Outdoors

If you enjoy photographing Iowa state parks, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources invites you to enter your photos in the America’s State Parks 2020 Photo Contest, hosted by the National Association of State Park Directors. Photos will feature state parks from Iowa and other states, and could be included in calendars and other publications...

Editor’s note: It seems that we’re always looking for new ways to fix fish. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has found four different recipes you might want to try. Over the next four weeks, we will provide one of these recipes. Below is the first of the four recipes...

Editor’s note: This water summary report is prepared by technical staff from Iowa DNR, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, IIHR ― Hydroscience and Engineering, and the U.S. Geological Survey, in collaboration with Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management Department...

Although I don’t do it as much as I used to, I still enjoy getting after walleyes at night. Across all of walleye country, there are lots of places where you can catch them under the cover of the moon. They can be caught casting from shore or trolling in a boat. Another appealing aspect is that the presentations are pretty simple: We cast either a crankbait or a jig tipped with plastic...

Last weekend my fishing friends — John Amick and Bill Elling — and I fished the 32nd annual Pocahontas Iowa Great Lakes Fishing Tournament on the Iowa Great Lakes. We found it to be pretty ironic that 32 two- or three-person teams entered the tournament for the 32nd year. It is a walleye and panfish (perch, bluegill and crappie) tournament and you can fish either category or both, but you can only win a category once during the Saturday/Sunday tournament...

Registrations for snowmobiles and off-highway vehicle purchased during the 2020 registration cycle will expire Dec. 31. Any decal displayed on a machine with a 20 printed on it will no longer be valid for machines to be used on snowmobile trails, public ice, or the OHV parks. Any registration that is not renewed prior to Jan. 1 will have a late penalty of $5 applied to the registration cost...

THORNTON — Union Hills Wildlife Area’s network of wetlands and prairie located in southern Cerro Gordo County has that been-here-forever kind of feel to it. “There’s not many places in Iowa where you get a block of habitat like this,” said TJ Herrick, wildlife biologist for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. ...

To say that COVID-19 has changed how we all go about our lives is perhaps the greatest understatement of the century. How frustrating it has been. My wife and I are both senior citizens, so we have stayed on the fringe, used our masks and avoided crowds. It has been quite a change for us because we really enjoy spending time at so many of the events held in the Iowa Great Lakes. Sadly, we haven’t attended any of these, not even gone to a restaurant or supper club since March...

Many anglers across the Midwest declare late September and October to be their favorite times to fish and I would mostly agree. In the fall, the fish catching can be so good, for quality and quantity. In addition, the surroundings are pretty spectacular as well. The trees are in full color and wildlife sightings can be abundant...

The Labor Day weekend always signals to me the official beginning of the fall season. The early teal season, dove season, and the cottontail and squirrel seasons are underway. The results of the August roadside count have been released. These are all traditional signs of fall arriving...

Iowa Deer Exchange is the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ new free online database where deer hunters willing to provide venison can connect with Iowans who want venison. Hunters enter their information to the database, including their location. ...

Editor’s Note: This release is the overall general summary of the 2020 roadside count. In a future story, we will take a more detailed look at the results and examine our northwest Iowa pheasant forecast. Iowa’s recently completed annual pheasant survey is great news for hunters — statewide, Iowa averaged 20.2 birds per 30-mile route, up significantly from 2019, with six of the nine survey regions averaging more than 20 pheasants per route, the most since 2007...

Fall walleye fishing is often heralded by anglers as one of the best times of the year for good fishing. Plenty of big fish potential as females begin to put on egg mass. Fall patterns are often drawn out and consistent. Compared to the spring, there are way fewer boats to compete against compared to the same fisheries after ice out. ...

To catch fish, you’ve gotta find them. That’s true at any time of the year. However, in the fall season, they can be in a lot of places, especially early in the fall. In the spring, the fish will usually be shallow. It’s spawning time, and the shallows are where they spawn...

There is little doubt that this is one of the most tumultuous times in our country’s history. On the national level, there is great anger between the Republican and Democratic parties and seemingly a total lack of bipartisanship. For me, as a long-time high school language arts instructor (now retired) who taught 33 years, I question how we educators can get today’s youngsters to listen to and respect the views of their classmates and when the time is right to compromise for the greater good of the class itself, when we see our elected officials fighting each other every step of the way?. ...

The Iowa Outdoor Expo has gone virtual this year, and extended the opportunity to learn about the outdoors for the entire month of September. Visit iowadnr.gov/expo starting on Tuesday to view several family, friendly videos and resources to expand your skills and knowledge about recreating in Iowa's great outdoors...

The good news for Iowa’s cottontail rabbit hunters is that Iowa has a strong population of rabbits, similar to last year, with the southern and east-central part of the state seeing the best overall numbers. The better news for hunters is Iowa’s cottontail rabbit season begins Sept. 5 statewide...

Pheasant hunters harvested nearly 284,000 roosters in Iowa during the 2019 season, which was the second highest harvest in the last decade. In 2018, hunters harvested an estimated 320,000 roosters. The 2019 roadside survey showed our pheasant population was 17% lower than in 2018, so a reduced harvest was expected. ...

As the calendar changes, so does our outdoor world. These changes will affect how and where we catch fish. In the next few weeks, the days will get shorter. Nighttime temperatures will cool, then daytime temperatures will do the same. An obvious change will be the color of leaves on trees...

What a weekend the team of Shane Akin, of Okoboji, and Matt Ahrenholtz, of Carroll, had with a record-breaking win at the Spirit Lake/Okoboji Chain Professional Musky Tournament Trail Musky Hunter Late Summer Showdown. Akin and Ahrenholtz boated 11 legal fish (over 30 inches) over the two days to shatter the previous all-time PMTT tournament record of 10 muskies. ...

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources is offering a free virtual workshop to teach skills needed to hunt, field dress and cook waterfowl to individuals who have little to no waterfowl hunting experience. This virtual workshop consists of two separate online knowledge and skills building sessions with instructors that possess the experience to teach skills necessary to become efficient waterfowl hunters. ...

Boy, oh, boy, summer of 2020 is already starting to exit. There are lots more butterflies on the bushes, birds are gathering and football practice has started. And many anglers are spooling up with fresh line to prepare for fall fishing. I’ve often said that June and October are my favorite months for fishing. June 2020 is in the past; October 2020 is in the near future. Following are some things that I’ve experienced in autumns past that will help anglers catch more fish in autumn's future...

Sept. 1 marks the beginning of the early teal season in Iowa. This early season runs for 16 days statewide (Sept. 1-16), and success relies pretty much on the weather. Any type of cool weather gets these early migrators heading south. You can have teal around one day and lows get into the 40s that night, and they are gone by morning...

In past articles, we have shared some effective trolling tactics that incorporate the use of a bow mount trolling motor. Particularly early in the year, creeping along with a bow mount trolling motor to pull crankbaits is simply deadly particularly in shallow water or when slow speeds are critical. ...

Crappies are an interesting fish. In mid and late summer they can seemingly disappear from a body of water that was infested with them just a few weeks earlier. They have a unique appearance: It’s hard to mistake a crappie for a different type of fish. Walleyes look much like sauger, northern pike can be mistaken for a pickerel or sometimes even a musky, and largemouth and smallmouth bass look similar also. But crappies, they look like crappies...

There is little doubt that the bodies of water here in the Iowa Great Lakes have a huge impact on the entire area from recreation to economic impact to sources of drinking water. Without them, we would be, well, we would be just any other rural Midwest area. ...

It started way back at least 50 years ago. That’s when I developed an interest in fishing. In that era, fishing was a summer thing. Not many people fished through the ice in the winter, and we went to school in the spring and fall, so all of the fishing that we did was in the summer...

We certainly are living through interesting and tragic times. A medical health crisis came upon us quickly, and quite unexpectedly, in the form of a worldwide pandemic which has overwhelmed the planet within a matter of months. Large and small economies have been completely shut down, schools shuttered, millions of jobs lost without warning and tens of thousands of families have lost loved ones, both here in the U. S. and across the globe...

A project between natural resources agencies in Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas, Becoming an Outdoors Women, and Women in the Outdoors have created an opportunity for ladies to purchase outdoor subscription boxes. These boxes will highlight the necessary skills and tools to participate in a particular outdoor activity. With fall approaching, the first box will focus on pheasant hunting...

It’s nearly mid-August, and our hunting seasons are quickly approaching. One of the first comes on Sept. 1 with the mourning dove season. Since the dove season was established in 2011, it has become an extremely popular early hunting season for Iowa hunters with over 10,000 hunters harvesting doves annually...