2 days ago
Brad Dokken: Here's how to get the free trial of onX Fish Midwest with your North Dakota fishing license
Jun. 7—If you've already purchased a North Dakota fishing license and just heard that onX Fish has expanded into the state with a free, three-month trial subscription through the North Dakota Game and Fish Department (NDGF), fear not.
You can still get the three-month trial subscription to onX Fish Midwest, even if you bought your North Dakota fishing license before the partnership between onX and Game and Fish was announced.
New North Dakota fishing licenses were required April 1, and the onX-NDGF partnership was only announced in late May.
According to Jack Flatley, public relations manager for onX Hunt and onX Fish in Denver, the recent expansion means onX Fish is now available in Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota.
To celebrate the expansion, Flatley says, onX and Game and Fish teamed up to offer the free onX Fish Midwest trial membership to anglers who buy their fishing licenses through the Game and Fish Department's online licensing platform.
It's really quite simple.
Upon buying their license, "anglers will receive a message in their NDGF online account with a free redemption code to unlock their onX Fish Midwest trial," Flatley said in an email.
Anglers who bought licenses before the offer was announced will receive the same access code upon logging into their Game and Fish account, either through the department website or the app, Flatley said.
I played with onX Fish a bit last fall when it
first became available in Minnesota,
and it's slick. For the North Dakota app, onX uses Game and Fish Department-sourced data, allowing anglers to search for fishing destinations across the state.
Considering the abundance of
new prairie lakes that have popped up
across the state since the beginning of a wet cycle in the early '90s, onX Fish's North Dakota offering provides a one-stop shop, of sorts, for finding a place to wet a line. North Dakota today has some 450 fishable waters, compared with maybe 250 or so a couple of decades ago.
"Filter by species, size and abundance to plan a day out with family or fill the livewell,"
Game and Fish says
in a post on its Facebook page.
For now, the onX Fish Midwest app is limited to iPhone users through the iOS platform. And, of course, it's also available by logging into the website, either on a computer or a smartphone.
"The free trial will provide access to the onX web map platform, so Android users can still use and experience the app that way," Flatley said. "Unfortunately, I don't have a timeline for when we are releasing the Android version. It's something we are working on, but there's no set release date yet."
Once the free trial ends, onX Fish Midwest costs $34.99 annually.
* More info:
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A celebration of life for a giant in the world of waterfowl management is planned for later this month in Spiritwood, North Dakota.
Lewis Cowardin died Feb. 15 at St. Benedict's Care Center in St. Cloud, Minnesota. He was 91 years old.
According to his obituary, Cowardin grew up in Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard and later received a doctorate in wildlife biology from Cornell University. He moved with his family to Jamestown in 1965, falling in love with the state and its wetlands, waterfowl and abundant outdoors opportunities. Cowardin spent his career at the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in Jamestown.
"He was well respected for his research and contributions to waterfowl biology in habitat management, remote sensing, aerial photography, predictive models for waterfowl population and wetlands classification, authoring over 55 scientific articles," his obituary states.
According to his obituary, Cowardin was honored with the Department of Interior Secretary's Stewardship Award of Science and Technology in 1992, the North Dakota Professional Award from the North Dakota Chapter of The Wildlife Society in 1995 and an award from Ducks Unlimited for his contributions to waterfowl management and research.
Bob Ekstrom of Bemidji, a friend who forwarded the celebration of life information he received from Cowardin's daughter, Dr. Nancy Cowardin, called him "one of the founders of modern waterfowl management," citing more than a decade of "groundbreaking waterfowl research" in Chippewa National Forest of northern Minnesota and the Prairie Pothole Region.
"You could write a book about Lew's career," Ekstrom said.
A casual get-together to mark Cowardin's life and career is set for 2:30 to 5 p.m. Saturday, June 28, at the Cowardin house on Spiritwood Lake, 510 E. Lake County Road, Spiritwood, North Dakota.
