Fly Fishing: The Art of the Tie

By: Kate Havlin

Before the waters, there are flies. 

Trout anglers’ work starts before they set waders in water. Often, the first step is tying flies. 

“It’s part of the craft of fishing. Part of the hunt is learning the right bait,” said Christopher Thompson. “It’s like baking your own bread.”

Thompson was among a half dozen anglers tying flies at a free clinic at Fort Snelling State Park with Naturalist Linda Radimecky. 

Carrol Henderson: Watching Over Wildlife

By Pamela Eyden, Outdoor Writer

Carol Henderson’s success is measured in wildlife perserved.

As supervisor of the Minnesota’s Nongame Wildlife Program he protects the birds and wildlife we love.

Take trumpeter swans. These birds have a wingspan of about seven feet and are the largest water bird on earth. When Henderson wrote a conservation plan for them in 1981, they were gone from Minnesota for 100 years. Their habitat had been turned to farmland and they’d been overhunted for their elegant white feathers. After 30 years of persistence in the trumpeter swan project, more than 2,000 adult birds nest in Minnesota’s wetlands and the population has doubled in the last five years alone.

by Marshall Helmberger, Tower Timberjay

There’s more bad news for northeastern Minnesota’s moose population. That’s according to the results of the DNR’s latest moose survey, which found yet another statistically significant decline in the population in northeastern Minnesota.