RAPIDS CAMP LODGE, built from the ground by founder Jerry Shults, is nestled in the Katmai-Naknek region—a short jump from Anchorage, depositing anglers in a Bristol Bay nucleus noted for its big rainbows and all five species of salmon.
The return of the Elwha’s steelhead Give a rainbow trout a direct line to the ocean and you have a potential steelhead. Throw a dam in its path and watch anadromy hit a wall. Salmonids in Washington State’s Elwha River, on the northeastern edge of the rain-soaked Olympic Peninsula, found their long-lost gateway to the…
Revivalists and renegades in South Florida’s Everglades It begins as a subtle unzippering across the surface. Nothing more than shape and motion—forcing the brain to calculate distance to target, direction of movement, and speed of travel. These computations form the basis of what comes next: an attempt to drop a bottlecap-sized fly in the path…
For artist Cody Richardson there’s no more enticing silhouette than the one belonging to a certain fish that he hasn’t yet caught. “To me it’s like the elk hunting of flyfishing,” he says of permit, as he pours us a couple of beers in his Windsor, Colorado workshop. “They’re so smart and you have to…
The best thing about a nightmare is the split-second you wake up and realize it was only a dream. Author Kirk W. Johnson skipped that moment, when, on December 29, 2005, he sleepwalked out of his second-floor hotel window in what he describes in the prologue of his new book, The Feather Thief, as a…
A week from now the creek at our boots will be too thin to float. Fueled by the dregs of a heavy winter snowpack atop Wyoming’s Bighorn Range, its window is on the verge of being shuttered. “Hard to say how it’ll fish,” Clark Smyth says from under the brim of an oversized straw hat.…
Feelings are part of it. That’s because our cherished fly rods, whether impatient laser throwers or deep-bending noodles, stroke emotions. When they feel right, we’re remarkable anglers. When something’s jacked, it’s a slippery slope from elitist to self-defeatist. Idaho-based Waterworks Lamson, with its new Center Axis Rod/Reel, is banking on recalibrating the way we feel…
ON MARCH 20, 2017, a canary-yellow A-star helicopter kicked up a cloud of sand while planting its skids on a tiny atoll off the Caribbean coast of Honduras. Years in the making, the landing at Faraway Cay was like a blindfold removed. According to satellite imagery, the island doesn’t exist. But minutes after landing, Steve…
IT’S NOT DIFFICULT to imagine the tiny community of Forks, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula, kindling the kind of small-town restlessness that prompts its sons and daughters to move elsewhere. But Gray Struznik, born into this land of tall trees and deep puddles, was never struck by that desire to bounce. Instead, he stayed and…
If you’re looking for a 20+ pound cutthroat, you’re either high or you’re fishing Pyramid Lake. Maybe both. In the center of northern Nevada’s elevated-desert lie the remnants of Lake Lahontan, once covering more than 8,000 square miles. Today, the largest body of water left is Pyramid, home to legends of spell-casting mermaids, human-snatching babies…
CHAD BROWN, the Navy veteran who spawned the Soul River Runs Deep brand, looks like he’s just fought the battle of his life. And it’s no surprise he’s beat. A glance at my watch shows 3 a.m. Alaska time and Brown, along with his squad of vet volunteers here to herd a posse of bedraggled…
The inaugural unfurling took place four years ago in Yellowstone, on Slough Creek’s high meadow reaches. Plush 650-fill down internals provided a cozy bulwark against the still frigid nighttime lows of early spring. Her rugged inflatable underside took the edge off pointy rocks and smothered knobby roots for a comfortable night’s slumber. While her lightweight…
Sagebrush and brown rolling mounds. Ripping wind and an Arctic shoulder-season. One righteous truck stop bar, where dollar bills wallpaper smoky internals. And iffy gas station burritos at 6 a.m. There you have Alcova, Wyoming… at first glance.
Summer on Utah’s Green River In the pines above a slumbering Dutch John they clicked and we listened. Clicking, like a foreign tongue only a small group of unwashed anglers might decipher. Below the concrete wall holding Flaming Gorge Reservoir, that same clicking joined the riffing of the Green River. They clicked. The trout tuned…
Seattle is a fishy place. With the Puget Sound in its backyard, the Olympic Peninsula three hours west, and sneaky creeks within striking distance due east, you’d think that in addition to espresso factories on every corner it’d be easy to source a fly shop. But that hasn’t always been the case. Until now.
IN THE SHOWTIME SERIES HOMELAND, Carrie Mathison, played by actress Claire Danes, leads drone strikes against terrorists from the comfort of her CIA station. But the same technology that makes drones—also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs—convenient military weapons, has also helped advance the careers of real-world civilians, including a growing list of flyfishing…
Wolf Creek, Montana, is just ambitious enough to justify a post office and a couple of bars. Its proximity to cold, clear tailwater stretches of the Missouri River, below Holter dam, also make it ripe for a fly shop, and that’s where Wolf Creek Angler steps in. Shop co-owner Jason Orzechowski purchased the retail space…
Convincing a permit to eat your fly is similar to doing business in a foreign country in that success in both is hard-won. Guide and Tres Pescados Fly Shop owner, Wil Flack, can relate.
Shallow Water Expeditions’ film Out of Touch hits the F3T with overstuffed reds and a special alert Out of Touch is one of several films premiering at this weekend’s F3T launch. It’s also one that doesn’t open with sweeping aerials of Caribbean flats or dip-in-lip anglers fondling 30-pound browns. Instead, the audience crowding Denver’s City…
Outdoor photographers fight Forest Service for First Amendment rights Sketch a line around the pristine and safeguard its natural integrity against human missteps and, in a nutshell, you have the foundational elements for wilderness. In 1964, Congress staked those perimeters with a Wilderness Act designed to preserve millions of acres in perpetuity.
DURING THE WANING DAYS OF SUMMER 2000, guide Dave Deardorff rowed his drift boat one stroke too far. Idaho’s lower South Fork of the Snake had fished well that afternoon. Cutthroat sipped BWOs under tormented skies, while Deardorff storm-jumped his way downstream. Finally, something angry surrounded him and his two clients. He sunk oar blades…
THERE WAS A TIME when skateboarder-turnedgraphics- creator Dave Hartman excelled at the art of being aimless. Bucking the law and generally lacking purpose, Hartman bounced from home to home in suburban Arizona and California, rural Alabama, and southern New Hampshire. Until fishing intervened. He found a fly rod and carried it to Montana. And there…
Quebec-based graphic artist Mathieu Laroche—aka, Matel—has worked with brands such as Volcom, Rome, and Spy, lending his street-inspired art to everything from snowboard designs to accessories and streetwear. His latest “Reel Art” collection stems from trout, Atlantic salmon, and striper hankerings, and was prompted by close friends seeking reels with a one-of-a-kind look. “The project…
The Belizean coastline stretches along 239 miles of pleasant places to visit. Tourists who come here, even for the first time, often want to help save it. And there’s a lot to save in Belize—jaguars and Scarlet Macaws and lots and lots of fish. There’s also plenty to save the country from, like Jimmy Buffett…
Back in January, NOAA meteorologists reported a brilliant haze-like anomaly ascending into the atmosphere high above Colorado’s famed 14ers. Dubbed the “Puffy Grail” it’s since been attributed to a mass exhale sparked by lawmakers legalizing in-state recreational marijuana sales. It’s now kosher to purchase and smoke pot in Colorado—where Johnny Law allows—and as anglers prepare…
Utah-based photographer Jay Morr can often be found with his lens slipping back and forth between separate universes. The first is familiar. It’s places with trout, drift boats, requisite dudes looking dude-ish, and the awesome esthetics of the West’s best waters. But Morr’s alternate reality, I hate to say it, looks even better. Musicians. Models.…
320 reasons why, Hier kom groot kak Flyfishing filmmaker Jako Lucas has been on a world tear since dropping Gangsters of the Flats on U.S. audiences in 2012. The bangers of those Seychelles flats were, of course, large and in charge giant trevally. With Aqua Hulk, last year’s Best New Film at The Drake Film…