By KW

First, understand: I don’t care whether they shoot moose that come into town or not.

Tranquilizing them is fine by me, if it has a good chance of success (although in South Dakota, where would you take them?). Shooting is OK. Best of all is allowing them to move on on their own.

Sometimes that’s not possible, with the danger of major incidents - which moose are very capable of. I have a cousin who knows that personally, because he was attacked by a moose and seriously injured while jogging near his Alaska home.

Lots of us remember the time a moose wandered into Rapid City a few years back. GF&P plugged that one, in a somewhat clumsily handled final solution that they later recognized could have been better handled.

Sometimes wildlife pros  handle things differently. Take this Colorado case. It all turned out OK, although you have to wonder how it would have been perceived it the moose had gone onto the highway and caused an injury accident (I’m worried about the people here, not the moose), or if it had kept coming at the group of onlookers and roughed a few of them up.

Tough calls. Easy to second guess.

I guess I won’t.

Bandit squares off against a slithering intruder at the Wintersteen place.

By KW

As guard dogs go, Bandit runs a bit small.

She runs maybe 18 inches from nose to tail, in fact. And that bullsnake she found in the backyard? Four times that, or more.

Nonetheless, Bandit is protective of her home turf. So she was more than a little miffed when the big bull showed up in the yard.

“I had the dogs out in the yard yesterday and Bandit started raising Cain,” Wintersteen says. “So I went to investigate and found this.”

Investigating commotion out in the yard is a regular occurrence for Wintersteen, his wife, Jeana, and their daughter, Kelsey. They reside at McNenny Fish Hatchery near Spearfish, where Wintersteen (here on Take It Outside, we go by Wintersteen’s last name, just as we refer to Elvis simply by his first) is assistant manager. It’s the kind of picturesque, wildlife-rich location that has led my brother-in-law, Grant, to wonder why his school guidance counselor at Highmore “never told me about jobs like this.”

It’s a good job, and a great location - even with the occasional serpentine visitor - which, in this case at least, was without rattles.

Even the venomless bull snake was an aggravation to Bandit. Yet it’s clear from the picture that the feisty chihuahua is a renaissance pooch, more than willing to consider a peaceful resolution to a potentially unpleasant stand-off.

The snake appears willing as well. Well, mostly willing.

If you study its pose, you’ll notice that it also seems to be measuring the odds and checking the possibilities.

Bull snakes like to eat rodents, after all, some of which aren’t all that much smaller than, well, Bandit.

I’m just saying …

But not to worry. Wintersteen reports a happy ending:

“Both snake and dog were unhurt.”

It works out that way in the great outdoors, sometimes.

By KW

To anglers who report dead fish - in some cases that look like walleyes - drifting down the Missouri River from Oahe Dam, the Game, Fish & Parks Department has a message: not to worry.

Most of the fish are lake herring, according to a GF&P release, that have been sucked into the intakes above the dam and spit out in the tailrace below.

That phenomenon with smelt used to provide some interesting fishing when I lived in Pierre in the 1980s, and not just for walleyes, white bass and salmon.

For a time, the carp - sometimes 8 or 10 pounders - grew accustomed to sucking dead smelt off the surface, and would take a floating Rapala just as readily.

Then the fight was on. Former Argus Leader reporter Chuck Raasch, a Castlewood boy who covers national politics for Gannett News Service (There’s still a Gannett News Service, isn’t there?) in Washington, D.C.. and I once got into a hot carp bite on Rapalas below Oahe that stretched on for two days.

Raasch still sleeps fitfully when he thinks of it.

But back to the herring.

“Lake herring, which school by nature,  prefer cold water and were introduced into Lake Oahe as a forage fish<” a GF&P release says. “The forage fish are being drawn through Oahe Dam because of the current elevation of the lake and the intakes. At the current water elevation of 1,612 above sea level, water is removed from Lake Oahe between 78 to 88 feet down.  Fish near the intakes in that deep water are susceptible to being pulled through the dam.”

It’s not all bad, however.

“Lake herring are abundant in Lake Oahe this year, and the suctioning of fish from Lake Oahe into Lake Sharpe is important to the Lake Sharpe fishery,” GF&P says. “ Many of the fish in Lake Sharpe feed on these new fish and grow larger.  Rainbow trout and Chinook salmon are again taking advantage of food provided in the tailrace area.”

Sounds a bit like the days of old.  I wonder if I could talk Raasch into another fishing trip?

OK, all you folks out there in West Rapid, help me fill in the names. All I know is that one of these kids - Colton Scott Vickerman, I think - hooked this beauty of a brown in that little trickle of a stream, Lime Creek.

By KW

It won’t go down as the biggest brown trout caught in Rapid City this year.

But it might be the most impressive.

This very respectable brown came from Lime Creek, a diminutive stream that collects itself in the springs of Wilderness Park, curls down through the grounds of the planned Outdoor Campus West and rambles under boulevards and through back yards on its humble journey to Rapid Creek.

As trout waters go, Lime Creek isn’t much. Yet it’s been running strong enough lately that Wintersteen and his GF&P fish pals stocked a hundred or so 4-inch browns last year.

Some people in the neighborhood were skeptical.

But the kids weren’t. They just set to fishin’. Colton Vickerman was among them. Ane he apparently took that nice trout which, I think, is hanging in his hand on July 22.

Turns out they knew what they were doing.

Maybe GF&P did, too. Could that nice brown have been a 4-incher a year ago?

Or were there a few larger browns already in the creek?

Wintersteen says amazing growth is possible for trout, with plenty of food and little competition.

Lime Creek might be just that spot.

By KW

It’s quite a story, that Jake Niedringhaus rattlesnake tale.

I felt privileged to write if for the Journal. But if you’re a little snake-shy (when those snakes are rattlers) as I am, immersing yourself in the story of a near-fatal rattlesnake bite is likely to fire the neurosis and rekindle some memories.

Like the time I stepped next to a buzzing rattler on a catfish trip to Fort Hale Bottom as an 8-year old (it didn’t strike).

Or the time I walked over the top of one, then another rattler on a south-facing slope in the Missouri River breaks near Chamberlain, as an 18-year-old. (neither struck).

Or the time I happened on one during a stroll to a likely northern pike spot near Spring Creek years later, or almost stumbled on one during a grouse hunt in the breaks southeast of Pierre a few years after that.

Rattlers buzzing in buck piles and alfalfa windrows are part of my farm memories.

And it still  makes my legs hurt just to think of it. It also makes me tromp louder when I’m walking in likely snake country, and avoid shady spots that might entice snakes on a hot summer day.

Yeah, I’m spooked by rattlers. Absolutely I am.

Aren’t you?

A research crew netted this long-nosed sucker in Crow Creek during a survey of suckers.

By KW

If somebody asked you to go along on a sucker survey, would you?

Or would you wait until fall, for the snipe hunt?

Actually, SDSU graduate wildlife student Luke Schultz is plenty serious about his sucker study, which is why he brought a fisheries team to McNenny Fish Hatchery and its always delightful Crow Creek.

Crow’s a nice trout stream that can be awfully complicated to fish when the summer vegetation gets growing. It’s also one of the few places in the Black Hills where long-nosed suckers have been confirmed.

The long-nose is just one of the suckers Schultz is looking at in his research. He’s focusing on the mountain sucker and its distribution in the hills.

Why care about suckers? Well, they’re native fish (unlike trout), and part of the aquatic life chain that all fish, including trout, depend on.

Schultz found one mountain sucker in Crow Creek last year, but this year’s crew failed to duplicate that find. They did net white suckers, long-nosed suckers, long-nosed dace, green sunfish, brown trout and rainbow trout.

No, that’s not the Take It Outside angling guru flexing his pipes (although the build is, uh, somewhat similar). It’s actually SDSU grad student Luke Schultz, looking for suckers.

Whoa, nice Crow Creek bow.

The fish seems familiar, but the other guy, uh…

As the TIO traveler heads for home, Lorne Ruzicka waits for the evening catfish bite below the inlet at Orman.

By KW

They got nine the night before.

And they were back for more.

Lorne Ruzicka and Mike Campbell of Belle Fourche were settling in for the evening when I was pulling up my white-bass stringer.

They’re catfish hunters, soaking worms on the bottom. And doing pretty well these days at Orman.

“Yeah, everybody overlooks carfish,” Ruzicka said. “And that’s fine with me.”

I’ll just bet it is…

Mike Campbell does the honors on a nice channel cat

Brian Taylor of Belle Fourche lands a nice Orman Dam walleye.

By KW

It’s tought to be Harriet, isn’t it?

Brtian and Jed wouldn’t even try. But they had other business in the inlet channel at Orman.

Walleye business.

They were camped out under Fisherman’s Bridge just upstream from Harriet and Gretchen, and they had a couple of nice walleyes.

Indeed, as Harriet pointed out, it can be tricky to catch a keeper walleye in Orman these days. With the slot protecing walleyes from 15 inches to 18 inches,  and only one over 18 allowed in each limit, there aren’t many walleyes going home.

Brian Taylor and Jed Schosser of Belle Fourche each got a keeper, and they weren’t complaining. But I didd hear some complains about the slot limit there.

You?

No complaints here - Brian Taylor, left, and Jed Schlosser seem pretty pleased with their keeper Orman walleyes.

Harriet Foertsch of Rapid City and the catfish she was angling for.

By KW

Closing in on 90, Harriet Foertsch is pretty clear on what she wants.

And Sunday, she didn’t want a sizzling boat ride on Belle Fourche Reservoir with slim chances of a keeper walleye.

She wanted a little shade, a couple of beers, a ham sandwich or two and, if the angling gods were smiling, a catfish for the frying pan.

She got all of that, and more.

“I got my catfish,” she said late Sunday afternoon. “But I also got two suckers for my cats.”

Redhorse suckers, I believe, unless Wintersteen or DJ or somebody else tells me different.

How’s that for a day on the water? Just about perfect for the 89-year-old Foertsch (90 in October), who takes her catfishing as seriously as her lawn-chair beer drinking and sandwich munching.

Sunday, she and her daughter-in-law, Gretchen Foertsch, chose the inlet canal at Belle Fourche - Orman Dam to those of us who frequent the place - over a walleye hunt out on the lake with Harriet’s 82-year-old brother, Duke, and her son, Bruce.

“We came to drink beer and eat ham sandwiches and see what we could get,” Harriet said, offering a quote for the angling ages. “I wanted to fish the channel. I thought I had a better chance of catching a fish here.”

As she spoke, a long rope stringer stretching from the leg of a green lawn chair out into the murky water went straight, then slack, then straight again, jerking the chair foward a foot.

Gretchen grabbed the chair, regained the lost real estate and pulled in the stringer to show off a plump  3- or 4-pound catfish.

“When he hit, he pulled the whole rod and reel into the water,” Gretchen said. “But it got caught in those weeds. And I was able to jump in there and get it.”

Harriet grinned at the memory of that adventure, and at the catfish, and at the sport that never seems to lose its youthful attraction.

“I still fish,” she said. “I still love to fish.”

Especially when the beer is cold and the catfish are biting.

Gretchen Foertsch, left, and her mother-in-law, Harriet, enjoy the shade while waiting for the next bite.

Three white bass on the stringer represent the fruits of about three hours of casting below the inlet structure at Orman Dam.

By KW

Rarely has anyone fished so hard for one white bass.

Two, actually. Well, three, if you count the eventual population of my yellow rope stringer.

But it was the second one that mattered most. And came the hardest. I fished for it for more than two hours, cast after cast.

The first white hit on about my third cast into the churning water below the inlet structure at Orman Dam late Sunday afternoon.  It was a surprise. I was thinking walleye when I started pitching a 1/4-quarter -ounce white jig head dressed with a white Gulp minnow body into the canal.

But it was a nice white, a little brute of a fish in that fast water. And Mary has been asking me to bring home some white bass. She likes them at least as well as walleye, and gets positively cranky when she learns I’ve caught and released a dozen  while casting at the river.

 And I figured, where there’s one white, there’s usually many more. That’s true on the Missouri, but not so true, apparently, up the inlet canal at Orman. 

After the first white, I figured to take home a stringer of whites, which would be much to Mary’s delight. Or at least a pair of them, so we’d have a nice meal.

That added an air of intensity I usually don’t have when fishing for white bass. (And, what the heck, with most walleyes at Orman falling into the protected 15- to 18-inch slot, I doubted I’d be taking any of old marble-eyes home anyway.)

I put the first white on the stringer with confidence. Two hours  or so later, I finally had another white on - and lost it.

Rarely has anyone so profoundly lamented the loss of a white bass.

I thought I might be going home with just one white, a skimpy meal for two. But 10 minutes later, I hooked another white, and landed it. And 15 minutes after that, another.

Rarely, has anyone been so completely delighted by catching three white bass.

Or given so little thought to walleyes, at least for a few hours.

Although there were some walleyes being caught, along with some catfish. I’ll give you a glimpse of that action - including words of wisdom from an 89-year-old Rapid City angler name Harriet Foertsch - in coming TIO threads.