Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Summer 2015
In 2015, the Park Service opened all of what were once known as “red line” brookie streams in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In doing so, it endorsed both anglers and trout. It is now the official policy of the United States to let these Appalachian natives be their own brookie selves. Contributor Zach Matthews…
How to enjoy them; how to avoid them THE YAKIMA Central Washington Enjoy it: Central Washington University is why Four Loko was banned. Coeds in Ellensburg like to party next-level, and when they want to get blacked out on an inner tube, the Yakima River is their venue of choice. Hoppers and summer stones pop…
IT’S EASY TO CAST A FLY IN ICELAND. No trees get in the way. The country never had much timber to begin with, and what trees there were got cut down long ago because burning wood keeps you warmer than not burning wood. Only 20 percent of the Kentucky-sized country can support vegetation anyway, so…
NO FRESHWATER FISH swimming the American West is more badass than the bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus). Like Mongolian taimen, bulls are the undisputed apex predators of their watersheds, and they know it. A mature bull swims with the élan of a gangsta in his lifted Cadillac; when he rolls by, the little fish dart for…
WITH ALL THE TALK I HEAR THESE DAYS about flat-brims, ironic trucker hats, and hipsters, I’ve been thinking about baseball caps and how they function as extensions of identity. A crisp New Era cap with a glittering sticker on the bill is separated from my sweat-stained fishing-logo lid by a cultural gulf as big as…
ATLANTA, YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND, is not a particularly good fishing town. We have a striped bass run, as well as some nearby mountain fisheries for brook trout, but on the whole, it’s tough being a flyfisher in the Dirty South. When I moved to the city a decade ago, I took a stab at…