Drake Magazine Back Issue Content
David Lemieux wears many hats, and every one of them bears a “Steal Your Face” logo. He’s the official Grateful Dead archivist. He’s also the Dead’s legacy manager with Rhino Records, the host of “Today in Grateful Dead History” on Sirius XM radio’s Grateful Dead channel, and a writer for the Dead’s official website, Dead.net.…
“Hey, Lucky,” Scott asks, “I can’t get this Chuggernaut to chug. What am I doing wrong?” My friend Scott Noble has traveled from Spokane, Washington, to Hayward, Wisconsin, with the singular goal of catching a musky on a fly. And now, finally here in the bow of the boat, being guided by Brian “Lucky” Porter…
Past the Far East Restaurant, and Big Daddy’s Buff n’ Wax, we turn left at the Mexico Congregational Church and find the boat launch empty. This is normal in the mill town of fewer than 3,000 residents, but surprises me on a spring morning: the Androscoggin is at its most fishable (around 4,500 cfs); it’s…
The status of wild winter-steelhead populations can drive the most committed steelheaders to seek refuge near the fringes of Salmo Mykiss’ geographical range—fewer anglers can mean a few more fish. So, after 19 hours of driving, I pull my truck into the dark driveway descending to a rustic lakefront cabin. Towering cedars block what scant…
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…
If My cats were talking cats they would ask me the same question my father does: why don’t you keep the fish you catch. Why are you so spineless, so un-hungry, so thoughtless as to our longsuffering? I’ve released countless fish, many which could have turned a day into legend for my dad. We didn’t…
PIPELINES GET A BAD RAP, which they often deserve. Last November, the Keystone Pipeline—of Standing Rock protest fame—leaked more than 200,000 gallons of oil from a below-ground crack, adjacent to Sioux lands near the Lake Traverse reservation. The irony was lost on no one, least of all the protesters who were forcibly evicted from their…
It’s 1 a.m. and we’ve just shuffled out of the Sheridan Opera House, halfway through The Travelin’ McCoury’s NightGrass after-show. Not because they weren’t fantastic. Fronted by the sons of bluegrass legend Del McCoury, they lived up to their pedigree. But we’re exhausted. Ignoring the advice of experienced Festivarians, we have not paced ourselves. It’s…
THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER’S pristine headwaters are tucked into some of the most remote land in the Lower 48, draining roughly 70,000 square miles across Wyoming and Montana. These wild waters serve as a stronghold for native Yellowstone cutthroat, and, combined with Yellowstone Lake, make up the largest inland population of cutthroat in the world.
The proposed Pebble Mine, subject of 20 years of controversy, 2.2 million public comments, a dozen Congressional hearings, multiple documentary films, media campaigns, ballot initiatives, lawsuits, and the most ubiquitous sticker in all of fishingdom, is back on the table. Seemingly the result of one 30-minute meeting between two men: EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and…
Walk into the Bozeman offices of Tom Morgan Rodsmiths and an immaculate bamboo rod greets you. Natural yellow. Maroon wrappings. Agate guides. Fluid action. It’s stunning.
BEFORE APRIL ARCHER cofounded Denver-based SaraBella Fishing—makers of women-specific fly rods—she’d already noticed an influx of female flyfishers to the sport. But as an angler herself, fishing since she was a toddler and flyfishing for the past 16 years, she also recognized that there was a distinct lack of women-specific gear.
A week from now the creek at our boots will be too thin to float. Fueled by the dregs of a heavy winter snowpack atop Wyoming’s Bighorn Range, its window is on the verge of being shuttered. “Hard to say how it’ll fish,” Clark Smyth says from under the brim of an oversized straw hat.…
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,…
Her hand, inches from my nose, is filled with a half dozen hooks in varying states of undress and oxidation. Reaching out, I choose a moderately rusty hook with a small clump of fur dangling from a bit of unraveling thread. “Just think of it like summer camp craft hour,” she says, holding up a…
I’d never been to Guanaja, Honduras, but I did my research and learned that we’d have our own little island surrounded by permit flats. I was even told of permit before breakfast—almost as great as waking up in that special way.
Instead of dick pics, I send my girlfriend pictures of myself, naked, holding fish over my junk. Sometimes they’re full-body shots. Other times they’re close ups of just the fish covering my frank and beans, with a halo of manicured pubic hair surrounding it. #hottie #instawizard.
It starts in early Spring when the water is cold and flinty, the wind an unceasing bully. Sure, there may be a schoolie here or there, a member of the Hudson River group that’s opted out of the migration. But the great fish are still south. I don’t care, though. I just need to reacquaint…
God promised Noah that He’d never again destroy every living creature on earth by a flood, and God put rainbows in the sky as a sign of this promise. (Genesis 9, Chapter 10, verses 9-13). But God never said He wouldn’t have Mother Nature occasionally kick us in the crotch as a reminder of what…
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…
IN THE SPRING OF 1996, President Bill Clinton created the 1.8-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, encircling a swath of twisted canyon country in southern Utah. Using the Antiquities Act, he sidestepped Congress—as 16 presidents have done, creating 157 national monuments—and delivered the proclamation in a ceremony on the rim of the Grand Canyon.
This was once one of my favorite spots in the Catskills. Paul and I used to fish it a lot before he moved to Montana. It’s a good place for Isonychias in the fall, and fishing a big dry in October in the East is something to be relished. I was last here more than…
Like Dirk Nowitzki, Clyde was stuck in Dallas. But what I thought might be little more than a quick rescue mission turned into two of the more interesting fishing days of my summer.
When a net-pen enclosure holding more than 300,000 farmed Atlantic salmon, owned by Canadian company Cooke Aquaculture, broke open in August, approximately 160,000 fish escaped into Washington’s Puget Sound. Atlantics are classified by the state as an aquatic invasive species and a “pollutant.”
The first places I explored as a kid, outside of my backyard, were the small creeks and wetlands near my home. They were full of tadpoles, salamanders, and, if we were lucky, turtles. I spent countless hours trying to fit various animals into Mason jars, but mostly I just covered myself in mud.
I’ve made a lot of trips between northern Minnesota and northern Michigan. Usually I’m fishing my way across, hunting hex-eating browns and flats-cruising smallies in July, and backwoods muskies in November. By far the fishiest route is U.S. 2 through the Upper Peninsula and across the Mackinac Bridge down into the top of the mitten;…
Booze consumed me as I sat listless in the upper bar of the Dogwood; a restored Mississippi riverboat docked a few hundred yards east of the Hopedale, Louisiana, boat launch. For the next two days and nights, the Dogwood would serve as home and headquarters to anglers competing in the 2017 Sheepy tournament—a tongue-in-cheek backcountry…