The great thing about the outdoors is we have nearly unlimited choices of what to do and how to do it, especially as summer gets underway. On our way up the angling learning curve, and through a world of changing technology, the options have become expansive. If you want to bonk a muskie on the head with a double-bladed oversized flashabou inline spinner after picking its silhouette out in the developing weed lines from a HD display, you can do that. If you want to lazily roll a cast off a dock and wait for the rise of the most aggressive bluegill in the school, that option is there. You can troll, or jig, or slip float for walleyes, and cast small spinners or tubes for crappies coming off the spawn. The ways to fish from the most high-tech to the most simplistic are available to you right now, and there’s probably never been a better time to be an angler.

Whether you’re honing your casting abilities or deciphering the images on a new screen in the boat, however you want to fish and whatever you want to fish for is given the green light as summer gets going. Even resurgent populations of lake sturgeon along the Red River basin are open and available for some catch and release angling, where often the combination of the latest tech, and the most basic of setups — a hook, a chunk of lead and a gob of nightcrawlers — bring that balance between using the tools to identify where these fish hold and how they’re most often caught with the simplest of offerings. That’s the fun and the paradox of the angling world we live in right now.

In talking with an outdoors contemporary of mine, as he lamented the spread of live sonar to many boats on the water putting what many perceive as added pressure on the resource while also admitting that he had the latest top-of-the-line system fully installed on his boat to find the fish he was after, he concluded the conversation with a sigh and a laugh, perhaps a bit bothered by justifying the duality he was experiencing, stating “sometimes I think fishing was just more fun when we were 12 years old.”

For me, that statement conjured up visions of hanging off the concrete edges of the Mill Dam or the Little Dam on the Sheyenne River in my home town of Valley City trying to trick a walleye in the churning flow below, or sneaking silently with gentle dips of wooden paddles from the old family canoe coasting into the backwater ponds under the Hi-Line Bridge with a buddy to catch crappies hidden in the tangles of timber. We didn’t need sonar, or even much knowledge to land these fish, and it seemed that every one of them was a trophy, if not in size, then simply for what it added to the story of a day between school’s end and its start seemingly far down the road in late August. They’re moments that stay etched in my memory.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized, however a person wants to fish is how they should fish. I quit forcing (or maybe just “softened” is a better word) on foisting my ideals via this medium and others as to how folks should spend their angling time. If you want to drive around and stare at a screen until you find what you’re looking for, that’s fine. If you want to do it the way you did it when you were 12, that’s great too. Across all species and on all waters, there are so many ways to angle for them: from the fly rod to specific presentations and techniques, to tournament circuits, to simply wetting a line with friends and family to relive old traditions. However you do it, you’re fishing, and that’s what counts.

Summer memories for those in the outdoors are built upon time spent on the water. Set your standards, do it by your specifications, and target the species you love to catch on your terms. No matter how you do it, if you stay within the bounds of the regulations and then via the means and metrics you choose to set for yourself, which too may change in time, or as your technological preferences advance or even from day-to-day, it’s likely you’ll find that inner 12-year-old’s joy with each hookset this summer … in our outdoors