Ringworm Cure

Since the flood of 2011, the fishing on South Dakota Great Lakes, the Missouri River has been phenomenal as anglers fishing for walleyes; bass and other species are reporting excellent numbers and quality.

Wit the high water last year and all of the water blowing through the dams, good numbers of both bait and prey fish were introduced into the rivers and lakes below the dams.

Locals in our area have been doing well on Francis Case all the way down to Gavins Point Dam at Yankton. Those anglers jigging and trolling crankbaits are doing exceptionally well.

A couple of weeks ago, Team Outdoorsmen Adventures member Larry Myhre and I decided to venture farther north to see if the anglers fishing on Lake Sharpe and Lake Oahe were experiencing similar results.

We contacted good friend Kent Hutcheson (www.fishinghutch.com) or “Hutch” as he’s known to his friends and clients, who graciously agreed to spend a couple of days on the water with us in the Pierre area.

Larry and I met Hutch and two of his fishing buddies from Ida Grove, Iowa after lunch at the West Bend boat launch, down river from Pierre on Lake Sharpe.

Like on much of the Missouri River, the spawn was pretty much over, but there were still plenty of fish in the staging areas to be caught.

We’d be fishing a submerged island or gravel bar where the walleyes were stacked up during the spawn. Our plan of attack would be to vertical jig or pitch light 1/8th ounce jigs up into the shallow water working them back on out to the boat. Hutch and Larry were using jigs tipped with minnows, since I’d had such good luck with the pearl white 3” Gulp minnow, I threw it, catching as many if not more than the jigs tipped with live minnows.

Later, Larry switched to his old favorite, the 4” ringworm on a jig, which took several nice fish when cast and slowly retrieved along the bottom.

All of the fish we were catching were the aggressive males, the ones you want to catch and keep this time of the year, as the larger females, the spawners had moved into deeper water. The smaller males will hang around the spawning areas just in case a female, which hadn’t spawned, came cruising by.

The bite was almost non-stop with the majority of the fish we took in the 15 to 17” range, just the right eating size, making for some excellent eating after a day on the water.

On day two, we decided to head north to the big lake, Lake Oahe to fish the Cheyenne River arm, hoping to get a few larger fish.

We trailered to the far end of the arm to the Miniconjou ramp where we launched and headed out to check out a few of the many points found in the area.

As on the day before, we’d be pitching light jigs up shallow and working them back to the boat. I stuck with my 1/8th ounce jig tipped with the Gulp minnow while Larry and Hutch worked jigs tipped with minnows.

As in the day before, the majority of the fish were the 17 to 18” males as the females had completed their part of the spawn and had moved off into the deeper water.

All of the fish we took on this trip, in both Lake Sharpe and Lake Oahe were in really good shape, fat and healthy.

With all the water going through the dams, there was some concern about the flood impact on the fish populations, I’m here to tell you, if the fishing we’ve had on Lewis Clark, lake Sharpe and Lake Oahe, unless we have a major disaster, it doesn’t look like we’re going to need to worry about a thing.

Recent reports from the South Dakota Game, Fish Parks indicate the walleye population in Lake Oahe is at the second highest level since 1985 and their prey species, rainbow smelt and gizzard shad should be in pretty good shape. In 2011, the rainbow smelt reproduction was the highest in 11 years. With the majority of the smelt lost through the dam were young fish. The gizzard shad population should be in good shape as the mild winters we’ve been having have helped to increase winter survival and the stockings of pre-spawn adult shad this spring will add to the population. This along with stocking being done by the Game, Fish and Parks we should have good numbers of prey fish.

On Lake Sharpe, indication are that there is a large 2 year age class of fish in the lake and the high number of three-year old fish will be a catchable size this year. A far as the gizzard shad go, in 2011 their reproduction was believed to be low because of the cool water, but, there should be no shortage of prey fish because of all the rainbow smelt that came through the dam from Lake Oahe.

Anglers can expect to find good salmon fishing on Lake Sharpe as the water coming through the Oahe Dam brought with it good numbers of salmon which will now be roaming the waters of the lake.

On Lake Francis Case the walleye numbers should be very similar to last years, when there was some of the best fishing on the lake that I can remember, this along with aback-to-back strong years of walleye production should help keep to assure a good walleye population.

The fishing below Ft. Randall Dam on down stream has also been excellent with excellent walleyes and smallmouth being caught.

Now’s the time to get out and do some fishing as the bite has been strong and should continue throughout the season.

More information on the great outdoor opportunities on the Great Lakes of South Dakota can be found at www.sdgreatlakes.org.

Gary Howey, Hartington, Neb., is the President of Outdoorsmen Productions, producer/host of the Outdoorsmen Adventures television series and the co-host of Outdoor Adventures radio. Check him out on Facebook and on the web at www.outdoorsmenadventures.com.

Article source: http://www.yankton.net/articles/2012/05/20/outdoors/doc4fb713cf8a268599643024.txt

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A couple of weeks ago, we began our study of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient Columbia World.  This is a septet of buildings, landmarks and other oddities that once amazed and bewildered anyone who might have encountered them but now, for better or worse, have been erased from our local landscape but never from our collective memories of the bizarre. We previously discussed the Reactor Field parking lot, the Biscayne Mall and the Cosmo Park rocket ship. This week, we complete the list with four more now-extinct peculiarities:

1. Bargain Barn: Long before the advent of today’s specialized, boutique shopping experience, Columbians flocked to this orange-and-white metal building off North Garth Avenue, which actually more closely resembled the outside of a carnival ride than it did a barn.  Back in the 1970s, if you suddenly found yourself in desperate need of, say, 50 wooden ax handles or a dozen cheap Army canteens, the Bargain Barn was the place for you, which is to say it was really just the place for nobody unless you happened to be my grandparents, whose sole pursuit in life was seeking out items they simply couldn’t afford not to buy. 

2. The Downtown Loop: Believe it or not, there was a time about 30 years ago when it was actually harder to drive around downtown Columbia than it is now. And this was even before they passed the law making it mandatory for there to be two gigantic delivery trucks parked right in the middle of every street, every block, every minute, every day between the hours of 6 a.m. and midnight. Instead, city planners once baffled motorists by removing all the stoplights and replacing them with a myriad of one-way streets, turn lanes and yield signs that would theoretically allow you to drive to any given destination without ever having to stop.  The result, however, was that downtown quickly deteriorated into a lurching parade of bewildered old ladies hunched over their steering wheels, eyes darting back and forth behind their windshields in desperation, circling, circling, circling, often for days on end, until their jalopies would finally run out of gas, and they would have to go figure out where to hunt down a city bus, which was an altogether different wonder in and of itself.

3. Wet Willie’s Water Slide: To this day, I have often wondered why, if Branson is able to provide its citizenry with approximately 450 full-time operating water slides, a city the size of Columbia isn’t able to support a single one? I think the answer to that question might lie in the heritage left behind by Wet Willie’s, the only water slide in our town’s entire history, which was carved into the side of a big hill of weeds overlooking majestic Interstate 70, at roughly the location of today’s La Quinta Inn. Wet Willie’s formula was simple: Take a steep and winding culvert and cover it with blue latex, which is uncontrollably slick in the straightaways but is fraught with highly abrasive, skin-pulverizing patches in the turns. Shoot a stream of water down the culvert. Add several vials of pinkeye and ringworm. Place little kids on extremely cheap rubber mats and shoot them down the water stream until they inevitably shoot out over the poorly engineered walls into piles of sharp gravel. Invoke a strict time limit that encourages kids to sprint back up the foot-blistering asphalt hill, their slippery rubber mats clinched tightly in their mouths, jostling and elbowing for position, until they all crash together into the ever-growing pile of dislodged teeth. Charge another $3 after 30 minutes has expired.  Repeat.

4. Road Apple Party Barn: If you are like me and attended a local high school between 1975 and 1990, I trust you spent plenty of time at this fine establishment east of town, where the size of the crowd on Friday nights would rival those you might find at an SEC football game. I also trust your parents constantly questioned you as to what, exactly, went on out there, why it was so essential to go to there every weekend instead of someplace like the ice cream parlor, where responsible adults were in charge, and why you always felt compelled to sneak in the basement door, crawl up the stairs on your hands and knees, and then sleep on your closet floor every time you came home from the Road Apple Party Barn. That’s one of the great things about ancient wonders. Some of them contain unsolved mysteries that certain people will be left wondering about into eternity.

Homeboy, aka Columbia attorney Doug Pugh, is the father of two daughters. Beyond that, it gets weird. He’s a Kewpie married to a Bruin, a graduate of both MU’s journalism and law schools and is working to become domesticated for the sake of his wife and the girls.

Copyright 2012 Columbia Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Article source: http://www.yankton.net/articles/2012/05/20/outdoors/doc4fb713cf8a268599643024.txt

$2 million grant to the local Head Start program wasn’t a narrative of one incident where the agency failed miserably. The letter and 25-page report addressed to New Hanover County Community Action is a chronicle of severe dysfunction in a publicly funded organization that was entrusted with responsibility for the welfare and educational development of 260 children.

The report lists dozens of examples of incompetent fiscal management, repeated failure to comply with the rules, severe neglect of the building and its contents, unsanitary conditions, and an inexcusable lack of attention to the educational and recreational needs of the children in the program.

Deficiencies cited in the letter to Community Action’s board chairman from the Southeast regional manager for the Head Start program are too numerous to list, but the picture painted by the description on pages 22-25 is sufficient reason to pull the funding and offer it to a bidder that can demonstrate competence and responsibility.

Leaking urinals in a children’s bathroom, broken furniture and toys, all 11 classrooms in disrepair, safety hazards and splintered chairs were what greeted the 3- and 4-year-olds who spent weekdays in the old Peabody School where the Head Start program in Wilmington is located.

When a teacher and several children developed ringworm, “management” refused to allow teachers to notify parents of the infestation. Teachers took blankets to their own homes to wash them.

Believe it or not, those problems aren’t the reason the Office of Head Start decided to revoke funding. Rather, it was continued failure to properly document financial transactions, to comply with enrollment and community assessment requirements, questionable accounting practices, foot-dragging in releasing public reports and a general lack of compliance with the rules that go along with running a federal program.

Discovery of the physical conditions may have tipped the scale, but this program’s problems went far beyond facility and maintenance issues. Blame must be shouldered jointly by Community Action’s executive director, Cynthia Brown, and the board or boards that allowed these deficiencies to fester and multiply. Special mention goes to the Rev. Charles Davis Jr., the board’s chairman, who has evaded questions to which the taxpayers deserve firm answers.

Should Community Action decide to challenge Head Start’s decision, as a memo from Brown indicated, the appeals board should ask not whether funding should be restored, but why it took state and federal oversight agencies so long to revoke it.

Moreover, revelations about Community Action’s serial mismanagement suggest the need for a more thorough investigation, beginning with a forensic audit to answer the question: Where did the money go?

Article source: http://www.yankton.net/articles/2012/05/20/outdoors/doc4fb713cf8a268599643024.txt