Orlan Love

1 week ago | thegazette.com | Orlan Love

Minnows huddle May 12 in clear, shallow water of the Wapsipinicon River, pinned near shore by ravening game fish. (Orlan Love/correspondent ) The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced. It was a lovely spring day for all but the minnows, who found themselves in a pickle. Maple spinners fluttered down like confetti. A cold-blooded water snake absorbed the warmth of a sun-drenched rock.

1 week ago | thegazette.com | Orlan Love

The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced. Orlan Love, a Vietnam War Navy veteran, delivered this speech on Memorial Day 2018 at the Quasqueton Cemetery. The remains of more than 200 military veterans repose in the cemetery, the final resting place for 66 Civil War veterans. Love, a Quasqueton native, retired in 2016 after 25 years as a reporter for The Gazette. He continues to write an Outdoors column for the newspaper.

3 weeks ago | thegazette.com | Orlan Love

The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced. It’s humbling to realize you know next to nothing about a passion you’ve been pursuing for more than 60 years. Especially when you once thought you had it all figured out. It was easy to think so in the 1960s and ’70s when all you had to do to fill your bag with morels was look beneath stately elms succumbing by the millions to Dutch elm disease.

1 month ago | thegazette.com | Orlan Love

The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced. With euphoria getting harder to come by these days, the buzz I caught on Good Friday was therapeutic. I had been waiting all spring for just such a day — overcast, 60 degrees, high humidity, no wind — to visit my favorite spring hole for pre-spawn smallmouth bass.

1 month ago | thegazette.com | Orlan Love

The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced. Orange fish bad. Many anglers think that. I don’t. I’m indifferent to the common carp. I don’t have much to do with them. We leave each other alone. They won’t chase the moving lures I typically fish, and I don’t leave a gob of worms or sweet corn-laden hook sitting where a bottom feeder is likely to find it.