MINNEAPOLIS — How exactly it happened, Alan Johnston’s death, no one knows. But in the end, on May 13, Johnston’s Golden Retriever, JJ, was in Johnston’s boat alone, and his master was in Lake of the Woods.

An independent sort whose family in the 1800s was among the first white settlers in Warroad, Minn., Johnston, 78, had been a ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Ron Schara was sitting with his back to a tree when he realized he’d shot enough turkeys in his lifetime.

Known best for his role as a host on Minnesota Bound, a television series he started in 1995 to highlight the outdoors and now airs on KSTP, Schara said he watched a small flock of turkeys pass by as he sat last year at ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota anglers say they are catching and keeping more fish than previously believed. A boatload more.

A new federal study published this month in the peer-reviewed journal Fisheries found that Minnesotans are bringing home an estimated 80 million pounds of freshwater fish annually. That’s more than twice the state’s ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Hundreds of thousands of Minnesota hunters and anglers will have the option to use their phones in new ways to buy and display licenses beginning June 9.

On Tuesday, the state Department of Natural Resources announced exact details on what it had telegraphed for months: the launch date of an upgrade to its electronic license ...Read more

BOSTON — A piece of quintessential Cape Cod will be restored this summer, as a local lobsterman resumes a nearly century-old family tradition of selling from his home after being caught in small-town bureaucracy last year.

The Yarmouth Zoning Board of Appeals has approved a special permit for resident Jon Tolley to reopen his shop at his home...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Working in a darkened laboratory, Laurel Sacco dips a cup into a large tank of water and scoops up dozens of young walleye. She pours one into a petri dish and examines it under a microscope.

The fry has been harvested from Pine River near the headwaters of the Mississippi River where the Minnesota Department of Natural ...Read more

LAKE VERMILION, Minn. — On this big lake last weekend it was shake and bake, baby, another fishing opener, with walleyes n bacon on the menu.

That’s the way Tom Stuen spells it. Walleyes n bacon. His wife, Mary, spells it that way, too, and together they’ve scripted those words on the pickup camper that is their home away from home when ...Read more

DETROIT — Five fishermen found themselves in hot water after taking more than their legal limit of walleye from the Detroit River, officials said.

The group from northern Michigan was caught Friday after fishing on the river near Milliken State Park, east of downtown on Atwater Street near Orleans, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources...Read more

LANSING, Mich. — Michigan hunters in the Lower Peninsula will only be allowed to kill one buck starting in March 2027, the state commission that sets hunting and fishing rules declared Wednesday.

The change is in service of efforts to control the booming deer population in southern Michigan, where some communities have resorted to culling ...Read more

An experienced North Carolina angler died for reasons unknown after he fell overboard at a bass tournament in western Tennessee, according to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.

The body of 36-year-old Alexander C. Luster of Boone was recovered late Friday from Watauga Lake, the TWRA said in a May 9 news release.

An autopsy will be ...Read more

CRANE LAKE, MINN. — Few anglers who wet a line in this picturesque northern border lake on Saturday had time to consider whether fishing is a sport or something more akin to a religious experience. Having pulled on every hooded coat and pair of coveralls they brought with them on this first day of the state’s inland fishing season, they were...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — More Minnesota young people are fishing the state’s lakes and rivers.

Considering the post-pandemic drop in license sales to young anglers — and overall — the uptick is positive news and an encouraging sign as the 2026 season opens.

About 111,000 licenses were bought by people ages 16 to 20 in 2025, an increase of more ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — The most famous Minnesota invention was not water skis (1922). Nor was it packaged cake mix (1947), crisp crust frozen pizza (1979) or even Post-it notes (1980). It was the Lindy Rig, which doubtless has brought more thrills to more people in more places than any of the state’s many other innovations, including the pop-up ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Growing up in northern Minnesota, Nathan Stanelle spent plenty of time fishing on Lake of the Woods. The lake is known as the Walleye Capital of the World, but fish weren’t the only thing Stanelle remembers reeling in.

“We would pull up some weeds and we would always joke we have our ‘salad’ for the meal,” Stanelle ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Fascinated from childhood about colors, and particularly about the coloring of duck feathers, wildlife artist David Maass was never more at home than in a waterfowl blind. It was there that the tawny hues of marsh grass often blended with the foreboding grays of an autumn sky to frame an incoming squadron of bluebills or ...Read more