A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
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The regulations, they are a-changin' .... Starting March 1, on the Rainy River and Fourmile Bay of Lake of the Woods, a catch-and-release season will be in effect until April 14. This will discourage some anglers from making the long trek north. But despite the new regs, my annual Rainy River spring walleye trip will continue as planned. Two things draw me north. One is just to get the boat in the water. In the dead of winter, I catch myself staring out my kitchen window at my Lund. It stares...
Conditions for snowmobile riding in many parts of the state are as good as they’ve been in a long time, prompting what Department of Natural Resources conservation officers call the biggest number of riders in years to hit the state’s 22,000 miles of snowmobile trails. While zipping around on a sled is a great way to experience Minnesota’s snow-covered outdoors, law enforcement officials remind riders to leave the booze on the shelf or in the refrigerator until after they’re done riding. Alcohol is a factor in more than 70 percent of snowmob...
The wind chill factor was developed by a fellow named Paul Siple in the late 1930s while he was on a research assignment in Antarctica for the U.S government. We knew we’d be getting into World War II, so Siple was assigned to develop winter gear and survival strategies for the military. Look him up sometime. He was involved in a lot of Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. In the early days of my 25-plus-year weather career, I ran into a lot of oldtimers from before Siple’s time who didn’t belie...
Dan Gorski won the KBM ice fishing tournament Saturday, with the biggest fish and the biggest fish tale. It's a whopper. The story, not the fish, which weighed in at 2.09 pounds. Allegedly, Gorski wasn't paying attention when the fish decided to bite, and the darn thing ended up pulling his pole through the hole in the ice at Carlton's Chub Lake. After borrowing a pole from someone else, Gorski started fishing around for his lost fishing pole. After pulling up a lot of weeds, he hooked a line...
As I drive up London Road I have one goal in mind: to see for myself the villages of fishermen that have ventured gingerly out onto Lake Superior’s rare ice. My social media feed has been taken over by videos of high fives and big fish — all caught within a few miles of my truck. Several black, blue, and red shacks appear just off 21st Avenue as I drive past Marine General in East Duluth. A couple dozen more groups can be seen off the mouth of the Lester, just a couple of miles farther. The mas...
Hello again, we are in a winter wonderland, and I love it. As long as it is winter it might as well snow a little bit. I was going to continue my discussion on peat bogs this week, but my peat guy in Cromwell had to cancel our interview. No problem, so many things to wonder about. Yesterday I went cross-country skiing with two of my grandkids, ages 5 and 8. Halfway through our ski, I built a little ski jump off to the side and watched as they soared 12 feet through the air and landed on their...
JHardy northern folk are encouraged to participate in the Frozen Forester Winter Triathlon on Saturday, March 2 at Pine Valley Recreation Area in Cloquet. What is a winter triathlon? In this case, it includes Nordic skiing, fat tire biking and snowshoeing (or just running/walking in your boots, whatever works). Organizer Tim Krohn said the Frozen Forester Ski-Bike-Shoe is a family-friendly event to help introduce the new Pine Valley mountain bike trail. Unlike last year's Lost Forester race,...
I'm not sure Shamrock Productions could have timed it better. The Duluth Boat, Sports, Travel & RV Show rolls into Duluth Entertainment Convention Center February 13-17. This past weekend I was excited to hit some local lakes and chase crappies. The snow, cold and lack of plowed roads left me with few options. Lake after lake was virtually inaccessible without a snowmobile. I longed for open water and to be back in my 20-foot Lund Alaskan, enjoying the warmth of the sun and long days of summer....
The Cloquet Area Golden K Kiwanis Club will host the 2019 annual Kiwanis Last Chance ice fishing contest Saturday, Feb. 23. The contest was originated and hosted by the Kiwanis of Cloquet Noon Club. Since its inception 17 years ago, the contest has grown, and anglers look forward to the event. The family-friendly event will take place from noon to 3 p.m. Feb. 23 on Fish Lake, located northwest of Duluth. There will be prizes for participants, including cash and sports gear. The grand prize for the first-place winner is $500 in cash, plus other...
"Extreme" would be the proper term for the 2019 side of winter so far. More than 20 inches of snow in the first two weeks of February came on the heels of a polar plunge of minus-20s temperatures at the end of January. Meteorologist William Leatham at the National Weather Service in Duluth said the total snowfall there, 26.5 inches, is a record for the first two weeks of February. The former mark was 24.6 inches in 1939. Snow totals across Carlton County vary, but mirror the official...
Kingdom Builders Ministries will hold its third annual ice fishing contest at Carlton’s Chub Lake Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Organizer Bruce Matuszak encouraged people to come 20-30 minutes earlier to register and get a copy of the rules. He said people should go to the only public boat landing and parking lot (by the baseball fields) on Chub Lake and look for the big tent. Cost is $20 per adult and $10 for youth ages 12 and younger. Payment by cash or check is preferred. “We’re going to let people fish the entire lake; they just have...
It's officially winter, now that long weeks of frigid temps have finally set up the ice for safe travel on inland lakes. And, as truck travel begins, we enter one of the most predictable bites of the year: the basin crappie bite. The basin is loosely defined as the deepest part of any given lake. In our area that may vary between 10 feet of water and 50-plus feet of water. Most basins I concentrate on bottom out in the 20-to-30-foot range. Most local lakes set up well for this bite. Even...
Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, in partnership with the Northeast Minnesota Beekeepers Association, is hosting a daylong workshop, Beekeeping and More! on Saturday, Feb. 16, for anyone interested in learning about beekeeping as a hobby or as a commercial enterprise. The symposium will open at 8:30 a.m. and classes run from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., starting in the college commons. Preregistration is encouraged. The first Beekeeping and More workshop held in 2016 drew in more than 150...
Wow, that was a cold few days last week, hope your water pipes and septic mounds survived. I was lucky - the only thing I lost was the ability to open my gas cap from inside the car because my cable snapped. It is often more difficult to enjoy the outdoors when wind chills are so wicked; one place I can count on being fairly comfortable during these times is in the middle of a spruce bog on a pair of snowshoes. I love bogs in all seasons, except when the mosquitoes are in charge. Northern...
The Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve will hold its annual St. Louis River Summit March 5-6 in the Yellowjacket Union at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. A variety of speakers will present information about progress related to river landscapes, community well-being, progress on habitat restoration, and scientific monitoring techniques. This year’s summit will feature a keynote panel of representatives from local and regional breweries and distilleries, focused on the importance of clean water to their processes and i...
Last month, retired lead forecaster Craig Sanders of the National Weather Service Duluth Forecast Office noted signs of the dreaded "polar vortex" returning in late January of this year. It sure looks like he was right! Several daily cold-temperature records were set for a few of our towns last month. There's even been talk of setting a new state record, after spending nearly 23 years in the hands of Tower-Soudan. This article was written just before the deep freeze hit, so if the record was...
I know exactly where I was 20 years ago, pretty darn close to the day. I was standing on the ice in front of our family cabin at Birch Lake, Grand Marais, auger in hand. Jamie was there also; she was being a good sport about braving the cold and chasing some rainbow trout. Little did she know the plump trout below our feet were not my main target. I fired up the gas auger and pushed hard into its rotating blades. I quickly punched through eight inches as the auger broke through the underside of...
They call it ice trolling: augering a couple hundred holes across a frozen lake. The thought is to constantly hop hole-to-hole trying to find active fish. In reality, making Swiss cheese of an icy expanse can’t replace 10 minutes of open-water trolling as far as covering productive water. However, winter angling offers one advantage over summer: in Minnesota, you can use two lines per angler, allowing the old one-two punch for winter success. For each target species the logistics are a little d...
Hello to you all, or should I say, "Aloha." I am playing and learning in a place far, far away from Carlton County and the Pine Knot News. It took me 66 years to get here, but I made it: O'ahu, Hawaii. It is a lot warmer and a lot greener here. I have seen whales, lizards in our Airbnb and flying fish being chased by tuna. I've wiped out on a boogie board, and jumped into a jungle waterfall. My favorite thing to do was snorkeling - I saw fish that put Dr. Seuss creatures to shame; the colors...
Minnesota’s “Take a Kid Ice Fishing Weekend” is this Saturday, Jan. 19, through Monday, Jan. 21. During the weekend, Minnesota residents age 16 or older can fish or dark-house spear without an angling or spearing license if they take a child younger than 16 fishing or spearing. “This weekend is a way to encourage anglers to take a kid fishing,” said Jeff Ledermann, education and skills team supervisor with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “Ice fishing is a great way to get outdoors in winter.” Before heading out, anglers or sp...
Once in a while I'm forced to come clean. Recently, with one eyebrow raised in curiosity, the love of my life casually asked, "Why is there a disco ball motor in the Amazon cart?" It's moments like this I realize, I'm busted. However, the truth will set me free. I have a plan, and although she will listen intently, I know, deep down, she will never understand the ideas that float through this brain of mine. The plan is a solution to a problem it took me years to realize I was having. I will...
Too much salt isn't just bad for our physical health, it's also a big problem for our environment. As we strive to keep sidewalks and driveways safe from slips and falls, we also need to think of our drinking water and fish populations. With the wintry mix the Northland serves up, using salt or other chemical de-icers is the norm. But when the snow melts, de-icing salt containing chloride runs into storm drains and into rivers, groundwater and, of course, Lake Superior. "Every bit of salt we...
Take one of those math compasses we all enjoyed so much in school and center its unnecessarily sharp point on a map of downtown Cloquet. Stretch out its metallic arm and locate someplace, anyplace, 175 miles away. From there draw a perfect circle. This is my home range. This is where I live, work, hunt, and fish. If you plopped that same compass down anywhere else in the United States, you may find better hunting ground, but you would be hard-pressed to find the quality of outdoor opportunities...
Happy new year to you all. I was very happy to see the snow we received last week because I love solid water, and all the things we can do with it. Sliding with my grandkids, riding a snowmobile, skiing at Mont du Lac, jumping and skiing at Pine Valley, fishing on a frozen lake, skating across a pond or a rink, or just looking at it, are all some of the reasons why I really do enjoy winter. In some of our past adventures we traveled in time or became really small. This column is about...
Every new year makes me ponder the past and how things have changed. When I first became Jack McKenna's computer graphic artist back in 1987, TV weather in our region was only one year removed from magnets on sheet metal maps. Several of my old colleagues still use Jack's weather symbol magnets on their refrigerators and a big chunk of his old sheet metal map of the U.S. became inner fenders for my rusty and untrusty '68 Barracuda years ago. That 1980s weather computer was pretty primitive with...
