Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(
Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.
Win the Native Fish Society’s “Bahamas for a Benjamin” raffle and bonefish at a luxe lodge on the Marls of Abaco for less than what you spent last week on pizza and beard oil. Lose, and it’s still a win because your hundred buck donation supports the NFS’s work restoring the Pacific Northwest’s wild fish and…
RepYourWater’s Bash for Boulder Creek is back. The 4th annual event, a fundraiser for Boulder Flycasters (Boulder’s Trout Unlimited chapter), will not only include all of the great festivities of Bashes past—games, food, beer, music, fun—but will also be the launch party for a collaborative collection between RepYourWater and Sight Line Provisions.
The 2018 Video Awards brought the party to the Rosen Plaza, Orlando, with another big night of cold beers, live music, and brilliant films. And while Central Florida simmered outside, it was a similarly heated story inside, where the year’s best movies slugged it out for top honors.
When First Quantum Minerals took its $150 million and bolted earlier this spring, it became the fourth financial backer to leave the warty, unloved Pebble Mine project at the altar. If dug, Pebble would become the largest open-pit copper and gold mine in North America. Worse, it would sit at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Alaska.…
The Drake’s 12th Annual Flyfishing Video Awards, presented by Simms, begins at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, July 11 at Orlando’s Rosen Plaza Hotel (Ballroom C). Please join us for the pre-party with special musical guests (plus poolside cocktails) at 6 p.m.
Beyond the Horizon is a story of redemption and personal discovery made possible via the exploration of a new permit fishery located 160 miles east of Guanaja, Honduras. If you missed catching it at the film tour, check out the full cut of the Faraway Cay saga, below, from our friends at Cold Collaborative. Read more…
Conserving wild salmon and steelhead habitat on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula is the driver behind “The Salmon Coast”—a new film from Shane Anderson. Projects detailed here will help open up hundreds of miles of water to incoming fish. The other key part of the recipe: Ensuring that there are still fish around to populate that habitat.…
Fishing the remote waters of Alaska’s Alagnak River is a dream shared by countless trout bums. While that dream is Russel Owen’s reality, it came at a cost. For a look inside Owen’s abnormal existance, check out the new video from Filson:
If you (or a good friend) enjoy the outdoors and live in California, this is a must-read. In 2017, the California state legislature passed Senate Bill 5, which will allow the issuance of bonds to finance drought-recovery, water, parks, climate and outdoor access programs. That bill, now known as Proposition 68, will appear on California voters’…
Bozeman’s Upper Missouri Waterkeeper organization works to protect clean, fishable, swimmable, drinkable water throughout the 25,000 sq. miles of Montana’s Upper Missouri River Basin. Check out its newly launched fundraiser page, where you can help support efforts that safeguard regional waterways and communities from projects that would do harm “We use a combination of strong…
Survive the Sound could be the title of the next big, hipster music festival. But luckily for all of us, it’s not. Seattle, WA-based non-profit Long Live the Kings has created Survive the Sound, an online game, as an educational tool to raise awareness for migrating steelhead in Puget Sound.
A story of wholes and fractions Russia’s Lake Baikal contains one-fifth of the earth’s fresh surface water, while two-thirds of its plant and animal species exist nowhere else on the planet. One river, the Selenge, provides more than half of the lake’s annual inflows. Without this river and its tributaries, there would be no Baikal…
AKA, yet another bill aimed at breathing life support into deadbeat dams “It’s like flushing money down the river,” said Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) in a news release last week, referring to the federal court order to “spill” water at the four lower Snake River dams.
Skykomish River hydropower project nuked Last year the South Fork of the Skykomish River joined the ranks of the down-and-out on American Rivers’ 10 most endangered rivers list. The reason: Snohomish County PUD had proposed to build a dubious run-of-the-river hydropower project at Sunset Falls that would have diverted a 1.1 mile section of water,…
Experience some of the best fly-out fishing in Alaska for a hundred bucks, and support a good cause while you’re at it. Oregon’s Native Fish Society is now selling raffle tickets for a trip to Rapids Camp Lodge. It will draw one lucky winner (who gets to bring one stoked friend) on May 15.
Rebounding runs on Washington’s Skagit River prompt this month’s reopening Puget Sound anglers who’ve been logging long miles to get their steelheading fix now have a much closer-to-home option on the Skagit and Sauk rivers, beginning tomorrow.
Montana’s Madison River saw a swarm of more than 179,000 angler days in 2017. During the height of salmonfly season that traffic is condensed—like a resort parking lot the morning after a colossal dump on the slopes. Now Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) is aiming to alleviate the stress, announcing this week that it’s…
As anglers, we have all discussed it and most of us have even witnessed it in real life. You run into someone on the river whose top goal is increasing followers on their social media of choice by targeting that one “photo” fish, sometimes with photographer and/or videographer in tow. Days or weeks later, you…
With warmer days ahead, Howler Bros is now accepting applications for its ultimate summer job. That’s right, instead of pouring frapps for sassy soccer dads or polishing balls for crusty country clubbers, hit the open asphalt as a Howler Privateer, traveling coast to coast in a custom van (#vanlife), while flyfishing, swimming, surfing, and hanging out…
While it’s clear that Atlantic Salmon numbers are only 40 percent of what they were thirty years ago, no one knows exactly why these fish are disappearing at such an alarming rate. A team led by Dierdre Brennan, producer/director of the documentary Atlantic Salmon: Lost at Sea, traversed six countries over the past eight years,…
Each year in May, The River’s Edge and Simms Fishing Products host a women’s flyfishing event in Bozeman, MT—Chica de Mayo. The gathering has evolved into the largest women’s flyfishing event in Montana, the United States, and well, probably in the world. This year’s event celebrates women in flyfishing and offers educational clinics, phenomenal female…
PHOTO BY COREY KRUITBOSCH
Once upon a time, Utah’s Green River below Flaming Gorge was the only tailwater in the state that anglers knew or cared about. Sure, the Green was, and is, one of the most famous in the country, but beyond that, or wading the Middle Provo if the snow sucked in Park City, the Beehive State…
The worst dates I’ve ever been on have all been with my husband, but last year he really outdid himself. It began one day after work, when he announced that his schedule had finally allowed him to attend the Fly Fishing Film Tour. He told me we’d get a nice hotel, go to dinner, and…
Cheeky’s 7th annual Schoolie Tournament starts on May 19, in Cape Cod, MA. With more than 400 registered striper fiends, the catch-and-release event has evolved into one of the largest of its kind in the country. And as part of the American Fly Fishing Trade Association’s (AFFTA) sponsorship deal, the organization is donating $1 for every…
Midwest summers—despite what you may have seen in Ozark—are all about working streamers and popping surface patterns for oversized bronzebacks and ornery musky and pike. Third Year Fly Fisher’s new teaser for “Summer Haze” captures the essence of both the region and the season. Shooting is scheduled to continue through 2018. Stay tuned for more.
This past June I found myself walking the high-desert banks of Oregon’s Deschutes River, searching for rising, thick-bodied redside trout. After a flurry of mid-day salmonfly activity, we grabbed a streamside bite washed down with local craft brews and settled in for the much-anticipated evening rise. We’d enjoyed relative solitude most of the day but…
The mighty chinook salmon, the largest of the Pacific salmon species, is shrinking, which is scary news for Southeast Alaska’s already-imperiled king stocks. Fisheries researchers from Alaska and Washington recently summarized 40 years of data taken from 85 king salmon populations from California to Alaska. The results show that the fish are both decreasing in size and…