Sports

Jason Bentz has always loved fishing.

Growing up, Bentz and his family would spend their weekends camping at Heart Butte Dam and Lake Tschida, reeling in walleye, perch and bass from dawn until dusk in a 14-foot aluminum boat.

“You couldn’t go out when there was a whole lot of waves,” Bentz says with a laugh.

On camping trips, the family slept in a truck topper perched on a ’79 Dodge and spent time stargazing when they weren’t casting.

The clock ticks past 7 a.m. as the whooshing of casting lines simultaneously erupts. Plop. Plop. Plop. Hooks drop into the water as fishermen up and down the bank begin their pull-and-reel rhythms until their lines once again reach shore and it is time for another cast.

The gym is empty, though not for long. Soon, fans of basketball will fill the stands. But not before Catherine Howard, a Spirit Lake tribal elder, performs a ceremonial smudging of the Four Winds Community School gym.

The N.D. Game and Fish Department is encouraging anglers to refer to the 2022-24 North Dakota Fishing Guide for winter fishing regulations, available online at https://gf.nd.gov/fishing/regulations-guide/2022-24.

Some winter fishing regulations include:
• A maximum of four poles is legal for ice fishing. When fishing a water body where both open water and ice occur at the same time, however, an angler is allowed a maximum of four poles, of which no more than two poles can be used in open water.

This is not prairie golf. That becomes obvious with the first hole of Watford City’s Fox Hills Golf Course, which hugs the rugged western North Dakota landscape like a well-worn golf glove.

The par 72 course, with 6,980 yards from the back tees, recently expanded to an 18-hole municipal course and is served by McKenzie Electric Cooperative.

Expect to use every club in your bag on this course, which dates back to 1930.

Swing a club at the Bois de Sioux Golf Course and you’ll golf in two different states on one course.

Spread across two ZIP codes, the 18-hole Bois de Sioux Golf Course is the only course in the United States to feature holes in two states, with the front nine holes in Wahpeton in North Dakota and the back nine holes in Breckenridge in Minnesota.

The stately par 71 course offers 6,378 yards of golf from the most popular gold tees.

Stand at the No. 15 tee at Bully Pulpit Golf Course near Medora and you may forget about the game for a moment, as a backswing atop the butte feels like it may scrape the sky.

Golfers will immerse themselves into the Badlands, golfing from atop the buttes along the Little Missouri River on a challenging, but entertaining, course.

An 18-hole course, Bully Pulpit Golf Course opened in 2004. It’s a par 72 layout, with renovations continually improving the grounds.

A 15-year-old Lansford girl has turned her love of writing into a successful first book.

Lindsey Undlin, a freshman at MLS-Mohall, had her book, “Stolen,” published by W. Brand Publishing last March. Since then, more than 1,000 copies of her book have sold.

Going into last winter, with many North Dakota waters lower than they’d been in some time thanks to severe drought, N.D. Game and Fish Department (NDGF) fisheries managers worried that declining water levels and other factors would lead to significant winterkill.
Turns out, it wasn’t nearly as bad as anticipated.

Severe drought conditions that impacted wildlife across North Dakota last year are, thankfully, in the rearview mirror. While remaining wildlife habitat across the state’s landscape is looking good as we head into fall, fallout from hot, dry conditions in 2021 are still being felt, as the N.D. Game and Fish Department, for the first time in six years, reduced the number of deer gun licenses made available to hunters for the November season.