Blogger’s note: Molly Good is a biologist for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in our USFWS Washington Fish and Wildlife Office in Lacey, Washington. An avid angler and passionate conservationist, Molly was inspired to share her love of the outdoors with Washington Outdoor Women (WOW), a Washington Wildlife Federation program empowering women through nature. She teamed up with fellow Service biologist Jamie Hanson, and together they shared the ‘WOW’ factor with this group of women. Read on to learn more about their day - you might even be ‘WOW’-ed into volunteering too!
Photo: Right on target: Archery was one of the several skills WOW members got a chance to learn more about. Photo credit: USFWS
Eager to build my confidence exploring a new area and learn more technical outdoor skills, I stumbled upon Washington Outdoor Women or WOW, a program of the Washington Wildlife Federation, during my first few months of living in Washington. Founded by Ronni McGlenn in 1998, WOW helps women learn traditional outdoor skills and practices that empower them to develop a deeper connection with nature and the outdoors, and also instills in them a strong conservation ethic. Through 30 different courses (e.g., Archery, Backpacking, Big Game Hunting, Dutch Oven Cooking, Fly Fishing, Map and Compass, Outdoor Photography, Survival Skills, Wild Edibles, Wilderness First Aid, and more), WOW volunteer instructors share their own knowledge, experiences, and passion for natural resources and conservation with interested and attentive students.
Photo: What a catch! Molly holds out her haul during a "reel" good day teaching outdoor skills to the women of the 'WOW' program. Photo credit: USFWS
Inspired by this organization and their mission, I communicated with Ronni and WOW’s current Executive Director, Jen Syrowitz, and I joined the WOW volunteer instructor team to co-teach the “Fly Fishing” course during their annual Fall Weekend Workshop with long-time instructors, Faith Roland (22 years) and Katie Surbeck (10 years). In 4 hours, we teach women about fly fishing equipment and terminology (it is a rod, not a pole), casting (please bring eye protection), insects and flies (yes, some even look like mice!), knots (you really only need one), gear (there is always a good price point), and, finally - we fish (and land them)! This year was especially satisfying for me as I was fortunate to help two women, both new to fly fishing, land their first rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and introduce my colleague and friend, Jamie Hanson, to WOW!
Photo: 'Fly'-ing high: Jamie and Molly are all smiles after their day teaching the art of angling to the WOW group. Photo credit: USFWS
Jamie had this to say about her WOW experience: “This was my first year attending a WOW event. I already enjoy a variety of outdoor activities, but I’d never done archery or fly fishing and was a bit intimidated to try. I left the weekend feeling that not only could I successfully do both of those activities, but also just might have new longtime hobbies! Fly fishing, especially, offers me a unique way to increase my knowledge of Washington wildlife and ecosystems, which I fully expect will increase my effectiveness as a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service). It was doubly a treat to learn from Molly, a truly inspiring outdoor woman! I also attended the “Survival Skills” course and plan to incorporate what I learned on backpacking, day hiking, and work related trips into the field. It was an empowering experience and one I encourage others to check out.”
As a Biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, I have found that each course presents an opportunity for me to not only inspire others to try a new outdoors skill like fly fishing, but also to educate other like-minded individuals about the importance of becoming a responsible steward of our state’s natural resources. Thus, as part of my fly fishing course, I make a point to talk about fishing as a privilege, and that purchasing fishing licenses and abiding by other rules and regulations help ensure that privilege remains for women and girls (and others!) into the future. I hope to be able to recruit more women, like Jamie, from the Service to help them become more confident in building their skillsets and developing the right language to better relate to, and connect with, the people we work for - our public trust resource users - on a daily basis.
For 22 years, WOW and its volunteer instructor team have taught outdoor skills to more than 3,300 students. For additional information about WOW, visit washingtonoutdoorwomen.org or reach us at [email protected]
Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service USFWS Fisheries
Kids Get “Hooked” on “Reel” Nature in the Portland Metro Area
Photo: A partnership between non-profit I’m Hooked Inc. and the Service resulted in a new outreach trailer that aims to teach fishing skills to future anglers. Credit: USFWS
Novice and experienced anglers alike made their way to Henry Hagg Lake in Gaston, OR on June 2nd and 3rd for the 29th annual I’m Hooked Youth and Family Fishing Weekend. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) and I’m Hooked, Inc. co-hosted the event, which brought over 1,000 youth and their families out to the lake to fish — including the largest single-day turnout in the history of the event. That day, 24 volunteer boater-anglers took over 450 kids out on the lake for 1-1/2 hour fishing excursion. Families also took advantage of the opportunity to fish from the bank.
Photo: Young nature enthusiasts get hands-on at the activity table during the Hagg Lake event. Credit: USFWS
In addition to building fishing skills, the USFWS/I’m Hooked collaboration has a focus on conservation and positive youth development. Partnership at all levels is the key to carrying out the Hagg Lake event and organizations like Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Oregon Hunters Association as well as businesses like Home Depot and local fishing shops contributed to make this year the most successful yet.
USFWS participation came from staff and volunteers from Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge. A new USFWS/I’m Hooked outreach trailer debuted at the event, serving as the base station for a series of skill-building and educational activities, including a practice casting station, a salmon life cycle course, and a macroinvertebrate game. By hosting the practice casting station, a mandatory stop for those who aimed to fish on the lake, the USFWS made contact with a vast majority of the event’s participants
Photo: Wil Warren, founder of I’m Hooked Inc., helps a young angler with casting at the 22nd Annual Tualatin River Bird Festival where the new fishing trailer made its debut in May. Credit: USFWS
The new outreach trailer and the I’m Hooked partnership are on a roll! Find out more about the upcoming events where you can see the trailer and get your fish on here.
Dracula of the Deep, Part I: Meet the Flathead Catfish, The Pacific Northwest’s “Freshwater Freight Train”
By Dan Magneson/USFWS Fishery Biologist
Photo: Their legendary size and strength make them the stuff of lore, much like Dracula but the fantastical flathead catfish is very real. Photo credit: in-fisherman.com
They are the aquatic version of Count Dracula, quietly resting in the same dark, hidden location by day and then prowling for living prey by night. And like a vampire, they are legendary for both their great physical strength and ability to achieve a ripe old age. These “freshwater freight trains” require use of fishing tackle usually seen in saltwater situations, and can live up to 30 years of age.
The flathead catfish, Pylodictis olivaris, is known by other nicknames, most notably yellow catfish or mud catfish. And owing to a broad, flattened head (that seemingly comprises half their slender bodies), shovelhead or shoehead catfish are yet other common nicknames. They are fascinating in a way that is inversely-proportional to their looks.
According to Dakota Sioux legend, a tribe of catfish plotted to ambush and eat a moose as he waded into a lake. The attack ultimately failed, and the moose was so angered that he retaliated and trampled all the catfish’s heads flat. To this day, the catfish have flat heads as a result of the war the moose waged upon their grandfathers.
Photo: The author Dan Magneson with an enormous flathead catfish
Formally described to science by Rafinesque in 1818, Pylodictis is Greek for “mud fish” and olivaris is Latin for “olive-colored.” Flatheads are the only species in their genus, and appear unchanged from the middle Miocene epoch 15 million years ago. They have a protruding lower jaw and in all but the very largest specimens, there is a pale whitish or cream-colored tip on the upper lobe of their tails.
The flathead is native to the Gulf of Mexico drainages, from the Mobile River basin over to the vast Mississippi River basin thence to the Rio Grande and from there well south into eastern Mexico.
Thus the flathead catfish is not native to waters west of the Continental Divide, but they have been introduced to both the Colorado and Snake Rivers.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, just exactly how the flathead catfish came to inhabit the Snake River and some of its tributaries is something of a mystery, but it has been suspected that earlier shipments of blue catfish subsequently planted into the Snake River may have mistakenly included flathead catfish.
The lower Snake River in general may be populated with at least some flathead catfish, but the Oxbow Reservoir contains good flathead fishing, and Brownlee Reservoir is commonly regarded as being great. But the Pacific Northwest’s absolute premier flathead fishery is regarded by many as being more in the middle stretch of the Snake River itself, from Brownlee Reservoir upstream to the town of Nyssa, Oregon, along with possibly those adjacent lower reaches of the larger tributary streams such as the Powder, Burnt, Weiser, Payette, Malheur, Owyhee and Boise Rivers.
As an apex predator, flathead catfish are the schoolyard bullies within the waters they inhabit. Live fish are their favorite prey, with smaller catfishes and sunfishes seeming to turn up in their bellies at especially frequent rates. And unlike other catfish species which readily scavenge, the predatory flathead prefers to consume its meal while it’s still kicking and screaming.
Depending on the latitude, spawning begins in late spring or early summer as the water begins warming into the mid-70’s. A cavity is chosen in a hollow log, a hole in a riverbank, within riprap or sometimes even inside submerged cars and metal drums, and after depositing her eggs, the female is then driven away and the male very aggressively guards the nest, fanning the egg mass with his fins and, upon hatching, continuing his watch over the dense school of fry as they absorb their yolk sacs over the course of the next few days, after which they begin dispersing to lead independent lives.
Young flatheads up to 4 inches long are found among sandy, cobble-strewn riffle areas, consuming aquatic insect larvae. From about 4 to 12 inches in length, they are more generally dispersed throughout the stream environment, with crayfish and fish becoming an increasingly-important part of the diet. From about 12 to 16 inches, the fish are associated with cover at intermediate depths.
By the time they surpass 16 inches in length, flatheads feed almost entirely upon other fishes and are very strongly associated with extensive cover such as logjams, downed trees, rootwads and jumbles of boulders found in deep pools with a slow to moderate current over a firm substrate.
The flathead is also something of a lone wolf: a single clump of cover will often yield only one, or at best just a few large individuals; the only exception is during the frigid water temperatures of winter, when dozens of these large individuals may congregate and overwinter among sheltered bottoms of deep pools.
And the word “large” really does apply: they rank among our biggest freshwater fish of any species, and are hot on the heels of the blue catfish as being our largest species of catfish, with a current rod-and-reel flathead record of 123 lbs. But unlike the somewhat-larger blue catfish, a decidedly “big water” fish of major rivers and huge reservoirs, the flathead can also be found in smaller streams, and so for many anglers represent a more readily-available trophy fish that is closer to their doorsteps than the less-accessible blue catfish.
Flatheads are a challenging quarry due not only to their sheer size and strength, but also because as a top predator, there are generally not many of them inhabiting a given location. Add to that their proclivity for live prey, strong homing instincts and chiefly nocturnal activity, and those elite anglers who can consistently land trophy-sized flatheads belong to a very select and skilled fraternity.
Some folks feel that flatheads have a regular “milk run” of favored feeding routes and strategize their fishing in a manner much like a hunter plotting an ambush upon a wily trophy muley buck or bull elk. The long intervals between bites can stretch from hours to nights, but to a flathead fanatic, patience finally pays off when setting the hook on what first seems to be a log, only to be quickly followed by an adrenaline rush and pounding heart when the “log” suddenly comes to life, turns, and bulldozes away through the depths, rod bent to within a whisper of the breaking point and line tearing off the reel.
With a giant flathead, a successful battle is often fought to nearly a draw, with both fish and angler vanquished when the fish is finally beached. Few freshwater fish can rival a gigantic flathead when it comes to leaving the muscles in both arms, both legs and back strained and aching as you grunt and sweat to finally land them, and to a dedicated flathead angler this experience is simply euphoric.
The “Achilles heel” for this species is the vulnerability of the male while guarding the nest. In a technique known as “noodling,” the male is wrestled by hand onto the adjacent shore, which in turn dooms the eggs he had been guarding. Set lines are yet another method that can have an outsized impact on trophy flatheads.
Using circle-style hooks and encouraging catch-and-release can help to conserve populations of trophy flatheads. As a further incentive not to kill and consume large flatheads, this long-lived and fish-eating species can accumulate contaminants in its flesh at greater levels than shorter-lived fish that feed lower in the food chain.
Seeing a flathead’s broad head and massive mouth emerging from the water and into the beam of a flashlight has a profound effect on the angler: their appearance seems to be not of this earth, like some alien creature straight out of a science fiction flick. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, because those in the know realize that one of the coolest and most fascinating fishes in North America is at the end of their fishing line.
Sitting around a midnight campfire and gazing at the lazy swirls of murky current while pondering these mysterious creatures lurking somewhere below, and imagining instead oneself as the aquatic quarry of their nocturnal hunts, then the specter of a marauding predator cloaked by darkness represents a true living nightmare.
It’s an ancient anxiety conjured up from somewhere deep within – both primitive and palpable, of an apparition suddenly looming out of the blackness and devouring oneself – that makes the firelight and the flickering faces of family and friends all the more comforting in the wee hours of the night.
#ThrowbackThursday: Love for a best friend never gets old. That's why we are bringing you one of our most popular stories EVER from the archives. Get your tissues out for this U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist's tribute to his four-legged hunting partner Shellie: http://bit.ly/1efK2ch
Share your stories of hunting, fishing, and connecting with nature on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook #ShootHuntFish #iHuntBecause
Blog courtesy of Dan Spencer, an Information & Education Specialist at the Puget Sound & Olympic Peninsula Fisheries Complex (USFWS)
Event organizer David Kyle (Trout Unlimited Biologist) presents the prize to the total poundage winner of the competition. Photo credit: Dan Spencer/USFWS
What could be more satisfying than reeling in fish and winning prizes while supporting a noble cause? The Bellevue/Issaquah Chapter of Trout Unlimited provided just such an opportunity over Veterans Day Weekend with their Perch-A-Thon fishing derby on Lake Sammamish (WA). Similar to a Run-A-Thon fundraiser, participants recruited sponsors to donate money per fish caught. These anglers then had a four-hour window to catch as many non-native yellow perch as possible, in turn raising funds for “Project Healing Waters”, a non-profit that provides therapy and rehabilitation opportunities for disabled military personnel and veterans through fly-fishing.
The 33 fundraisers, ages five and up, hauled in over 500 yellow perch, which netted over $3,000 for Project Healing Waters! They also contributed to science by allowing U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) staff to collect stomach samples from their catch. With 150 yellow perch sampled, these stomach contents will shed additional light on the role of these non-native perch on the Lake Sammamish ecosystem.
AmeriCorps service member Evan Lewis showing off Yellow Perch stomach contents. This sample was primarily daphnia, which are commonly referred to as "water fleas." Photo credit: Dan Spencer/USFWS
For the competition portion of the derby, anglers submitted their largest 25 perch for measuring and weighing. The Perch-A-Thon crew processed over 380 of these entries, which totaled cumulative length and weight of 148 pounds and 300.2 feet respectively! The longest perch award measured in at 303mm (11 1/4in). The heaviest perch weighed in at 303grams (0.67 lbs). The heaviest total catch entered weighed in at 5821gram (12.8 lbs). Every fundraising participant walked away with a prize thanks to the numerous sponsors and contributors.
This event was a success thanks to the support from partners, businesses, and volunteers, including: Trout Unlimited, King County, Washington State Parks, the Snoqualmie Tribe, the Lake Sammamish Kokanee Work Group, the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service’s Puget Sound Olympic Peninsula Fisheries Complex, and Lake Sammamish Urban Wildlife Refuge Partnership, PCC Community Markets, Coho Cafe, and Friends of Lake Sammamish State Park.
Participants standing in front of the prize table. Photo credit: Dan Spencer/USFWS
Blogger’s note: Matt Trott, one of our Fish and Wildlife Service communications specialists was writing a blog for Open Spaces and found a photo of anglers out fishing in the rain. Matt knew a little rain is nothing to a dedicated angler, but started thinking: “Is there a particular fish that anglers really love to fish for? Is it different depending on where you are? What makes that fish that fun?” He reached out to Service anglers and some partners across the country to find out what their favorite fish to catch is. Here is what they had to say.
Dan Magneson, Assistant Hatchery Manager at Quilcene National Fish Hatchery in Washington state:
For me, it is flathead catfish hands-down. For me, it is the equivalent of trying to hunt a trophy bull elk with a bow. It is big -- with a current rod-and-reel flathead record of more than 123 lbs.-- and there are generally not many of them inhabiting a given location. Add to that their proclivity for live prey, strong homing instincts and chiefly nocturnal activity, and those elite anglers who can consistently land trophy-sized flatheads belong to a very select and skilled fraternity.
Kelly Oliver-Amy, Fish and Wildlife Biologist and Grant Manager for the Sport Fish Restoration Program in our Southwest Region
Kelly is the photographer in the family, but here are her daughters last summer on the upper Cebolla Creek in New Mexico
My husband and I like to take our girls fishing in the Santa Fe National Forest on the Rio Cebolla, which has Rio Grande cutthroat trout. It is catch-and-release fishing on a fly rod. This fish is really fun for us because it is a native New Mexico cutthroat, is quite lovely and unique. As a fish biologist, I love to see the native species.
Julie Timmer, Administrative Officer at Pendills Creek National Fish Hatchery in Michigan
Ever since I can remember, my grandpa and dad both enjoyed perch fishing, and I would always tag along. We'd fish in the summer and winter. I have more memories ice fishing. Perhaps because we'd have to snowmobile in to Pendills Lake. Grandpa would ride on the four wheeler once we had a good enough path out to the lake, and dad and I would be on his old Elan snowmobile. There'd be numerous ice shanties out on the lake, seemed like the whole neighborhood from Dollar Settlement [in Michigan] would come out. Some days, if the weather was fair, even grandma, my mom and younger sister would come out. The three of them would be in one ice shanty, and dad, grandpa and I would be in the other, waiting for perch and/or pike.
Mike Piccirilli, Chief of the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program for the Southeast Region
Yellowstone River cutthroat trout are beautiful, and they're found in beautiful places, it’s a bonus to maybe get a glimpse of a wolf or a grizzly bear when fishing, and finally I never tire of releasing them to live another day.
Chris Smith, Supervisory Fish and Wildlife Biologist at the Lake Champlain Fish and Wildlife Resources Office in Vermont
I enjoy angling for walleye because of the numerous techniques used to catch them. Walleye put up a tremendous fight and are excellent table fare.
Volunteer Michelle Van Den Heede of Riverdale, North Dakota, seconds the walleye vote.
As Chris says: "Walleye is excellent table fare."
Mike Goehle, Deputy Complex Manager of the Lower Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office in New York
Mike also "votes for walleye as my favorite fish to catch. They're a beautiful fish with a great fight. As for table fare, they don't get much better either!”
Shane Hanlon, Hatchery Manager at North Attleboro National Fish Hatchery in Massachusetts
Why it's the brook trout, of course – with its miraculous coloration, its wonderful taste and representation of the places I love most--the mountains and upland streams. A good catch helps me forget about the blood-sucking mosquitoes and black flies.
Steve Klein, Chief of the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program for our Alaska Region
Steve Klein (third from left) and friends with five Chinook salmon from Prince William Sound.
My favorite fish to catch is the mighty Chinook salmon, especially trolling for them in beautiful places like Prince William Sound and Resurrection Bay. They give you a great fight and taste so good! And when a hot bite is on, it gets real exciting!
Richard "Kip" Bottomley, Project Leader at Jones Hole National Fish Hatchery in Utah
Kip (right) and cousin.
Kip also picks Chinook salmon.
The excitement begins when you leave the dock and head out into the beautiful Pacific Ocean. Oftentimes there will be several boats trolling the area where fish are being caught, and the excitement increases. At times the fish are in deep water (> 200 ft. depth) where trolling is best or they move in with the bail to shallower waters (<100 ft. depth) where a technique called mooching works well. While mooching,a sliding egg-hape sinker is used so that when the fish picks up the bait (anchovy or herring), it can swim freely, or at least for a 10 - 15 feet before the hook is set, and then it can get very exciting! More often than not the water is colored deep blue and the fish are such dedicated swimmers that they will run in any direction, left, right, as well as surfacing! Strong and powerful fish. And of course there is always that urge to fulfill one’s desires to consume all the OMEGA - 3s possible from what I consider to be my favorite table fare.
Matt Baun, Public Affairs Officer in our Pacific Southwest Region
I enjoy catching half-pounders on the Klamath River each autumn. There's quite a bit of lore and legend surrounding these small but mighty fish. Among steelhead, half-pounders are unique. They are found in the Klamath River and a few other places in Southern Oregon and Northern California. For reasons not completely known, they are hard-wired genetically to return to the river within months after reaching the ocean whereas other steelhead are programmed to spend up to three years in the Pacific before returning to their natal rivers. When these immature steelhead come back into the river as half-pounders they are only about 16 inches long, but are very strong and are known for their aerial acrobatics when hooked on a fly.
Bob Clarke, Fisheries Program Supervisor for our Pacific Southwest Region
My favorite is the California golden trout, because you catch them in beautiful parts of the Sierra Nevada mountains, they are a really pretty fish, and they are the state freshwater fish of California, my home state. A close second on the list is the Lahontan cutthroat trout, because of the awesome role the Service has played in bringing the Pilot Peak strain back to the Truckee watershed, because they are the largest inland trout in North America, and because, despite catching many Lahontan cutthroat, I still have yet to catch a floy-tagged [An external tag placed for one reason or another.] Pilot Peak fish from the Service’s Lahontan National Fish Hatchery.
Denise Wagner, Conservation Education Coordinator for the Fish and Aquatic Conservation Program
Living in Oklahoma most of my life, I loved catching crappie with my dad. They were fun to catch, great memories from our times together and fried crappie is delicious! Now living in Montana, of course I had to start fly fishing. Beautiful surroundings, love being on the water and I’m pretty happy when I catch anything. But getting a nice trout on the line and successfully bringing it in, amazing!
A few folks couldn’t pick just one.
Chad Brown, owner, creative director and designer of Soul River Runs Deep, a fishing and outdoors outfitter, and Soul River Inc. Runs Wild, a nonprofit that connects inner city youth and U.S. veterans to the outdoors
It’s kind of different on where you are at on the river and location. Here in the Northwest it is the forever-lucent steelhead or the unicorn of the Northwest, which is a goal to anglers and the heartbeat of the Northwest! On the East Coast, depending where you’re at, it can be stripers. Go down to Texas, you’re looking at redfish and bass. In the middle like Montana you have the blue ribbon trout or the Midwest, musky. So it really depends where you are and what type of water.
Christopher Dean, Fish Biologist at Pendills Creek National Fish Hatchery
Christopher (shown with a steelhead) agrees it depends on the location. “The Midwest seems to be set as the walleye is the prize possession, while in the Pacific Northwest it's all about the Pacific salmon. The thrill of the chase (not easy to catch), the fight, and the table fare afterwards really makes the sport fun.”
Dr. Mike Millard, Director of the Northeast Fishery Center in Pennsylvania
• Coho salmon are a good fighting fish that show up in the early fall, an absolutely beautiful time of the year to be in Alaska.
• Rainbow trout fishing in Alaska’s Kenai River can be the most visually appealing fishing you'll ever find.
And the best catch may not the fish itself but the memories made on fishing trips.
Susan Sawyer, Visitor Services Manager at Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge Complexin Nevada
Dad, me holding fish I just caught, my sister on left, brother behind - Kern River, California, in 1964.
My dad taught me to fish when I was 3 (golden trout, Merced River, Yosemite National Park) and it’s something I continue to this day whenever I get the chance. Hard to say a favorite fish, it was always about the experience that my dad and I shared over the years - catching a fish wasn't that important, but it sure added to the memories and stories. My favorite part was being outdoors, from oceans to mountains, doing something we both enjoyed, together.
You often hear of how so many kids today find their recreation mainly behind an electronic screen, but when I am on the beaches at nearby Port Townsend, Washington, I still witness some hold-outs against a life dominated by technology, and I observe a number of kids out beachcombing, and especially for bits and chunks of highly-prized sea glass, and almost every time I am out there.
The high, timbered bluffs above the beach display well-worn trails, and some of these traverse short, but nearly vertical stretches; knotted ropes hang downward to assist in negotiating this tricky terrain. I see, too, that they have excavated a makeshift cave behind a veil of English Ivy.
One day I encountered some kids on the Union Wharf, on their bikes and carrying fishing rods; one had a small green tackle box similar to the one I carried at about his age.
I’m nearly 57 years old now, but that sight was like looking in a sort of mirror, transporting me back in time to the days when I was about the age of these guys.
And more specifically, by such days I mean coming of age during the era spanning the 1960’s and into the early 1970’s. When you add in the 1950’s, you are talking about what was probably the golden age of being a kid.
And nowhere did the gold shine brighter than in small town Iowa.
Oh, we did have our great television shows back then, no doubt about it: Saturday mornings saw Jonny Quest, The Pink Panther Show, The King Kong Show, Aquaman and Hot Wheels being counted among my favorites. These days also included ore thoughtful fare such as The CBS Children’s Film Festival, Davey and Goliath and The Wonderful World of Disney. And we enjoyed the weekly episodes of such classics as Lost in Space and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.
Most of the folks in our neighborhood had upgraded to color television from black-and-white only relatively recently, which probably helped make the cartoons of that era even more vividly-memorable.
But while television was a part of growing up, it didn’t so fully dominate your activities, your mother would see to that by booting you outside even if you hadn’t wanted to go. But you already did want to go anyway, because your main activities were centered around, well, actually being physically active.
In our small Iowa town, an annual Easter egg hunt was hosted at the town square, and some of those Easter eggs had prizes associated with them, consisting of a few to several dollars of merchandise at the stores located around the square. The Holy Grail among these eggs was the lone Golden Egg, a specimen of which I never even saw. But one year, while pawing through a wind-drifted blanket of fallen pin oak leaves, I did uncover a Silver Egg and still remember redeeming it at the counter of one of those downtown businesses. I think it was worth $5, which was a fortune to a kid back then.
The manager of the local Woolworth’s store hosted a really neat event: he had taken numerous bales of straw, spread it on the sidewalk in front of his store and cordoned it off, scattered $100 worth of pennies though it, and blew a whistle to start an event allowing us kids to dig through that straw and recover those pennies. A penny would buy you a piece of candy at that time, so it was well worth the effort of uncovering and pocketing those pennies.
And we had some really good kinds of candy too, very much worth buying at those still-abundant little mom-and-pop neighborhood markets with the old creaky and well-worn wooden floors: NIBS, Lemonheads, Boston Baked Beans, Sugar Babies, Atomic Fireballs, SweeTarts, and Chuckles. My personal favorite was Hot Tamales, which were then a nickel a box. There were also Bottle Caps, Reed’s Candy Rolls, Razzles, Zotz, Slo-Pokes, Chick-O-Sticks and Fire Stix. We had chewing gums like Bazooka, Dubble Bubble and Rain-Blo as well as Beech-Nut, Fruit Stripe, Beemans, Teaberry, Clove and Black Jack. Candy bar selections included Zagnut, Zero, MilkShake, Mars, Oh Henry!, Clark, Milky Way, Big Time, Pearson’s Salted Nut Roll and another of my favorites, Cherry Mash.
Sometimes in the evenings we visited the local Dairy Queen store, where they served chocolate-dipped and subsequently-frozen bananas which they had entertainingly christened “monkey tails.”
And while downtown, it was decidedly worthwhile to check the local phone booths, because not everyone remembered to retrieve their dime from the coin return slot.
We played little league baseball, with the local businesses sponsoring a team with their name across the shirts they supplied. The baseball park was riddled with the burrows of thirteen-lined ground squirrels and some of the guys captured a few to try to tame as pets.
The summer of 1969, I played for one of the local drugstores, and we went on to win the championship. And whenever we won a game, the players were each entitled to receive a free beverage at their soda fountain.
But probably more fun were our neighborhood baseball games, surprisingly-similar in nature to the 1993 movie The Sandlot.
We often went to the community swimming pool during the very hottest days of summer, but not until at least an hour after lunch, because any less time than that and you would “cramp up and drowned!”
I can remember a very pleasant odor like pink bubble gum emanating from the local plant nurseries, a chief industry in our little town. It wasn’t until years later, as an adult living in Washington state, when I happened upon a storm-shattered specimen and finally connected that wonderful smell to the exposed wood of the western redcedar; it must have been used in those nursery operations for one purpose or another.
We rode our bikes all over town, and the most esteemed bikes then were of the stingray variety, with the high handlebars and banana seats. We didn’t come home much except for meals and at bedtime, and we roamed and roved outdoors just about all day in the summertime. The term “helicopter parent” wasn’t a part of the local vernacular.
We had a gigantic weeping willow tree in our backyard, and we would grab a handful of branches and swing through the air like Tarzan.
We climbed to far greater heights at the local junior high school in the summer, pulling down the lower portion of the fire escape and then climbing those metal stairs to nearly the dizzying roof of the school. The view of the surrounding town and countryside was great, and no adults ever came along and chastised us or chased us down.
The street below this fire escape dropped sharply off into a very steep and very long hill. During the slick and slippery weather that accompanied snowstorms, the city blocked access to it from the connecting side streets and thus turned it over to us kids while the homeowners merely parked in the alleys. The ride down was exhilarating, but that climb back to the top arduous. Afterwards, we’d enjoy steaming cups of hot chocolate – with heads of melting marshmallows – as we thawed our achingly-cold fingers and toes in warm kitchens while the gray wintery evening descended outside.
We built snow forts and hurled snowballs at one another in the winter, and I recall one ambitious family up the block having actually constructed a real-life igloo in their front yard.
While in Scouting, we would go on wintertime outings – “freezeouts,” we called them – camping overnight and over the weekend in the snow. You would shiver and shake in your sleeping bag at first, but eventually warm up and fall into probably the greatest slumber ever. You awoke under a clear sky to find everything encased in heavy frost; you scrounged wood and made a campfire to cook over; we used no stoves with contained fuels that we had bought and brought. The bottoms of the mess kit items I actually cooked with were black with soot, and those unevenly-cooked pancakes still held gooey batter within, but never had a breakfast tasted or hit the spot better.
In the summer, we built treehouses from scrap lumber; it seems as impossible now as it did then, but my dog would climb those rungs of 2” X 4” lumber that we had nailed ladder-like along the tree trunk, and join us up in treehouse. But he couldn’t descend, leaving me to carry him down. But I didn’t mind, I was astonished by his ability and amazed at his courage!
We climbed into the furthest branches of apple trees looking for an apple without worm holes, and ate a lot of tart gooseberries and those sweet and staining mulberries too.
We caught garter snakes and marveled at their differing personalities; some were quite docile and easy to handle while others struggled and squirmed and any chance they got, tried to bite you.
We collected shiny, fallen buckeyes and on the back steps and used dad’s hammer to smash open the tough shells of black walnuts to get at the tasty contents.
We had chance encounters with poison ivy and stinging nettles, slapped mosquitoes, experienced the maddening itch of chigger bites and the terror of a swollen tick stuck into your scalp.
It seemed as though every backyard had a sand pile encircled by an old tractor tire. Looking back on it, this practice may well have greatly contributed to the burgeoning mosquito population, for I remember holding up a clear jar full of water collected from within such a tractor tire – and examining a teeming collection of convulsively-flexing “wigglers” or mosquito larvae. At the time, the city had trucks that periodically went out and slowly “fogged” their way down the streets in an effort to control the mosquitoes.
I chased a lot of butterflies and learned about them along the way: red admirals are wary, mourning cloaks are attracted to fallen, rotting fruit and that butterflies are generally attracted to flowers that are similar in color to themselves. My favorite was a very distinctly-marked species known as the “buckeye butterfly.”
The neighbors down the street had a huge paper wasp nest on the side of the tin shed in their backyard; these wasps have a painfully high-voltage sting. The mother had to run some errands downtown but before she left, and knowing us, she administered a warning: “you guys leave that wasp’s nest alone while I’m gone!” She hadn’t even turned the corner before we were out throwing crabapples at it. Even though we were missing, it vibrated the tin when the crabapples struck and we were getting the wasps madder and madder with each throw. The biggest, oldest and bravest kid – the one who was supposed to have been watching over us younger kids – was out in front, and got stung right below his right eye and on the lower lip. I’ll never forget him looking in the bathroom mirror, then turning to me – with the area around his eye puffed out and reminding me of a goldfish, coupled with a lower lip swollen up like a sausage – and saying “oh thit, now the’s gonna know!”
We would play hide-and-seek well into the night, and then camped out in our backyards, fashioning blankets into a flimsy tent, erstwhile having captured a sufficient number of lightning bugs – as we called fireflies – to function as a lantern (though much like banging a faulty flashlight on your hip to get it to work, you usually had to shake the jar a bit to get the lightning bugs to actively light up). We would scan the heavens using the instruments from my Mattel “Super-Eyes” set, and one morning we woke up to find a Carolina wren sharing the tent with us. We would have a bag of salty, buttered popcorn and wash that down with Coca-Cola, (which was then always bottled, and in that curvaceous glass with the light aquamarine tint and for which you also always needed a bottle opener). What a great combination of flavors!
The pop machines for those bottles had a vertical door holding the various selections. After putting your dime into the coin slot, you would open the door, grasp your favorite (which for me was Nesbitt’s strawberry very early on, then switching to Frostie Root Beer later) and pull the bottle out by the neck. After the flat bottom of the bottle was pulled clear, a metal contraption would slam solidly down and lock again.
There were also a few of those old-fashioned candy machines still in service around town, the tall and narrow ones that held the individual candy bars on a sort of little shelf that were evenly spaced along a vertical belt.
There was a concrete culvert exiting into a ditch at the end of the next door neighbor’s backyard and we wondered if it was the same one that had an opening at the ditch across the block. So no flashlight or anything, I crawled through – total darkness, dry leaves, cobwebs and all – to find out. I rounded at least one curve underground and saw a circle of light signaling the exit. I confirmed it was indeed the same culvert as I emerged – but standing there was mom, ready to administer a spanking. Later on, I hollered into that culvert and was startled when a pair of reflecting eyes – which were uncomfortably set rather widely apart too – opened up and looked back at me.
One day I saw a grackle catch and kill a young sparrow in midair – I didn’t know that they were capable of inflicting such harm.
We started out with cap guns – these used a long strip of red paper formed into a roll, and with little dots containing a small dab of gunpowder interspersed to create the noise of a gunshot. And later on, nearly all of us owned a Daisy BB gun.
I explored the surrounding countryside in my Bart Starr tennis shoes, carrying my own little Daisy lever action BB gun (with a length of heavy, coarse twine functioning as a sling) and my dog as a companion. I always carried extra ammo, just in case, and remember those Daisy BB’s were loosely packaged inside a few inches of lemon-yellow cardboard tube and with a black cardboard cap on top.
The farmers didn’t chase you away, they just waved in greeting when they saw you. I learned the hard way during those hikes that around old lumber, tennis shoes can lead to tetanus shots, as their soft soles don’t stop rusty nails from penetrating into your foot!
My dog and I found a neat little spring-fed pond within a glade of toweringly-huge trees. A great horned owl roosted there and always took to wing as we approached – I remember being amazed at its huge wingspan. A friend discovered a trickle of cold water draining from a pipe along a steep bank and would fill his canteen from it.
Nor far away early one spring, I found what I later identified to be an owl’s skull sitting starkly atop the black soil rich with soft green shoots protruding; the heavy hooked beak and huge eye sockets were strong clues to its true identity.
The rural power lines still had a good number of the glass insulators associated with them, both of the clear variety and those imbued with a bluish-greenish hue; they seemed to especially adorn the poles that paralleled the railroad tracks.
And I found old bottles – of the type that had once held a cork stopper – sticking out of the gooey mud along the creek; the glass would often have a rosy lavender hue due to the accumulated exposure to sunlight.
We fished too, farm ponds simply abounded in the rural areas around us. We discovered clever ways to catch bullfrogs and that those captured snapping turtles really could crush small branches in their powerful jaws – and thus teaching us to give them distance and respect as we now could see the potential of getting a finger sheared off. And crayfish have claws that sure could painfully pinch!
We lived for a year in the northwestern part of the state, and very near the Iowa Great Lakes. I learned use a small, red cork popper to catch bluegills – I took great pride in having successfully mastered use of an artificial lure.
One afternoon in a sun-dappled cove along Lake West Okoboji I was watching a small school of bluegill lazily lolling in the clear water near the shore when they suddenly panicked and scattered – and into that void suddenly burst a lunging northern pike. It hovered for a moment after its failed ambush and then spying me towering above, turned and shot back into the murky depths.
There was a sort of canal connecting Big Spirit Lake with East Lake Okoboji, and jumbo yellow perch were spawning in the clear water. These are a particularly-beautiful freshwater fish, with yellowish-gold bodies interspersed with dusky vertical barring and further highlighted by vivid orange fins. Anglers lined both banks virtually shoulder-to-shoulder, but those fish apparently had lockjaw. My brother and I both had bobbers, with my brother using a worm and myself a minnow for bait. Almost simultaneously, a pair of fish accepted each of our offerings, and this pair represented the only fish landed by anyone that day.
I learned that crappies are very gregarious and have such a strong affinity for schooling that free-swimming fish might position themselves alongside the stringer of crappies that you had already captured.
And I fished in the local streams in southwest Iowa, these being the Nishnabotna and Nodaway Rivers. Once along the Nishnabotna I encountered a gar holding position in the current near the bank and lowered my bait right in front of it. The gar grabbed it and simply held on - their bony beak will deflect the point of a fish hook quite effectively. I hauled him up onto the bank, and he finally let go of the bait and flopped down into the water – and returned to exactly where he had been and began holding position in the current again as though nothing had ever happened. I lowered my bait in front of him a second time and we repeated the scene – but after this second time, he took off for good once he flopped bank down the bank and back into the river.
On another occasion, this time in the Nodaway River, I hooked a mirror carp; these carp have a few gigantically- large scales scattered along their backs and sides and are otherwise scaleless. I was astonished at the sight as he flopped about on the riprap below, disgorging the hook in the process and tumbling back into the river. I hadn’t seen a living specimen before that day and I haven’t since.
Today so much Iowa farmland seems to consist mainly of row crops like corn and soybeans – with only a barbed wire fence and a sparse strip of grass separating the fields. But agriculture wasn’t nearly so intensive back in my youth – the individual fields were a lot smaller and much weedier than now, and often heavily-bordered by osage-orange hedgerows or wide margins of giant ragweed and foxtail and punctuated with wild plum thickets, wild rose and the sumac that turned such a beautiful scarlet-crimson the fall. The fields also had not been tiled then as they so often are now, and so there were a preponderance of wet, marshy areas where smartweeds like to grow and turn that rusty, ground-cinnamon color in the fall. They were a lot more hayfields back then too. All this in turn meant a lot more small game like cottontail rabbits, bobwhite quail and pheasants. It seemed that you saw a lot more red foxes, badgers, blue racer snakes and bobolinks back then too.
Most of us moved from our air rifles up to single-shot .22 rifles and .410 shotguns and joined our dads in those fields on frosty autumn mornings.
Those ubiquitous fox squirrels would scramble around the tree truck to maintain a position opposite you and thus stay out of your line of sight. This presented a problem when you were alone or separated from your hunting partners, but you could overcome it by temporarily hanging your jacket on a nearby sapling and then circling the tree. The now-confused squirrel would then cease his own circling behavior, thinking himself suddenly caught between a pair of hunters, and this could afford you a chance for a shot.
Tradition held that we waited for snow before pursuing cottontails, but if there was no snow, the rabbits could be hard to discern among the background of dead vegetation and leaf litter. A good tip was to look instead for that roundish, dark and liquid-looking eye, which would betray them.
One bitterly cold day in the winter I was in a timbered area hunting rabbits and stopped to rest, leaning against an old tree trunk. The wood turned out to be so very rotten that an entire slab of wood fell off the trunk, exposing a hive of honeybees within. I instantly took flight – and so did those bees! I remember being grateful for the fact that the crusted snow wasn’t deep enough to really slow my progress and after running a good distance away, I turned and looked back. I could hear very small sounds, soft and muffled, and it was those honeybees falling from their flight through the frigid air and colliding with that crusted snow. There were little dark dots against a white surface – appearing like a photographic negative of the aftermath of a hailstorm.
This all took place in southwest Iowa, and in autumn we would go over along bottomlands of the Nishnabotna River to witness the waterfowl migrations. Also while in the Scouts, we migrated to the south ourselves one fine fall weekend and set up our pup tents to witness those “V”-shaped strings of migrating geese using the Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge near Mound City, Missouri. I still recall those cloud-like aggregations of snow geese feeding and resting out there amidst the dark background of the corn stubble.
Once, during a nighttime football game in our small town, a small flock of snow geese appeared out of the dark sky, circling the football field under the lights and not very far above the goal posts, creating a temporary distraction from the game and quite a spectacle for the fans in the bleachers.
Dutch elm disease had devastated the graceful, vase-shaped American elms in our area, but morel mushrooms then seemed to thrive on the ground beneath; in the springtime we might gather paper grocery bags full of morels right out of front yards in our little town.
Later in October, we would trudge across those very same lawns with the same kind of paper grocery bags, going door-to-door harvesting Halloween treats and very nearly filling the bag full before the night was done.
The weather in Iowa generated respect – as it could produce tornadoes. I recall it as being the spring of 1964 that seemed to have been particularly bad in regard to tornado warnings in our area, and a nearby community was heavily-damaged by what was subsequently judged to have been an F4 tornado. On more than one occasion, I remember an eerie sky with weird light and that strange stillness in the air – and of those sirens starting to wail and then rushing down into the basement – scary stuff for a kindergartner!
Swarms of leafhoppers and June bugs circled the summertime street lights – along with the occasional exquisite and delicate beauty of a Luna moth. Bats dived in and out of those cones of light, and if you tossed a small pebble high into the air, the bats would quickly turn and snag it – and then drop it when they realized the trickery. And either because the light lit up the area below or because of all the bugs below, toads were frequently seen too.
Frogs abounded - and the sounds of peepers during the spring evenings and bullfrogs in the summer night were a part of the experience. There were occasionally tree frogs appearing under the porch light – and they could emit a shrill sort of scream when badly frightened, as one did in a confrontation involving our tomcat.
The song of the scissor-grinder cicadas would fill the air – while I sure liked that sound, it was bittersweet in that it reminded you that summer was winding down and school would be starting up again.
These were among our discoveries and experiences that forged such rich memories during an outdoor Iowa childhood, times filled with color, simple enchantment and wide-eyed wonder. Each of these little adventures seemed as big as a safari to us.
I hope that kid and his buddies out on Union Wharf will have what my childhood buddies and I shared.
By Brent Lawrence and Anna Harris
Brent Lawrence and Anna Harris are Public Affairs Officers with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Portland, Oregon.
Blogger’s note: This piece is part of our #iHuntBecause and #iFishBecause campaigns. This call for photos is part of an interactive movement designed to connect the passion of hunters and anglers to the fruits of conservation. Through the submission of photos and stories, fans will share their love of recreation with us while learning about our agency’s roots in hunting and fishing. Join us!
Hunting and wildlife conservation. At first blush, the two might seem to be at odds.
How can you promote wildlife conservation by hunting for the same animals you’re working to save? We’d like to introduce you to the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, a model that is truly unique in the world.
From its inception in the late 1800s, hunters, anglers and recreational shooters have been the driving force behind this set of home-grown wildlife management principles, which set forth the radical idea that wildlife belongs to everyone, not just the rich and privileged.
In our nation’s early years, there were few laws protecting fish and wildlife and our wildlife resources took a heavy toll. Market hunters took fish and wildlife at will while habitat disappeared under plow and roads, resulting in devastating reductions in wildlife populations. Some species, like the passenger pigeon, were taken to the point of no return; others such as bison, white-tailed deer and wild turkeys, were pushed to the edge extinction. Concerned leaders within the sportsmen community banded together, using politics and power, to make great strides for conserving our vast wildlife resources.
As the tides turned for conservation, important laws were passed, including the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act of 1934, the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act of 1937, and the Federal Aid in Sport Fish Restoration Act of 1950. Collectively, these acts laid the foundation for a funding mechanism to state wildlife management agencies and are a large part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s history.
The mountains of Idaho provided a memorable turkey hunt for Brent Lawrence. Photo by John Hafner.
Sportsman-generated funds comprise, on average, more than 75 percent of a state fish and wildlife agency’s annual budget, according to the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.
“The financial support from America’s hunting, shooting sports, fishing and boating community through their purchases of taxable gear and hunting and fishing licenses is the lifeblood for funding state fish and wildlife conservation,” said Laura Maclean, Communications Director for the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.
Today, through self-imposed excise taxes on hunting, shooting, archery and angling equipment, and a tax on boating fuels, hunters, recreational shooters and anglers have generated more than $17.5 billion for wildlife and habitat conservation since 1937. These Wildlife Restoration and Sport Fish revenues, raised through the Pittman-Robertson Act and Dingell-Johnson Act, are managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Wildlife. This year alone, more than $1.1 billion was distributed to states through the program.
The funds can only be used by state wildlife agencies for a primary wildlife purpose, such as purchasing public land, improving essential habitat and creating additional outdoor recreation opportunities that also benefit hikers and bikers, wildlife and wildlife watchers, canoeists and campers.
“These funds are the cornerstone of state-based efforts that are critical to the preservation of America’s wildlife and natural resources,” said US Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe recently said. “But they are also the fuel for a massive financial engine that benefits outdoor recreationists, hunters, boaters and anglers, equipment manufacturers and retailers, and local and regional economies. Their value cannot be overstated in providing opportunities for the next generation of Americans to get outdoors, experience our wild places and learn the importance of conserving our natural heritage.”
The Columbia River provided great salmon fishing for Anna Harris.
North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, however, is about more than money. It’s a philosophy.
The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation has seven basic tenets supporting the notion that wildlife is a public trust, an American birthright, and that wildlife species need to be managed in a way that their populations will be sustained forever. The Wildlife Society and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation both do an excellent job of explaining them, and I borrowed some of their descriptions below.
Wildlife as Public Trust Resources: Natural resources and wildlife on public lands are managed by government agencies to ensure that current and future generations always have wildlife and wild places to enjoy.
Prohibition on Commerce of Dead Wildlife: Commercial hunting and the sale of wildlife is prohibited to ensure the sustainability of wildlife populations. The Lacey Act, which the Service has a role in enforcing, prohibits trade in wildlife, fish, and plants that have been illegally taken, possessed, transported or sold.
Rule of Law: Laws and regulations developed by the people and enforced by state and federal agencies will guide the proper use of wildlife resources.
Opportunity for All: Every citizen has an opportunity, under the law, to hunt and fish in the United States and Canada. This differs from many other countries, where only landowners and the wealthy can afford to participate.
Wildlife Should Only be Killed for a Legitimate Purpose: Individuals may legally kill certain wild animals under strict guidelines for food and fur, self-defense and property protection. Laws prohibit the casual killing of wildlife merely for antlers, horns or feathers or the wanton waste of game meat.
Wildlife as an International Resource: Because wildlife and fish freely migrate across boundaries between states, provinces, and countries, they are considered an international resource.
Scientific Management of Wildlife: The best science available will be used as a base for informed decision-making in wildlife management. It’s important to note that management objectives are developed to support the species, not individual animals.
Wildlife is a priceless part of our national heritage and the sportsman-funded North American Model of Wildlife Conservation keeps the emphasis on long-term management. This focus benefits a wide range of fish and wildlife, including non-game species, as well as everyone who enjoys nature.
How can you get involved?
First, buy a hunting or fishing license every year even if you don’t hunt or fish. The license fee goes directly to the state wildlife agency to help with all types of wildlife management. As an added bonus, license sales also help determine Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson distributions to states.
Second, get a Federal Duck Stamp. For every dollar spent on Federal Duck Stamps, ninety-eight cents goes directly to purchase vital waterfowl habitat for protection in the National Wildlife Refuge System. It has raised more than $750 million and protected 6 million acres of waterfowl habitat since 1934. A Federal Duck Stamp also gets you free admission to the Service’s National Wildlife Refuges, which help protect our wildlife and offer some great hunting, fishing and wildlife watching opportunities.
As you can see, the relationship between sportsmen and sportswomen and wildlife conservation is truly special. So to borrow a line from the Colorado Wildlife Council, maybe wildlife enthusiasts everywhere should “Hug a Hunter” and “Hug an Angler.”
Why do you do what you do? Tell us why you hunt and fish and share your photos with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter by using #iHuntBecause and #iFishBecause.
