘
Matt Brown captured this picture recently of  a mountain lion carrying its kill near Brown’s rural Custer home.

By KW

Those field cameras are something, aren’t they?

So are those mountain lions.

Matt Brown of Custer uses the camera to keep track of the lion traffic in an area not far from his home near Custer State Park. His dad, Dick, a former state legislator and GF&P Commissioner, says there’s plenty of feline traffic to keep track of.

“This is about a mile and a half from the earlier encounter we had with a cat three weeks ago, and is 30 yards from our tree stand,” Dick says.

I’ve lived out here in the Black HIlls for seven years and spend a lot of time up in the forest, and mouintain meadows, and granite country. And I’ve yet to see a lion.

With 250 or so sneaking around out there, I have to believe I’ll get lucky before too long.

Meanwhile, the field cameras give us all a glimpse of what we might not otherwise see: big cats among us.

These stills are great. And Eric Davis of Spearfish offers a nice video clip taken at “an undisclosed location” within the city limits of Spearfish:

Same spot in the daylight.

 

A little closer look at the action.