Tallahassee, FL—Hustling in the shadows of top fly tyers like Charlie Barr, Stevie Ray Merkin, and that guy who made worms sparkle isn’t easy. So when 42-year-old vise jockey Jimmy Proctor exchanged his bobbin for an embroidery hoop, no one was too surprised.
Central Oregon’s Crooked River has all the trappings of a flyfishing utopia, complete with a rugged Wild and Scenic stretch that back in 2013 held as many as 4,000 redband rainbows per kilometer. As of today, however, its booming trout population has gone bust. Biologists are also saying ‘goodbye’ to its once prolific whities.
The tempestuous case for public stream access in Utah is headed back to the state Supreme Court on Monday. And following a multi-year long battle between the Utah Stream Access Coalition (USAC) and private entities, a finish line now appears to be within reach.
In 2005 Ilya Sherbovich, owner of Russia’s Ponoi River Co., assembled a tight-knit crew to investigate Siberia’s untouched taimen fisheries, including remote rivers in Yakutia province. Eleven years later, he came back. This time with a yacht, helicopter, and better music. In Yakutia Capt Jack Productions chronicles that ten-river search for taimen, lenok, grayling, monster pike, and…
Alaska’s proposed Pebble mine hit a last-minute hiccup heading into the New Year as permits that were set to expire and be redrawn have instead been extended for ninety days—leaving the future of the project in limbo. The state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) called for the delay in order to field a flood of…
This much is for certain. Flats fishing in the Bahamas is relatively big business. A recreational fishery with an annual economic impact exceeding $140 million. (About what “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” pocketed during its opening weekend.) How that business is conducted, however, will soon change thanks to new flats-fishing regulations that have been on…
The U.S. Forest Service this month finalized an amendment to its Tongass Land and Resource Management plan that will help conserve more than 70 salmon and trout streams within Southeast Alaska’s 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest. The decision helps safeguard fish thanks to provisions that transition the Tongass timber program from old-growth logging to one based on…
At the end of a Kamchatka rainbow? Trout eating magically delicious mice for breakfast and salmon running in the hundreds of thousands. Here, the latest pro-Russia trailer from dynamic filmmaking duo Peter Christensen and Rolf Nylinder. At the End of a Rainbow is one of several new films set to headline the 2017 Fly Fishing Film Tour, which…
About two million coho salmon once stormed the rivers of the Oregon Coast. Industrial-strength fishing and leave-nothing-behind logging through the 1900s would be their downfall, underscored by dismal returns in the 1980s—with total numbers of spawning adults dropping below 15,000 fish. NOAA Fisheries listed the lingering coho as threatened in 1998. Last week the same…
I woke to the sound of slaughter. Several times a night this happened. The noise was caused by a pair of prehistoric animals hunting beneath my bed at Brazil’s Uakari Lodge, a floating eco-resort nestled along a protected stretch of the Amazon River, about 400 miles west of Manaus. Guests are advised to sleep with…
Directed by Alaska filmmaker Ryan Peterson, The Super Salmon is a super-inspiring film chronicling what could have been something super-shitty: the proposed Susitna-Watana dam on Alaska’s Susitna River. The 300-mile river is home to all five species of pacific salmon, including the state’s fourth largest chinook run. The latest concrete threat called for erecting the country’s second tallest…
Another water rights battle rages on in Colorado. As the Front Range’s population grows, it is Denver Water’s responsibility to make sure residents have enough flow to run their dishwashers. To satisfy the demand, Denver Water is looking at the threatened Fraser River, sixty percent of which is already diverted to the Front Range. The…
The God Squad isn’t a new Marvel spinoff. Nor is it the latest chart-topping Christian rock band. But it just might be another nightmare for ESA-listed salmon and steelhead on the Snake River.
People of Zwolle, a Netherlands municipality located east of the Amsterdam haze, are known as Blauwvingers (blue fingers). Story goes, way back when cash-strapped citizens sold church bells to a neighboring town for a pile of worthless coins. Counting the copper turned their fingers a unique shade of North Sea indigo. LOOP’s predator team may have…
This winter, Alyssa Halls of Owl Creek Flies is gathering a group of aspiring steelheaders for an inspiring sesh on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. The Ladies Winter Steelhead Fishing Retreat & Workshop is a hands-on clinic hosted in conjunction with Brazda’s Fly Fishing that includes Skagit-style casting, steelhead fly-tying, wade fishing and swung-fly presentations—plus plenty of time…
National Park Service (NPS) killed a record 366,000 cutthroat-gobbling, nonnative lake trout in Yellowstone Lake this year. Part of the park’s desperate effort to restore tanking native cutthroat populations, the program has dispatched about 1.5 million lakers in the last five years.
More than a month has passed since work on a decrepit diversion dam sent a trout-killing mud slurry into Wyoming’s Shoshone River. And so far, the lethal discharge is still flowing strong.
Rolling over from my plywood perch on the top bunk, I peer down to see all three of my cabinmates asleep. So I rule them out. Slipping the headlamp from beneath my pillow and turning on the light reveals not one but two Alaska-sized mice sitting on top of a cooler, munching saltines. I stare…
Approximately 200 federally-listed adult steelhead were discovered dead last week in the tailrace below the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Dworshak Dam on the North Fork of the Clearwater River near Orofino, Idaho. Cause of the mortalities is still under investigation, but it’s believed the injuries stemmed from non-routine upgrades of the Dam’s turbine unit.
Anyone who bought an Alaska fishing license online in the last year received an email from AK Fish & Game this week. The reason? The price of a fishing license is going up. Whether you live there or not, you’re going to have to shell out a few more bucks to the state.
Day-tripping Utah’s Green River, via Sean Slobodan. “Flaming Gorge is absolutely otherworldly. Home to the Green River and arguably the best fishing on the planet. We were just along for the ride on this one while Grant and Grant Jr. got to catch some fish and make some memories.”
Some trout get all the hype. That’s not the case for the aloof one in the lineup. Bull trout are no one’s celebrated state fish. No boutique digs cater solely to the species. They don’t mix well with nonnative riffraff. And they cast doubt on those who call climate change a hoax.
Hooké’s full-length version of “Along the Way” is finally live. Here’s looking at you, Canada. “We produced this movie with all the encounters and all the great moments we shared by the river in mind. Gaspé, New-Brunswick, Baie-James, Labrador and British Columbia were all incredible places, but the things we’ll remember the most are the people we…
In the final days of the presidential campaign, Republican nominee Donald Trump broke from his swing-state rallies and made several unexpected tour stops over the weekend. In Dutch John, Utah, on Sunday, Trump and his entourage exited the billionaire’s gold-plated chopper and hit the drift-boat littered streets of Guide Row, where the nominee was snapped…
After shuttering coho and steelhead fishing on the Columbia River two weeks ago, the Washington-Oregon Columbia River Compact recently reversed course, giving the green light to fishing for the two species from Buoy 10 near the mouth of the river to the Highway 395 Bridge near Pasco, WA. The fall chinook fishery will remain closed.
Keys to surviving an extended camping expedition on the remote West Side of Andros Island, in the Bahamas? Beer and a love for bonefish. In the 4th installment of Xplor Andros, Frankie Marion, Jeff Rybak, and flats guide Solomon Murphy focus on the “capture”. Read more about the crew and their mission in flats-fishing minimalism at…
Washington steelheaders will have fewer options this fall, as the Upper Columbia River tributaries will remain closed. In recent fall seasons bombers and muddlers motored through classic steelhead streams like the Methow and Wenatchee. This year only about 6,300 steelhead are expected to make it upstream of Priest Rapids Dam on the Columbia. That paltry sum…