An Outdoorsman’s Journal: “Howes” the fishing

Hello friends, Before I go any further with this week’s column, I would like to thank all of the good people who sent me emails and texts after the column my daughter Selina wrote, as well as the one I wrote about Selina. I would have to say Selina’s column was one of the top two or three with readers in the last 34 years. We speak every day, and she truly has become a woman of the Rocky Mountains.

The week before this trip I kind of went through the ice a bit, so I decided that maybe I should take a week off from winter camping on the ice. My good pal Gary Howe, who is a former four-generation newspaper man, and his cousin John Howe are dyed in the wool, going to go out no matter what the weather, river rats. Though Gary ice fishes, many of their winter stories are of fishing out of boats and often by pushing their boats through ice below the dams at Lynxville and Guttenberg on the Mississippi River. Wednesday, Feb. 7 – High 41, low 30 I have to make a confession. I, Mark Walters, do not vertical jig for walleye enough and therefore I am not very good at it when I do. This morning just after night became day and there was a cold wind blowing, Gary, John and I launched John’s extremely nice 18.6 semi-v Crestliner into the Mississippi near Prairie du Chien. Our plan was to drift, use spot lock on John’s trolling motor and also just very slowly work our way up against the current and jig with 3/8-ounce jigs tipped with a minnow. Anyone who fishes with me knows that sometimes I have to experiment, and today I started out with a Buck-Shot jigging spoon. At least today, the local sauger population was not hungry for what I was jigging. There were four boats and nine fishermen working about a 300-yard stretch of river. Often, we would be within 20 yards of each other and everyone knew each other and got along great. John and Gary had the hot sticks and were landing some beautiful sauger, 17 inches, and when I finally went over to a 3/8-ounce orange and green glitter jig with a Christmas lights tail, tipped with a stinger hook and minnow, I realized I really do not suck as bad as I thought. I would have to say the best memory of the day was watching Dave Ralph, who is a well-known, very good fishermen in the area and one of Gary’s buddies from childhood, fight and land a very large sturgeon on a 6-pound test. When we took photos, Dave said he had read Selina’s story the week before and he wanted me to tell Selina he was proud of her. Since Selina is my editor, I guess she will see this.

The Howe boys honestly are very tough and addicted to the water, and we fished from the very cold hours of early morning until midafternoon. We kept a nice batch of sauger and three catfish, and then, after trailering, the boat headed over to the Eagles Club Aerie 1502 for a cold beverage and good company. This fraternal organization does really good things for heart and cancer research, and both Gary and John are proud to be members of it. Thursday, Feb. 8 – High 45 John was busy today so we fished out of one of Gary’s boats, which is a 16-foot jon boat pushed by a 30-horsepower Yamaha – no electronics, no trolling motor on this day. I started out with a 3/8-ounce jig and the sauger were hungry. This is skill/finesse fishing if there is such a thing; when a sauger hit, it generally was either the fish putting its head on the jigs and the bottom of the river, or one tug and gone. I had a blast and, as is always the case with Gary, we never ran out of things to talk about. Once again, we fished until midafternoon. At one point I believe I had a sturgeon on and it was great to be on the river.

My near future is all about living on the ice, but I have to tell you the boat is a very close second!

Sunset

Mark Walters