Minnesota fisherman loses walleye down North Dakota storm drain — and gets it back

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VALLEY CITY, N.D. — After a North Dakota fishing trip, Valley City native Shawn Grim often goes to his favorite hometown haunts like the Pizza Corner restaurant.

Grim, who now lives in Osakis, Minn., had just rolled into town after a good walleye catch Sunday, Oct. 15.

“I had this gorgeous, 22-inch walleye, which, you know what, that’s as big as you keep. Everything else goes back in,” Grim said. “A 4 1/2 pound walleye. It was a nice fish, and it’s big.”

Outside of the pizza shop, Grim thought it would be a good photo opportunity.

“I am holding this fish, getting ready for a picture, and all of a sudden it flip-flops down onto the street. Okay, not a big deal, and I go down to grab it, and boom, boom, boom, right into the drain,” Grim said.

This sounds like a great fishing story, but was there proof?

Area businesses had no security footage. But recently, the city of Valley City installed traffic cameras, and they captured it all.

WDAY News showed Grim the traffic video of the fish flop.

“That was it, that was the, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me,’ moment,” Grim said.

Grim is a seasoned angler with his own fishing license plates.

“I can see it through the slots here. You can see the light coming through in there. I can see the fish. It was flopping,” Grim said.

He wasn’t going to let this walleye go.

“So, I go over to my car, go to my tackle box, and I pull out my Rapala. Three treble hooks — this thing catches fish. Is it going to catch one in a storm sewer? We’re going to find out,” Grim said.

He did what any angler would do. Trying to snag the fish and pull it back up to the street.

“I’m sitting here, trying to snag it, and I snag it. I get the fish. And then it pops out, and it’s like, ‘Okay it’s possible,’” Grim said.

Sure enough, the traffic camera recorded him using his rod and reel and treble hook to re-catch that walleye.

“Pull it up slowly, grab the fish by the back of the head and slowly pull it out of the (storm drain). So then we stand up, (and) we take the picture away from the gutter,” Grim said.

Along with the final photo, he got a fish story for the ages.

“Even the goofiest things, like fish down a drain. It’s like you got that story, and it’s like sometimes it’s even better than the fish you caught,” Grim said.

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Girls state tennis: Rochester Mayo finally breaks through for 2A title

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Making its 26th state tournament appearance in 27 season, Rochester Mayo finally broke through and won it all on Wednesday. The top-seeded Spartans topped the No. 2 seed, perennial power Edina, 6-1 in the Class 2A final at Baseline Tennis Center.

Rochester Mayo had previously downed Edina a couple times this fall and was the prohibitive favorite Wednesday, but the Hornets made the Spartans work for it.

With Rochester Mayo leading 3-1, the final three matches all went to a decisive third set. The Spartans needed to win one of them to claim a championship — they won all three.

Claire Loftus and Aoife Loftus set the tone up top for the Spartans, cruising to victories at No. 1 and No. 2 singles.

Class A

The Blake School prevented the Rochester sweep, as the second-seeded Bears upset top-seeded Rochester Lourdes 5-2 in the Class A final at Reed-Sweatt Tennis Center in Minneapolis.

Four of Blake’s five points came via straight-set victories, including wins from Nana Vang and Fatemeh Vang at No. 1 and No. 2 singles.

After rainy week, Twin Cities could see first snowfall of season on Saturday

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After a rainy work week in the Twin Cities, the metro might see its first snowfall of the season this weekend.

Tuesday’s record-breaking showers — which dumped 1.34 inches at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport — gave way to an overcast Wednesday, and a second round of heavy rainfall was expected to begin late Wednesday night and continue off-and-on into Friday, according to the National Weather Service.

Light snow is possible Saturday, said Joe Strus, a weather service meteorologist in Chanhassen. But don’t expect to be building any snowmen just yet.

“Flurries to snow showers, somewhere within that realm,” he said. “We’re not looking at major accumulation.”

Another dusting is possible on Halloween, but it could just as easily fall as rain if temperatures don’t dip low enough.

“It definitely bears watching,” Strus said, adding that he’s not expecting a major winter weather event either way.

That isn’t the case this week in much of North Dakota, where a winter storm warning has been posted until Friday afternoon. Forecasters expect 6 to 9 inches of snow driven by winds gusting to 40 mph. Far northwestern Minnesota could pick up 3 to 6 inches of snow.

Temperatures are expected to cool in general this weekend into next week. Saturday morning could finally bring the first fall freeze in the Twin Cities. Lows in the upper 20s are expected. Minneapolis-St. Paul typically see the first freeze between Oct. 1-10.

In advance of the additional precipitation, the weather service is reminding people to clear their neighborhood storm drains of leaves and other debris. The public can “adopt” storm drains at adopt-a-drain.org.

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UAW-Ford tentative deal could relieve some pressure on Biden

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A tentative agreement announced Wednesday between union autoworkers and Ford was welcome news to the White House and could be a sign that at least one of the problems on President Joe Biden’s plate could be nearing resolution.

Several hurdles remain to a settlement of the United Auto Workers’ strike against the Big Three, including whether workers at Ford would ratify an agreement and, if so, whether its terms can be extended to General Motors and Stellantis. The transition to electric vehicles has also been a major sticking point, with the UAW fearing a loss of jobs to non-union plants.

But it is the first major breakthrough in a strike that appeared to be digging in for the long haul.

A wider deal would come as a relief to the White House and Democrats representing car-producing regions, who had supported the workers’ demands even though some feared that an extended strike could harm the economy, sour public sentiment and hamstring their electoral prospects in 2024.

The White House was quick to applaud the development.

“This tentative agreement is a testament to the power of employers and employees coming together to work out their differences at the bargaining table in a manner that helps businesses succeed while helping workers secure pay and benefits they can raise a family on and retire with dignity and respect,” Biden said in a statement.

If the deal sticks, and similar agreements are struck with the other companies, it would be one of the organized labor’s biggest victories in a year of worker unrest across the country.

“We won things nobody thought possible,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement. “Since the strike began, Ford put 50% more on the table than when we walked out. This agreement sets us on a new path to make things right at Ford, at the Big Three, and across the auto industry. Together, we are turning the tide for the working class in this country.”

The agreement announced Wednesday includes a 25 percent wage increase for workers across the course of the four-year contract. The union had initially demanded a 40 percent increase, while the companies’ initial offers were in the single digits.

The tentative agreement also significantly boosts the starting pay for new employees and accelerates the rate at which they escalate to the highest wage tier, shaving off several years from the previous schedule. It also reinstates a cost-of-living adjustment that was done away with more than a decade ago amid the American auto industry’s financial struggles.

UAW also said it won the ability to strike in the event of future plant closures.

Fain has been expanding the strike on a piecemeal basis since the strike began Sept. 15. In total, more than 45,000 workers have walked out of 46 facilities in 22 states.

Workers most recently walked out of GM and Stellantis facilities, as Fain said the companies had fallen behind Ford’s offer.

The tentative agreement will go next to the union’s members for ratification.

The UAW said Ford workers would return to work during the ratification process but the strikes would continue at GM and Stellantis.

Ford has laid off the most workers of the three companies — 3,167 as of Wednesday — citing downstream effects of the strike. Between those employees and the striking workers, nearly 20,000 people have been off the job at Ford plants since the walkouts began.

Ford CEO and President Jim Farley said he was “pleased to have reached a tentative agreement” and “focused on restarting Kentucky Truck Plant, Michigan Assembly Plant and Chicago Assembly Plant, calling 20,000 Ford employees back to work and shipping our full lineup to our customers again.”

GM on Tuesday said the strike has cost it $800 million up to that point. Thousands of workers across the constellation of suppliers affiliated with the Big Three have also been affected by the weekslong strikes.

The electric vehicle transition has loomed over the negotiations, as it represents a turning point for both the industry and the union, which doesn’t have as strong of a foothold in EV facilities as traditional plants.

GM earlier in October agreed to include workers at its battery plants in its master labor agreement with the union, a major win for UAW.