A one-week paddlefish snag-and-release season will be open May 15-21 for anglers who hold a valid fishing license, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department announced.
However, if conditions warrant, Game and Fish may close the season with a 24-hour notice. Game and Fish announced April 3 that the annual paddlefish snagging harvest season, which was scheduled to open May 1, was canceled. However, the agency held open the possibility of a snag-and-release season in mid-May.
Fisheries chief Greg Power said with the state transitioning to North Dakota Smart Restart, snaggers should have an opportunity to participate in a snag-and-release season.
“Past history has shown that considerably fewer snaggers will participate, but this one-week season provides an opportunity for the avid snaggers,” Power said.
Legal snagging hours are from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Central Time. Snagging is legal in the Yellowstone River, as well as the area of the Missouri River lying west of the U.S. Highway 85 bridge to the Montana border, excluding that portion from the pipeline crossing (river mile 1,577) downstream to the upper end of the Lewis and Clark Wildlife Management Area (river mile 1,565).
With fewer dumpsters and functioning rest rooms in place this year, snaggers are reminded to plan accordingly and pack out all trash.
The use of more than one snag hook per line is illegal. Use or possession of gaffs is prohibited. A paddlefish tag is not required.
This book is a selection of some of Grey’s best work, and the stories and excerpts reveal a man who understood that angling is more than an activity–it is a way of seeing, a way of being more fully a part of the natural world. No writer exceeds Zane Grey’s ability to integrate the fishing experience with a world he saw so vividly.
Though he made his name and his fortune as an author of Western novels, Zane Grey’s best writing has to do with fishing. There he was free from the conventions of the Western genre and the expectations of the market, and he was able to blend his talent for narrative with his keen eye for detail and humor, much of it self-deprecating, into books and articles that are both informative and exciting.
