Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Fall 2013
I pulled into the Aspen Recreation Site just before 10 a.m. on Wednesday, October 3rd, after a 13-hour, nearly nonstop rental-car bender from Vancouver. The site is the lowest of three B.C. Ministry campgrounds along the Morice River, sitting about eleven miles southwest of Houston—home of the world’s largest fly rod, the world’s largest sawmill,…
The fly-tying company that lost—and blogged—it all On the morning of May 19, 2013, Idylwilde Flies founder Zach Mertens stared into his computer screen, digesting the bizarre circumstances that had sent his business spiraling. He then began punching paragraphs into the keyboard with the kind of blunt transparency unexpected of a company president and owner…
Almost Every Northwest Angler living within 100 miles of the Columbia River or its tributaries has a weekly, if not daily, if not hourly, ritual this time of year: checking the salmon and steelhead counts passing over eight dams on the Columbia and lower Snake rivers—Bonneville, The Dalles, John Day, McNary, Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental,…
I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt. I contemplated spending the rest of the day staring out the window, imagining fishing trips that never happened. But the cobwebs started to clear, so I figured I might as well go fishing. I loaded a new two-hander in the…