Spring Turkey Success: Captain’s Column (4.17.14)
By angelamontana

Posted: April 17, 2014

BeFunky_TURKKIDDO2.jpgLast Saturday turkey hunters headed out to celebrate the opening of the 2014 spring turkey season in Montana. It was a beautiful sunshine morning, and, according to some reports that I received, the turkeys were out and going nuts. Shawn Plakke and his son, Orion, from Superior were two of those hunters enjoying the hunt.

Plakke is an avid bow hunter and has bagged more than his fair share of nice bull elk with a bow. He has mastered the art of calling in bull elk in the heat of the rut in the fall and he says the thrill and excitement of getting close to a tom turkey in the spring gives him the same adrenaline rush, “The calls are different and the species are different but getting the elk or bird to come close enough to you for a quality shot is really exciting”.

Plakke also described last Saturday morning’s turkey hunt with Orion who is 9 years old in an e-mail, “We were out turkey hunting and happened to spot the Tom working up a hillside with two hens. We knew the area he was heading and went up in there. There is an old ditch that runs across where he was headed so we thought if we could just get in the ditch then we could sneak across and ambush him.  We ended up sneaking a long ways but lost sight of him? So we stopped and I glassed the hillside and caught him strutting. We snuck up another hundred yards or so? As we got a closer I stood up a little bit to see where the turkeys were and I was excited to see the hens feeding towards us. We set up, and about fifteen minutes later the hens walked right by us. Five minutes later the tom came by following the hens.  The tom is the biggest of four turkeys I have harvested as far as weight. The beard was nine inches”.

BeFunky_TURKKIDDO.jpgThe hunt was certainly exciting for Plakke but after the shot the best part for this Dad was about to unfold as he shared it with his son, “The best part is when my boy jumped up and gave me a huge hug after it was all said and done. He wanted to carry the bird back to the truck”.

This week I have been fishing Holter Reservoir over by Wolf Creek. I have heard some great reports coming out of the reservoir. “Last Saturday in a light snowstorm we did very well on trout”, reported Jim Johnson from Lincoln. Size 5 or 7 rapalas seem to do the trick right now and Johnson said the brown trout rapala was working the best. “We caught fish in depths ranging from 5 feet down to 15 feet”, he said. Bob Culp from Frenchtown and his uncle Al went fishing last week on Holter and kept 12 rainbows about 18 inches in length. “We were using about the same rapalas as Johnson but we caught quite a few 12-13 inch trout that we threw back, we were looking for some nice size fish to smoke”. Listen to Catching the Big Ones Friday morning from 8-9am on KGVO 1290am/101.5fm if you want to find out how I did this week fishing Holter.

(Written by the Captain; Photo via Shawn Plakke)

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