Drake Magazine Back Issue Content
STATE OF ARMS AS WOULD ANY GUY SPAWNED FROM THE gravels of Oregon, I had deep reservations about driving the backroads of my home state in a rig blasphemed by California plates. It was a red Tacoma with a watertight canopy and a rod rack permanently bolted to its hood, an otherwise brilliant fishing truck,…
FLOWING WATER, BY DESIGN, HAS A SANCTIMONIOUS way of pre-qualifying its clientele. Gentle riffles and wide gravel bars lure the false-casting masses, and boiling black holes rimmed with mossy ledge rock frighten them away. That said, I suppose there’s really no great mystery why the easy flows produce the fussy little degree-candidate fish, while the…
EVEN IN THE END, Cliff Hansen—one of the most influential advocates of local control and state rights in Wyoming history—thought it was a good idea. But thank the river gods he didn’t get his way back in the day. Otherwise, the Snake River in what is now Grand Teton National Park would be a whole…
A few years ago, I was sitting on the porch of a house I no longer live in, venting to a friend about “too much work, not enough fishing.” I told him I wanted to fish again, and said I knew just the guy to get me back on the water. The porch had great…
FOR MANY YEARS after I met Jeff Cottrell, I would have said that SoCal’s Bear Creek was the best small stream I’ve ever fished. A secretive tributary of the San Gabriel River not far from the troubled sprawl of the L.A. basin, it was the kind of place only fishing kids knew about.…
CHAD BROWN, the Navy veteran who spawned the Soul River Runs Deep brand, looks like he’s just fought the battle of his life. And it’s no surprise he’s beat. A glance at my watch shows 3 a.m. Alaska time and Brown, along with his squad of vet volunteers here to herd a posse of bedraggled…
IT STARTS AROUND THE SAME TIME every year, in late June or early July. And on a day that you should be fishing, you’re instead making furtive mouse clicks and talking in hushed tones with your buddies, always reminding yourselves that it’s still too early to say anything definitive. Then, as trout fishing ebbs into…
Washington’s Olympic National Park is best known for iconic steelhead rivers such as the Hoh, Bogachiel, and Sol Duc. It’s also home to America’s largest dam removal project, which was completed on the now free-flowing Elwha River in August 2014. Here, contributor Brian Irwin recounts his days pouring drinks in the park and exploring a…
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…
The IGFA calls Steve Huff “the most well-respected guide in the history of flats fishing.” In Andy Mill’s book, A Passion for Tarpon, he calls Huff “bar none, the best tarpon guide alive, the best there was and the best there ever will be.” Though he spent the first half of his career guiding the…
Anyone who’s ever spent a season working in a national park will relate to Fong’s heartfelt recollections. And for anyone considering it, this story helps illustrate how hard it can sometimes be to re-enter the real world. From the second issue of The Drake, Fong reminds us that fiction often speaks the greater truth.
THERE ARE MANY SLIMY and unappealing things in Washington, D.C.—politicians, attorneys, lobbyists—but flyfisher Austin Murphy is interested in just one: the northern snakehead, also known as the Potomac Pike or the fearsome-sounding Frankenfish, named for its seemingly unnatural ability to move on land, live for days out of water breathing air, secrete mucus from its…
DEEP INSIDE MOST TROUT anglers lies an understanding that the existence of clean water and healthy public habitat are what get us out of bed in the morning, especially on weekends. Many have sacrificed lucrative careers, either by stalling out in the middle when the job-responsibility-to-annual-vacation-day ratio became optimal for fishing, or by running away…
THE BEST-KEPT SECRET in all of Colorado is on the Taylor River. Every fisherman in the state knows the river itself, and those who think they’re special know to fish it at night, but a select few know the real spot. In the town of Almont, just across the bridge on Taylor River Road, sits…
NO ONE IS SURE where the brook trout found in Soda Butte Creek came from. Maybe a flood washed them over from a neighboring drainage. Maybe somebody in Cooke City had a bucket and a brookie fetish. Then again, the source doesn’t exactly matter. The fish are interlopers in one of Yellowstone National Park’s most…
“I CALL THESE OUR FEEL-GOOD PROGRAMS,” says Dennis Dunsmoor, Director of Colorado Correctional Industries (CCI), referring to several small-scale businesses he oversees, including rod-building, that are run out of the Arrowhead Correctional Center in Cañon City. “We don’t make money off of them, but the offenders learn skills that will help them on the outside.…
Upon learning of Jim Harrison’s death, reputedly hunched over his typewriter at work on a poem, I gather some of my favorite books and walk to a nearby bar. Perching on a stool by the window, I order a tequila cocktail and a half dozen Malpeque oysters. The oysters arrive, lascivious, nearly quivering in their…
I want to share this award with all the indigenous communities around the world. It is time that we recognize your history, and that we protect your indigenous lands from corporate interests and people that are out there to exploit them. It is time that we heard your voice. —Leonardo DiCaprio, Golden Globes, Jan. 10,…
[The Obama administration and California officials are set to announce an agreement to remove four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, sidestepping Congress to restore its salmon and steelhead fisheries. The move would result in the largest river restoration in U.S. history. A news conference trumpeting the deal will take place today at the Yurok Reservation in…
Cleaning a meat slicer requires a certain kind of finesse. It takes concentration, patience, and that funny muscle in your upper forearm. I’m standing awkwardly behind the glass counter at Terri’s Deli in upstate New York, my oddly shaped teenage torso hunched over the slicer. My toothpick arms move carefully back and forth as my fingers get…
The inaugural unfurling took place four years ago in Yellowstone, on Slough Creek’s high meadow reaches. Plush 650-fill down internals provided a cozy bulwark against the still frigid nighttime lows of early spring. Her rugged inflatable underside took the edge off pointy rocks and smothered knobby roots for a comfortable night’s slumber. While her lightweight…
We were steelhead junkies, hooked on moving water. Rivers flowed through us like a stiff Texas breeze. Over a weekend we’d soak up enough to keep us sane for a while, but eventually the beetles would begin to scutter around in our heads again, and we knew it was time to load the truck with…
When Malheur Wildlife Refuge militants in January made the decidedly un-Boy Scout move of announcing their lack of long-range plans by calling for snacks, perhaps they didn’t recognize the plethora of protein swimming just out their adopted back door: a millions-strong armada of carp, so many that their protruding backs can give off the illusion…
Just before midnight on March 27, 2009, South African flyfishing outfitter Gerhard Laubscher and his FlyCastaway guide crew were several hours deep into an end-of-the-season bender on the island of Mahe, the principal destination for tourists in the Seychelles.
After just two days of Western Montana’s “Get Your Guide On” Flyfishing Guide School, seasoned two-year vets Maddox and Karter say they can totally separate the future guides from the wannabees. Here’s a partial list of giveaway blunders they have witnessed:
I’M NOT MUCH A HORSEPOWER GUY—I don’t lust after motorcycles or muscle cars—but I am a sucker for a skiff on plane. Back from the ramp, turn toward the fish, and lean into the throttle. Wind in the face never gets old. Just yesterday, I ran several miles up a narrow tidal channel here in…
I HATE FLYFISHING FILMS. I watch them religiously, but I hate them. Every time a new one comes out, I pay to go see it, I’ll even pay to rent Fly Fishing Film Tour films from years past, on Amazon at home. I pay to torture myself repeatedly, and each time I’m left thinking the…