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Welcome to the articles. These articles are written and posted by our Pro Staff, Field Staff, registered members and other elite outdoorsmen and women. These articles are published to inform our members about the latest trends, tricks, hot spots in today's outdoor world and to share/learn about other sportsmen's outdoor experiences. If you would like to share your outdoor experience and have it published on just follow our helpful hints.

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Boat Ramp Etiquette By: Mike Peluso | Jul 8, 2008 12:00AM As a kid I used to ride my bike down to the river so I could watch people loading and unloading there boats. I can't even begin to tell you some of the things I have seen over the years while sitting on the rocks. Some of it has been funny, some scary and some down right stupid. I do however have a problem with some...

Our Outdoors: Transitions By: Nick Simonson | Jul 3, 2008 11:53AM The only constant in this life is change. That’s a good thing, because one of the best constants to remember in angling is that change generally equals fish. It is the changes underwater that can produce fast action and add fillets to your frying pan. Keying in on a spot-on-a-spot is an oft-relayed mantra in the world of sportfishing. Whether it is a change in flow on a river or the alteration of bottom composition by some glacier-deposited boulders on a lake, these areas provide fish with something that attracts them – either cover, food or both. Finding where these spots are and learning how to fish them is...

North Dakota Outdoors: Public Lands By: Doug Leier | Jul 3, 2008 11:50AM Modern-day North Dakota hunting is partly the product of licenses and excise taxes providing the money needed to secure habitat, develop land improvement projects, gather research and population data, and enforce fish and wildlife laws. Other major factors include annual and long-term weather patterns, and national agricultural policy, both of which are basically beyond our control. Knock on wood, harsh winters which can limit resident wildlife have...

Segmented Leadcore - Big Water Trolling Part 1 By: Corey Perman | Jun 30, 2008 9:59AM I grew up as a self proclaimed “river rat” and I have spent thousands of days on the Missouri River South of Bismarck, ND chasing walleyes, getting beached on sandbars and honing my skills on the this unique and amazing system. However, growing up fishing the Missouri River I was never exposed to big water trolling. I was a jig guy that would troll cranks if I had to. In March of 2006 life took me in a different direction and I moved to Western, NY on the shores of Lake Erie. This opened an exciting new chapter in my life. I was forced overnight to become an...

Line Control By: Mark Bry | Jun 30, 2008 9:28AM I have spent many days on Devils Lake, ND, fishing for whatever wants to bite in the shallow bays, and I think line control is something that everyone can improve on. This will help put a few more fish in the boat. Here are a few key tips to keep in mind while pitching cranks or jigs in the shallows. One of the most important factors to catching fish anywhere is line control. What I mean by line control is always having contact with your lure and always being able to feel every little detail of what is going on with your lure. Now, this sounds very basic and simple, but it can be challenging at times if you are not set up just right. First, go with...

Trolling Concepts By: Jason Mitchell | Jun 30, 2008 8:13AM Regardless of whether you look for walleye in a river, lake or reservoir, trolling crank baits is incredibly effective come mid to late summer. The reasons that trolling can be so effective stem from the fact that fish will generally pull out into areas that are easy to troll. When fish suspend over open water, trolling is often the best way to find and catch these fish. When fish pull out onto massive offshore flats and basins, trolling shines. When fish slide out off of sharp breaking contours and channels, trolling steals the show. Whenever you have large schools of fish utilizing large areas, trolling becomes...

Lake Oahe Walleyes Red Hot By: Carl Madson | Jun 27, 2008 2:20PM Lake Oahe has started this open water season with some of the best walleye fishing in the upper Midwest. “The bite keeps getting better but this year has been really good,” pointed out Lake Oahe guide, Cory Jueneman from Mobridge, South Dakota. The In-Fisherman Professional Walleye Trail just finished a pro-am event on the upper reaches of Lake Oahe and both the professional and amateur anglers fishing the event were ecstatic about the fishing. “We were generally catching 50 to 75 walleyes per day trolling crankbaits and the fish were mostly around that 15 to 20 inch mark with the occasional...

North Dakota Outdoors: Setting The Table By: Doug Leier | Jun 27, 2008 9:28AM Here it is barely summer and a lot of us are already looking ahead to what the fall hunting season might provide. While some prospects are risky to try to pin down just yet, spring weather conditions can give us some ideas about how various species have fared so far. Heading into spring, eastern North Dakota was about the only segment of the state not dealing with extremely dry conditions. While drought most obviously limits nesting conditions for waterfowl, lack of moisture also inhibits grass growth, which can mean...

Our Outdoors: Five Follows By: Nick Simonson | Jun 27, 2008 9:12AM Just five casts into Saturday morning, I figured the weekend would have one of two outcomes: either bigger muskies would certainly follow the one in my hand, or I just pre-spent my next 995 casts on the 20-incher with the treble of my homemade pink-and-brass bucktail in its mouth. As it turned out, I was right on both accounts. But, as Robert Plant put it, sometimes words have two meanings...

North Dakota Outdoors: Boat Launching By: Doug Leier | Jun 27, 2008 8:51AM As we wade a little deeper into summer I often preview the Fourth of July holiday and summer vacations with a safety reminder for anyone spending time in, on and around our lakes, rivers and reservoirs. So I'll reiterate that the only guarantee for a memorable outdoor excursion is for all participants to...

Our Outdoors: Small Hands, Big Fish By: Nick Simonson | Jun 27, 2008 8:45AM As I skidded a rock bass across the surface of the lake to the boat, my buddy Einar, stateside on a visit from Norway, asked whether or not the fish was the biggest rocky I had ever caught. I told him that while it was a good one, as a child I had caught a few that were over a pound and many others near that mark. I can recall holding one up that spanned the width of both of my hands as my cousin did the same while we trolled black-and-white Daredevle spoons for northerns with our dads, back in the day. That particular fish was the biggest rock bass I could remember catching...

North Dakota Outdoors: Tagged Fish By: Doug Leier | Jun 15, 2008 4:49AM Most hunters are aware of bird bands. Those most familiar are the metallic leg bands on ducks and geese.  The band will typically include instructions for reporting identifying numbers or letters related to the organization doing the research. Hunters have always embraced and understood their roll in these scientific studies, and banded birds are usually considered as a special trophy by the hunters who harvest them.  To a lesser extent, the same is true for fish, except that fish captured for research projects typically have...

Understanding Humminbird Electronics By: Chris Kuntz | Jun 11, 2008 2:01PM Other than your boat and motor the most important piece of equipment is your Depth finder and GPS. Way back when, I thought all Depth finders were created equal well this is partially true. Depth finders will give you the depth and the signal for a fish, well that is how you interpret what or how you read your electronics. I was fishing next to another boat and they were telling me the bottom was loaded with walleye (fish), I was not marking a fish (I’m using the Humminbird 987c SI (side imager) and the Matrix 97 on my bow mount electric motor). Neither one of my depth finders showed any fish; I asked them if they were getting any bites? The answer was no. That suggested to me...

Rock on for Walleyes By: Jason Mitchell | Jun 5, 2008 3:29PM One of the more snag resistant sinker styles for fishing rocks for many years was the simple and traditional egg sinker. Anglers would fish the rig nearly vertical, keeping the sinker off the bottom out of the rocks. Snell length was adjusted so that the bait could float close enough to the rocks without snagging up. The rigging setup for many walleye anglers changed dramatically with the advent of the No-Snagg Sinker made by Lindy. The No-Snagg can still possibly get snagged but the shape and design allows anglers to get much...

Our Outdoors: Sore Shoulders, Scares and Smiles By: Nick Simonson | Jun 5, 2008 3:21PM Up until last year, the muskellunge was just a footnote in my fishing journals. Between jigging for walleyes, pitching tubes for bass, and waxing a few panfish on the flyrod, there wasn’t much room for another angling pursuit. Sure, I had a muskie rod, but its use had fallen by the wayside since I first purchased in 2001. To say I wasn’t a devotee would have been correct. That was until a sunny August morning produced a 40-inch fish, and the fight of my life, just moments after my bait slapped the surface of Big Detroit Lake. Then it was on. Cash flashed across the Sportsman’s Warehouse counter as Cowgirls, Suicks and Bull Dawg baits piled up in my bag. The tackle wall at the lake cabin filled with ten- and twelve- inch lures and the obsession became...

North Dakota Outdoors: Wear Them For Life By: Doug Leier | Jun 5, 2008 3:16PM These and other excuses for not wearing a personal flotation device or life jacket are probably familiar to a lot of us. But during a time in which few argue the benefits of wearing a seatbelt, I struggle to make sense of why PFDs don’t are given lesser credence. For instance, youth age 10 and under must wear a PFD while the boat is underway. While there must be one PFD on the boat for everyone age 11 and older, wearing it is not required. The only exception to this is that all riders on a personal watercraft, regardless of age, must wear...

Trolling Strategies By: Troy Morris | Jun 5, 2008 3:08PM Many of the tournaments I fish on the FLW Walleye Tour that take place on the Great Lakes are won by anglers trolling either crank baits or harnesses. Large reservoirs like Lake Oahe and natural lakes like Mill Lacs and Devils Lake are other fisheries that have a great trolling bite. In order to consistently catch fish on either harnesses or crank baits by trolling, you yourself as an angler have to also be consistent. What consistency means is having equipment match up so that you can repeat or replicate what is working. To consistently match speed, a GPS works much better than a...

Archery in Schools – Right on Target for Mandan Students | May 30, 2008 2:29PM Everyone has their favorite class in school. During my grade school years, my favorite was physical education or as we called it ‘Gym Class’. The opportunity to participate in physical activities during school was always highly anticipated, especially by those of us who loved sports and competition. One sport however, that was rarely or never offered in grade school was archery. We could do all the other ball sports or activities but archery we had to do on our own, usually with misfit equipment and no formal instruction. I remember having to find Dad’s old recurve in the basement, makeshifting some arrows, and teaching myself how to...

Our Outdoors: Praise for Polarized Sunglasses By: Nick Simonson | May 30, 2008 2:25PM My yellow lab, Gunnar, and my father’s new pup Jake, stood side by side on the bow, wondering where we planned to park our boat in the small inlet the size of a hotel swimming pool, which was partially covered in lily pads and choked with old stumps and deadfalls. They too panned the water for fish after a bluegill rippled the surface. Feeling the warmth of the Sunday afternoon sun, I righted my...

North Dakota Outdoors: A Reason for Restrictions By: Doug Leier | May 30, 2008 2:15PM Over the years, North Dakota Game and Fish has developed a body of fishing regulations based on sound fisheries biology and management practices. A general rule of thumb is that if a regulation isn’t going to help the resource, then don’t put it in place, and conversely, if a regulation is no longer serving its intended purpose, it should be taken off the books.  Those principles are part of the reason why North Dakota has only a few waters that have some type of fish size restriction. For every 14-inch minimum walleye rule, the regulations become a little less angler-friendly. To justify the inconvenience to anglers, Game and Fish biologists have...

Walleye and Wind By: Jason Mitchell | May 23, 2008 7:31AM The affect of wind on walleye is almost cliché. Follow the wind or fish the windy shore. Wind stacks up baitfish and then the walleye follow. The reality is however that this cliché is only right half the time so this theory is just another half truth. There are so many scenarios where wind has a negative affect on walleye location and movements. There are many times where we are more productive avoiding the wind and the more we can recognize just when wind is...

Our Outdoors: Confidence Baits By: Nick Simonson | May 23, 2008 7:30AM The woolly bugger is a pattern that rarely fails. Likewise, a ballhead jig with a curly-tail grub will catch nearly any fish. A red-and-white Daredevle spoon will with all certainty pull a pike out of any water that holds the species. These lures are time-tested producers; they are the ultimate confidence baits because generations before ours have rippled the water with them in search of walleye, bass, trout and more. So what makes a confidence bait? A confidence bait is a lure that...

North Dakota Outdoors: Do a Youngster a Favor By: Doug Leier | May 23, 2008 7:26AM ”Take a kid fishing” is now pretty generic terminology for exposing youngsters to the world of fishing. Just about any child under the age of 12 would probably meet most definitions for being a “kid.” Over the years I've detailed my successes and failures of getting my son, now a veteran angler at the ripe old age of 6, “hooked” on fishing. Truthfully, he's probably landed more fish than dad in the past three years. But it does seem like just yesterday when he...

Memorial Day: Let Us Not Forget By: Tim Sandstrom | May 21, 2008 11:55AM It seems it was only yesterday that many of us throughout the boards of Fishing Buddy Outdoors (FBO) and other affiliates of the Total Outdoor Network were talking about late ice walleyes and early spring pike. Now, I'm writing today to wish you all a happy and safe Memorial Day! Where does the time go? It's been my pleasure in meeting several of you or at least interacting with you in some way since I was given the opportunity to work more closely with FBO. I appreciate all the kind words and the AWESOME cooperation you have all shown throughout the sites. In addition to extending my gratitude to all of you I'd like to concentrate on the story below...

NDGF Outdoors Magazine: Gizzard Shad - Dakota's Newest Forage Fish By: Scott Gangl | May 21, 2008 10:00AM Few other baitfish have been as inspirational to lure makers than shad. Open any sporting goods catalog and you’ll find baits with names like Shad Rap, Sassy Shad, Swimming Shad, Rattling Shad... the list goes on. But if you’ve spent most of your life in North Dakota, odds are you’ve never seen a shad. Your chances are improving, however, because the State Game and Fish Department has been stocking shad in southwestern North Dakota reservoirs since 2001, and they have become prominent forage in...

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