Passionate Pursuit of Iowa's Water and Woods

By Steve Anderson

Passionate Pursuit of Iowa’s Water and Woods is a compilation of outdoor adventures and experiences of lifelong Iowa native Steve Anderson; starting with his upbringing in northwest Iowa and leading to and through some of the positive highlights of a successful career in the conservation field within the state.

Whether the reader is considering a conservation-related career, wanting to expand their knowledge about bowhunting or pan-fishing, or even considering building or managing a pond or small lake of their own, the information contained in this book will fuel that passion and increase their odds of success.

May you enjoy the stories, glean the knowledge, and fuel the passion in your life to make a positive difference on this earth that will last for generations!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662470813

Steve Anderson

Steve Anderson is the author of the Kaspar Brothers novels: The Losing Role, Liberated, Lost Kin, and Lines of Deception. Under False Flags is the prequel to his novel The Preserve. Anderson was a Fulbright Fellow in Germany and is a literary translator of bestselling German fiction as well as a freelance editor. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

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Passionate Pursuit of Iowa's Water and Woods

Steve Anderson

Copyright © 2022 Steve Anderson

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-7079-0 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-7081-3 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

A Family’s Influence

College

Career Beginning

Howard County

Washington County

Sockum Ridge

Other Forest-Related Activities

Friends

Ice Fishing

A Couple More Stories

Pond and Lake Management Impacts in Washington County

Willow Pond

Fishermen

What Kind of Fish?

Feeding Your Fish

Aeration

The Final Chapter

Preface

A wise friend once stated to me, In every situation in life, there is your truth, each involved person’s truth, and the real truth. If you read this and were part of the stories, please understand that my truth is not intended to be offensive to yours.

My life has been blessed beyond belief. Looking back, it becomes apparent that even the most stressful times (and there were some seriously stressful times) nearly always lead to a greater good. I grew up in Calhoun County, Iowa, which prided itself in being The Golden Buckle of the Corn Belt. Like his father before him, Dad operated heavy equipment (mostly bulldozers and scrapers during my childhood). Mom gave up a nursing career to have a well-planned family including a child every two years, including an older sister, myself, and a younger brother. Ten years later, an unplanned pregnancy led to a final sister, who became extra well-loved, and then grew up to be a truly awesome person—just like the rest of us.

Iowa is certainly not famous for its waters and woods. However, if one looks closely, it does have plenty of opportunity. My life’s adventures and accomplishments, not so much individually but as part of amazing teams, provided incredible amounts of habitat enhancement and recreation for me. The habitat enhancement component has excellent odds of benefiting current citizens and multiple generations to follow. I hope you enjoy these real-life adventures, and that you can apply at least some to make your life and our world a little better.

A Family’s Influence

It is a brand-new year. Dad, brother Tom, and I are running a muskrat trap line on South Twin Lakes. Dad is carrying an iron bar, tapping the ice every few steps to make certain it will hold us. We are moving from one feeding station to the next, avoiding the actual houses as the ice is not safe there. The basic premise is that the muskrats have to move from hole to hole all day long to keep their feeding station from freezing shut. The entire colonies of muskrats are there due to the lake being extremely shallow, allowing cattails to thrive and spread by rhizome. The roots of the cattails become the muskrats’ food supply, with the leaves and stems, making the construction materials for the houses and feeding stations.

Dad chops a hole where the muskrats enter the feeding station (identified by the line of bubbles just under the ice) and places a leg-hold trap where they sit to feed. When the muskrat steps into the trap, it immediately dives back under the ice and drowns. Using this technique, we are able to harvest as many as one hundred muskrats per day. Fortunately, our buyer wants the skin for fur coats and the carcass for feeding commercial mink, meaning that we don’t have to skin them.

Tom’s and my role are to pull a sled full of muskrat carcasses and trapping supplies. It is excellent comradery, but the zero ambient temperature combined with twenty miles per hour winds does, at times, strongly diminish the fun! When Tom and I have our own trap line, we opt to trap local dredge ditches (we are in the part of Iowa that did not naturally drain, so artificial drainage ditches were dredged using a drag line to allow a place for the tiles to drain) in November when it isn’t so cold!

If Northwest Iowa were to be famous for anything other than corn, it should be just how rugged winter is! The land is flat and open, resulting in extremely high winds and blowing snow on a regular basis. Those with wealth have learned to migrate south soon after harvest and return only after the worst of winter is over. However, our family is not that wealthy, and we have learned to make the best of it. For Tom and I, this includes multiple hunting trips. In January. We are too young to drive, so we walk out to and several miles down the railroad, carrying single-shot shotguns. We are walking along when we spot a fresh set of bunny tracks in the snow. Mind you, with the driving wind and blowing snow, there are no old tracks! We begin to follow these tracks until the bunny makes a run for it. One or more of us shoots, and the rabbit ends up full of lead pellets and riding in our game coat. By the end of the average trip, we are carrying five or more of these shot-filled bunny rabbits. I know some were eaten, and others somehow disappeared.

It is early April, and the ice is just going out of Trumbull Lake. The three of us are standing in the effluent stream, casting red and white daredevil spoons using Johnson Century Reels. After multiple casts, the spoon is absolutely crushed, and the fight is on! Minutes pass, and a twenty-four-inch northern pike is added to the stringer, making our nine fish limit. These fish are taken home, scaled, gutted, and fried by Mom. We carefully eat around the bones and have slices of buttered bread ready in case someone chokes on them.

Very soon thereafter, our uncle joins us, and we make a trip to Paynesville, Minnesota. A chunk of night-crawler is thrown out into the stream between the lake and wetland there. The line hardly stops before it begins to move again, and the rod is jerked hard. The fight is on, resulting