Dennis Anderson

MINNEAPOLIS -- How to increase the number of people who hunt and fish?

A question often asked, and one with an obvious answer, say Lisa and Ed Retterath of Elko, Minn.

"Women."

That firmly held belief was on display Saturday morning in the northern Twin Cities suburbs, as the Retteraths joined the opener of the state's early goose season not by aiming guns -- but cameras.

Co-owners and producers of the cable TV show "Women of the Wild Outdoors," the Retteraths, along with two videographers, were on site during the first goose hunt of autumn as three women attempted to fell a honker or two.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Amid the evening's gloom, when most Minnesota anglers were winching their boats onto trailers, Patrick Kirschbaum and Carl Sassen were just launching theirs. A specially built, wartime-looking craft, their boat is constructed for nighttime stalking in shallow water, with a high deck in front and flood lamps to three sides.

Kirschbaum, 35, and Sassen, 29, are bowfishermen, the only sure-fire defense against carp Minnesota has. Or may ever have. On a good night, while most people are asleep, they will arrow as many as 100 common carp, some weighing 40 pounds and more.

"My biggest weighed 46 1/4 pounds," Kirschbaum said.

ON THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER, Minn. -- Last week, amid warnings of floods and impending floods, Dick "The Griz" Grzywinski backed his john boat toward this very flush river near Red Wing, Minn. The launch ramp itself was invisible, swamped. "I've never seen the river this high," Griz said. Then he dumped his boat into the Mississippi, essentially launching it from a parking lot.

This would be the second day in a row Griz was on the big river. Wednesday near Red Wing, Minn., he and a friend boated 83 walleyes and sauger. The biggest walleye weighed a hefty 4 1/2 pounds, the largest sauger was a pound more. The latter was a relative monster: The Minnesota sauger record is 6.275 pounds.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Boat shows are wondrous places for dreamers. But not just for those who dream of buying a glittering new bass boat, a 16-foot walleye rig, a wakeboarding plaything or a yacht awaiting a Lake Superior sea trial.

It's also a place where boat builders dream of finding customers who share their visions of what a specific craft should look like, whether it's a retro-looking lake cruiser or a 17-foot canoe.

Benjamin Skroch is such a boat builder -- and an unlikely one at that.

POOL 5, MISSISSIPPI RIVER -- The canvasback is North America's fastest duck. Either that or it isn't. Around here Thursday, pushed by a strong northwest wind, everything that flew was fast, even tundra swans, but more so the thousands of ring-necked ducks that traded up and down the Mississippi -- also the scaup but most magnificently the canvasbacks, some 300,000 of which will gather along this part of the river in coming days.

IN WEST-CENTRAL MINNESOTA -- On Saturday in this part of the state, everybody worked. Or so it seemed. Farmers cut corn. Pumpkin growers sold pumpkins. We hunted pheasants.