MINNEAPOLIS — Whether he’s having lake trout or walleye for shore lunch, Lukas Leaf employs the same recipe.

“We fry up a pound of bacon, eat the bacon, and fry the fish in the bacon grease,” Leaf said. “With fresh fish, there’s nothing better.”

Similar culinary rituals played out on lakeshores from Winona to Warroad and Winton ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — At a time when anglers are debating if advanced underwater sonar technology is wrecking the sanctity of fishing, wetting a line on Annie Battle Lake is becoming more of a throwback than ever.

Nestled inside Glendalough State Park in Otter Tail County, this deep and clear 334-acre lake is set aside by the Department of Natural ...Read more

MILLE LACS LAKE, Minn. — Within minutes of the clock striking midnight, marking the official start of the Minnesota fishing opener on Saturday, 24 extra-eager anglers cast their lines from a boat in the dark, hoping luck would shine upon them.

Almost right away, 13-year-old Katelynn Norman’s orange bobber sank below the water.

Boat Capt. ...Read more

PITTSBURGH — While door-to-door campaigning in 2019, Dan DeMarco, president of the Ross Board of Commissioners, had several residents ask, "What are you going to do about the deer?"

Six years later, after the Board banned residents from feeding white-tailed deer and rolled out managed archery hunts, he said, there are still too many deer.

"...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Pat McGowan was already on the road at 5 one morning last November when he received a call that a boat had overturned on Leech Lake and hunters were in the water.

A Department of Natural Resources conservation officer since 2008, and a longtime duck hunter himself, McGowan knew the lake was frigid and that no one could last long...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Only if President Donald Trump and Gov. Tim Walz squared off over a Department of Natural Resources plan to lower Minnesota’s walleye limit could the proposal be more controversial than it already is.

But even those political rivals couldn’t add more sparks to a fisheries management proposition that already is sizzling among...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Some 60,000 turkey hunters are expected to head out into farms, fields and woods across Minnesota last week in the hopes of hearing the scratchy, echoing cry of a tom and calling one in. Spring turkey hunting season, which ends May 31, has begun.

Turkeys, which were once completely wiped out of Minnesota and nearly all of the ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota anglers who want to fish anytime soon are still going to need paper licenses despite last year’s assurance by the Department of Natural Resources that outdoors licenses and registrations would go digital well before opening day.

The agency has been working on the $3.5 million project since 2021 and last year hired a ...Read more

PITTSBURGH — Black bears, deer, bobcats and other wildlife used to cross Route 220 in the forests near State College, sometimes to their detriment and that of motorists.

When the I-99 extension replaced that section of Route 220 with five wildlife underpasses, animal and car collisions dropped from nine animal deaths in 2009 to one in 2010, ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — At his cabin about three hours north of the Twin Cities, Alan Page carries on a tradition that he and his late wife, Diane Sims Page, started more than a decade ago: tapping maple trees and making gallons of sweet, sticky syrup.

The former Minnesota Supreme Court justice and Hall of Fame NFL football player continues to make the...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Last week, I wrote about birders, bikers and hikers and how they’ve been getting a free ride in many instances on the backs of hunters (and anglers) who have borne the brunt of conservation funding in Minnesota.

I focused on the purchase and maintenance of the more than 1,500 state wildlife management areas (WMAs) in Minnesota...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — The first time Frank Hubert Jr. caught the New Jersey state record bowfin he figured he’d have to kill the beloved, air-breathing fish to prove it, so he took a nice picture and released his catch back into the swamps.

That behemoth bowfin weighed 13 pounds, 12 ounces by Hubert’s scale, easily besting the 2017 record of 11 ...Read more