This past weekend I attended the wedding of my grandson Dylan Herfindahl and his now wife Kloe. It was an outdoors wedding in a beautiful country setting where the colors of fall seemed like part of the decorations. Kloe surprised me when part of the wedding ceremony included her playing the guitar and singing a song to Dylan.
I don’t claim to be a lifestyles writer as I am considered an outdoors writer. I have posted many pictures over the years of my grandkids holding fish that they have caught. Dylan has spent many hours at the cabin with us and fishing with grandpa, but nothing has made me prouder than seeing how happy he and Kloe were on their wedding day.
I thought that they were taking a risk when he told me that they were having an outdoors wedding in the middle of October. The day turned out perfect; it was sunny and warm, the trees were painted with all of the fall colors that you would picture fall would look like.
As we were driving out to the venue, the colors were amazing, and I wished in some way that they could stay that way for another month or more. In our area of the state, we should have a chance of keeping the fall colors around for a few more weeks.
The firearms deer season will be here in a couple of weeks. The season, for most of the state, starts on November 4th and runs until the 12th. There are some other areas of the state that are different, and you should refer to your hunting handbook if yours is one of them.
I am not a deer hunter, but the kid in me still gets excited whenever I see deer in the wild. Not that I am excited to shoot one, but because I love nature and all the critters that go with it.
If you love the fall colors as I do, you should take a drive to White’s Woods County Park or drive south of Twin Lakes for some beautiful scenery that costs no more than a little gas. I hope to take a little time to drive up to the Waterville area and visit some of my old haunts that I liked to visit when I had my camper up there. I always enjoyed the fall colors in that area. You should always be mindful of the harvest that is going on now.
When we had our camper on Lake Tetonka just outside of Waterville, I loved fishing in the fall. As October came along, there were hardly any boats to be seen on the lake. On one occasion, I was fishing in the morning with the fall sun shining down on me. If you have ever been outside in the fall when the sun comes out, you know how much warmer it feels with the sun shining on you, even if the temperature is the same.
On that morning I was trolling around a sunken weed bed when I started catching some small walleye and some nice-sized northern. I turned the walleye back, so they could grow, but I kept the northern because they were the perfect size for the frying pan. A lot of folks will ask why do you keep northerns, “they are disgusting”? I will tell them that they are good fighters and fun to catch, plus, they are mighty tasty. The meat is more yellow than a walleye, but when you fry them, they are just as white and flaky as a walleye. When I clean them, I always remove the bones, so that bone argument is over before it starts.
Until next time: There is still some time left to do a little fishing. Late fall is a great time to catch musky, pike and bass. There are some lakes around the area that do have some musky. French Lake by Faribault is one that comes to mind. Fountain Lake has no musky, but it does have walleye, northern, bass and panfish. I have fished Fountain as late as mid-November, so give it a try before ice-over.
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