Fabulous weather but the West Bend bite is getting slower. Most of the fish have finished their spawn and must be recovering. Matt and Nancy from Wasilla, Alaska hired me to take them out today. They have a real nice motor home and are traveling through the states. We had a great time visiting and enjoying the weather, but the bite was slow to none compared to last week.

Guided Jerry Fennel from Wisconsin and his party to nice limits on day one. Day two the South Dakota spring weather hampered the bite some.

We are lacking broad leaf in our CRP nesting ground.  Broad leafs like alfalfa and clover are important to provide bugs for early nesting pheasant chicks.  We have good grasses now and we mixed alfalfa with the grass mix when we planted in 2015 but it didn’t come up.  Either poor seed or planted too deep.  Alfalfa and clover like to be planted around 1/2′ deep.  Our no-till drills we use have a hard time planting that shallow.  That’s why I’m replanting now while the grounds froze hopefully to keep it shallow allowing for a finish depth of 1/2′ or 3/4′ deep.  Should work.  The soil around the blade tracks should wash a little from snowmelt and rains this winter to cover what seed left exposed.  Hopefully everything pops up when the soil warms up next spring…  Just in time for nesting!

We are almost done with sunflower harvest.  They are wet across the state this year.  It raised havoc with our pheasant hunting this fall.  Many birds are in the crops.  Although we limited each day, we were unable to hunt a lot of strips holding wild birds due to the standing sunflowers next to it.  There is no easy way to hunt sunflowers unless you are 7′ tall.  They hang over in the rows and hit you in the head or chest.  Birds love them!