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…
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…
Endorsed by Gov. Jay Inslee, a bill to phase out net-pen farming of Atlantic salmon in Washington waters made it through the state senate earlier this month. It’s now headed to the House, where the state legislature will cast a final vote to potentially nix the nets via a phase-out period.
Portland General Electric in 2010 began operating a “Selective Water Withdrawal” tower above Round Butte Dam on central Oregon’s Deschutes River. The ecology of the lower Deschutes, one of the West’s premier flyfishing destinations, has suffered ever since. These ecological impacts, in turn, have negatively affected businesses and communities in north Central Oregon that rely…
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”—Franklin D. Roosevelt What a difference a year makes. Just over a year ago, the proposed Pebble Mine at the headwaters of the world’s largest wild salmon run located in Bristol Bay, Alaska was on its deathbed. Then the…
Cocaine smuggler’s former Clarks Fork property returns to the spotlight for a public lands squabble Boat captain Stewart Allen Bost and his pals almost slipped into obscurity after they smuggled more than 3,000 kilos of Columbian cocaine from the Bahamas to South Florida in 1986. With approximately $1.35 million lining his pockets, Bost sought early…
With less than three months remaining, competition is fierce Goatfish, grayling, giant trevally, brown trout, one “huuuuge sunfish,” and many, many more, this edition of the #DrakeMagBigYear has anglers around North America chasing an incredible diversity of fish species on the fly. Which as it were, is pretty much the point of the contest—explore beyond…
In 2008, the feds introduced a new flow-management regime at Yellowtail Dam designed to increase water levels at the Horseshoe Bend boat ramp in Wyoming. Since then eastern Montana’s Bighorn River, on the downstream side, has been gushing—experiencing more days above 8,000 cfs than during the previous 40 years combined. A new report from the…
Cooke Aquaculture found to be at fault for Puget Sound net-pen failure Washington State just closed its investigation of the Cypress Island net-pen failure that caused hundreds of thousands of farmed Atlantic salmon to pour into Puget Sound last August. It found that Cooke’s gross negligence of the net pens caused their collapse and the…
Last year Sunshine State Gov. Rick Scott signed landmark legislation that called for a catch-all reservoir to be built below Lake Okeechobee in order to improve the spiraling health of the Everglades. Unfortunately, designs for the project recently submitted by the Water Management District don’t do enough. And in short, experts say we need a lot…
Snake River angler comes up short Poaching steelhead is a time honored tradition among degenerate anglers. But, hacking the tail off a B-run buck to comply with size restrictions is certainly a new technique.
With runs hovering in the hundreds, British Columbia’s Thompson River steelhead have been in steady decline since the ’90s. The imperiled stock hit a record low last fall, when returns were estimated at less than 200 fish. Despite the numbers, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (“DFO”) permitted commercial and First Nations gillnet chum salmon fisheries during…
This year’s Fly Fishing Film Tour (F3T) won’t be in Denver until March. Meantime, so you’re not feeling too fish-porn parched, Trouts Fly Fishing is proud to announce the Throwback Thursday Fly Fishing Film Fest, presented by The Drake, Felt Soul Media, and our friends at F3T.
Can commercial netting coexist with Columbia River salmon recovery? A Pound net is a wall of netting that stretches from the shoreline out into a river, funneling fish into a compartment called the “heart,” where fish are trapped but not killed. The nets were once common on the Columbia River, but were banned in Washington…
As the calendar year comes to an end, the folks behind the 2018 Fly Fishing Film Tour is just getting into gear. In the past few weeks the F3T has released trailers for Dubai on the Fly, 100 Miles, and Beyond the Horizon. Today, we see a sneak peak into Jako Lucas’s latest adventure to the heart…
NOAA solicits public comment for steelhead fishery proposal Home to a revered population of ESA-listed wild winter steelhead, Washington’s Skagit River and its main tributary, the Sauk, have been closed to spring catch-and-release fishing since 2011. That could all change in early 2018, however, as NOAA is considering granting a harvest permit to the Washington…
Smallmouth: Modern Fly-fishing Methods, Tactics & Techniques Tim Landwehr & Dave Karczynski $29.95 Stackpole Books Most of the how-to flyfishing books at your local library come from accomplished anglers that aren’t very good at writing. This book isn’t one of them. Lifelong smallmouth guide Tim Landwehr of Tight Lines Fly Fishing Company in DePere, Wisconsin,…
Unless you’ve been living under a triggerfish for the past few months, you’re likely one of the millions of viewers who’ve watched those incredible teasers of bird-eating giant trevally in the Seychelles, which hit the Interwebs on Oct. 26. The footage was captured by a four-person crew from the BBC’s Natural History Unit during fall…