Orlan Love

Iowa

Correspondent at The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, IA)

A reporter for The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

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Articles

A second chance at bass

2 weeks ago | thegazette.com | Orlan Love

The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced. Redemption is sweet, all the more so — in my case, at least — because it’s so hard to come by. I had plenty to atone for after I lost a big smallmouth bass Tuesday through my own negligence. Orlan Love poses with a big smallmouth bass caught Wednesday morning in the same spot where, a day earlier, he lost a similar fish through operator error.
A day with ‘boozhing’ bass

1 month 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.
Opinion: There was honor in Vietnam, but a lack of wise, compassionate leadership

1 month 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.
The (mushroom) hunt is on

1 month 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.
A day of bliss on the Wapsi

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.
Wild Side column: Battling stigma ... and carp

2 months 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.
Cannon Family Donates to Historical Society

2 months ago | communitynewspapergroup.com | Orlan Love

QUASQUETON — The Cannon family, whose name has long been synonymous with John Deere equipment in Buchanan County, has donated a rare, impeccably restored tractor to the Quasqueton Area Historical Society. The 1959 John Deere Model 330 was one of 18 tractors collected by the late John Cannon, the longtime proprietor of Cannon Implement on Highway 150 two miles west of Rowley.
Wild Side column: Spring signs never get old

Mar 20, 2025 | thegazette.com | Orlan Love

The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced. A robin prospects for food March 6 in a Quasqueton lawn. Though most robins don’t migrate, their return to lawns after hiding out in thicker winter cover is a welcome sign of spring. (Orlan Love/correspondent) A male red-winged blackbird, newly arrived Monday in southern Buchanan County, displays his gaudy epaulets and hails spring with his optimistic conk-la-ree.
Tap, tap, tap - it’s time for maple syrup

Mar 10, 2025 | thegazette.com | Orlan Love

The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced. About the time you thought you ought to be out tapping maple trees it got too cold to even go outside, let alone for the sap to flow. During those five days of unrelieved subzero wind chills (Feb. 16 to 21), about all you could do is look out the window and marvel at the disappearance of snow through sublimation.
A Super (Bowl) search outdoors

Feb 20, 2025 | thegazette.com | Orlan Love

A rock bar stretches for more than 50 yards below a bridge over a Buchanan County creek on Feb. 9. (Orlan Love/correspondent) The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced. It was Super Bowl Sunday, and I needed a fix. For several days I’d been inside buildings or vehicles, and I needed some exposure to nature for my personal well being and (for the sake of others) to keep a grumpy old man from getting grumpier.