Drake Magazine Back Issue Content
ABOARD THE MV MATANUSKA, on a 1,000-mile journey up the rainforest coast from Washington, a cross section of modern-day Alaska’s citizenry relaxed to a gentle January swell—old salts in halibut jackets bound for port towns; rotund men goat-t’d up, ball caps blazing with logos of off-road-vehicle brands; young hippies, all dreadlocks and skirts-over-pants, moving North…
BENEATH THE MAYO BRIDGE I share a small island with the homeless of Richmond. I return each year when the tiny buds of spring start to appear and warm weather kicks out the last frost. The folks on the island don’t seem to mind. They know why I’m here. There’s a small sandy shore on…
THE FIRST BONEFISH TO EAT MY DRY was tailing in ankle-deep water. I threw it two feet ahead of him and left it to dead drift. When he got near, I stripped it and he saw the wake, followed with his head up, hesitated, then turned away. I twitched the fly and he circled it…
HUDDLED IN THE CRAMPED HOTEL ROOM, I peer down at the creamer label and see that it and the sugar are both produced by the same Texas chemical company. Looking around, it’s hard to believe that they’ve actually fit two queen beds in here. Every inch of open space is filled with duffel bags, rod…
DICK MCGUIRE DIED as we fishers should hope to die—fishing his home water. At 82 years of age in 2007, McGuire launched his boat on Ennis Lake and never came home. They found him the next day floating face down. The coroner didn’t perform an autopsy, so we don’t know exactly what caused his death,…
The wind blows in Wyoming. So much so that over much of its southern acreage, trees live in a constant state of sideways, bowing to the prevailing forces. Tumbleweed bounces through prairie sagebrush. The earth’s guts, buttes, and sawtooth ridgelines live outside its skin—exposed. There are rivers. And there are generally few roads and people…
“Perhaps the rebuilding of body and spirit is the greatest service derivable from our forests, for of what worth are material things if we lose the character and quality of people that are the soul of America?” Arthur Carhart—widely regarded as a pioneer in wilderness protection—posed that question more than 90 years ago after a…
Back in the fall, during the second presidential debate, President Obama and Mitt Romney got into a somewhat spirited exchange on the topic of energy. It began by Romney saying that “oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production is down nine percent. Why? Because the President cut in…
I rarely keep trout—let’s get that straight right away. I have no ethical objection to killing them when done responsibly, I just prefer to leave them in the river. Plus I’ve never really enjoyed the taste of trout, which my wife still regards as “strange,” given the amount of time and effort I spend chasing…
Across the continent, 2012 was a bad year to be a climate- change skeptic, but a much worse year to be a fish. Before you bid a tepid au revoir to this torrid 12 months, consider: According to 350.org founder and climate raconteur Bill McKibben, June broke 2,132 high-temperature records across the country. May was…
The pilgrimage to my perceived Mecca took 22 years, 11 months, 16 days, and 20 hours. I arrived fresh out of college, riding a 2.7-liter American-made Japanese chariot, complete with three-inch lift kit and the white silhouette of a blitzing Montauk striper across the back window. I was hell on wheels and ready to set…
Sneaking onto a golf course to catch a few unguarded bass is one of the most time-honored traditions in flyfishing, especially if you’re a golfer. Who among us hasn’t walked down some random Sun Belt fairway (or rough, more likely) only to peer upon a hungry four-pounder lurking in a water hazard along the way?…
Off the coast of New Jersey a fly angler named Ed Janiga hooked and landed a five-pound false albacore near Mantoloking. He stuck a tag from the American Littoral Society into its caudal peduncle, the thin strip of meat between the second dorsal and the tail fin. Eight months later a commercial fisherman named Wes…
When sight-fishing as a sport debuted in the Upper Keys and Florida Bay, boat-makers modified their hulls, fishing companies developed faster and lighter rods, and tackle shops sprouted up all over the islands. By the 1950s an entire industry was formed around a specific shallow-water grassland habitat dominated by tarpon, redfish, permit, snook, and bonefish.…
Waters of Idaho’s North Fork Clearwater River once flowed freely to the Pacific. Cayuse Creek dropped from a high-elevation meadow into Kelly Creek, which funneled into the North Fork, which melded into the Clearwater proper, then the Snake, and finally the mighty Columbia. Native steelhead muscled upstream through it all—massive populations of massive fish during…
George Washington Served: April 30, 1789 – March 4, 1797 America’s Founding Father was not only the Brits’ worst nightmare, he was also a badass woodsman, whiskey distiller, tobacco farmer, and once dabbled in spinning and weaving. We’re excusing the last two knowing that the First Prez also hauled in cash via commercial fishing on…
The term “dude” first appeared in 1883’s The Home and Farm Manual describing an ill-bred and ostentatious city dweller. It was refined to describe the Easterners, decked out by Abercrombie & Fitch, who trekked west to hunt, ride, and play at ranching. Among its contemporary uses, my favorite describes the argot preferred by youngish flyfishing…
Can I return this reel? It’s brand new, never spooled up. Sure, do you have the receipt? No. Well, we can’t accept a return without a receipt. Why not?
One of the many appealing aspects of tarpon fishing is that tarpon come up for air, allowing anglers, in most cases, to view their quarry before casting to it. Just seeing a group of 100-pound ‘poons rolling on the surface can be almost as exciting as that first strip-set. So imagine taking the largest tarpon…
Way back in August of 2010, we celebrated the 200th anniversary of the can—canned soup, canned beans, canned tuna. This summer, it’s about the beer. Once considered a sub-par compromise when bottles weren’t available, cans are quickly becoming the preferred vessel for many a craft beer-drinker, particularly flyfishers, rafters, and other marginally employed types. Cans…
One of the only upsides to having a drought year out West is that we can backpack up to the high country a few weeks earlier than normal. And since it’s hard work getting up there, don’t shortchange your trip by bringing that broomstick of a six-weight or that noodley old fiberglass rod because “it…
Bamboo fly rods are a little like herpes. Both are achieved out of lust which, in the light of day, provokes a certain retrospective guilt. Both, once acquired, invoke the sort of awe that elicits careful handling, and—be it split-cane rod or irritated genitalia—the newfound host might find himself wondering “Damn… should I even touch…
I thought I was just sharing a lark—fine: I was bragging—when I posted a Facebook update a month after moving from Missoula, Montana, to Oberlin, Ohio: “Just caught a dozen bluegill on a fly rod in a light rain standing on the shore of Oberlin Reservoir. I think I’d forgot how much fun fishing could…
Dargan Coggeshallin is being sued for flyfishing on a public stretch of Virginia’s Jackson River. If he loses his May court case to River’s Edge developers—who claim to own the river bottom—you stand to lose, too. “You can be fishing in a public river that is marketed by the state—on a tailwater managed with taxpayer…
Gamefish status for redfish, speckled trout, and stripers would seem like a no-brainer for anyone outside of the commercial fishing industry. But in North Carolina, even mentioning such an unholy thought could get a gun drawn on you. This spring sights are set on House Bill 353, a state measure that would effectively ban gillnetting…
You’ve never fished San Francisquito Creek. And if something isn’t done about Searsville Dam, you never will. Stanford University owns the dam, which was built in 1892. It buries the confluence of five redwood- and fir-shaded salmon creeks that now run salmonless out of the Santa Cruz Mountains. They all came together beneath what is…
My flight was delayed an entire day. My bags were packed for a two-week stay in Guatemala City, where I would accompany an underground cadre of ex-gang members who were now volunteer chaplains entering Central America’s infamous gang prisons. As a jail chaplain myself, working with Chicano gangs in Washington State’s Skagit County, these young…