Drake Magazine Daily Fly Fishing News and Blog
In 2011, the Wild Steelhead Coalition teamed with the Skagit River System Cooperative and Orvis to use drone technology to map out and survey a critical habitat restoration project on the Skagit River, which is home to Puget Sound’s largest winter steelhead run. The project’s goal is to transform Barnaby Slough back into a natural…
This October you can sit at home and practice duck face in the mirror, or you can travel to Belize with the pro photogs at Yellow Dog and take your creative captures to a higher level. Yellow Dog Flyfishing Adventures just announced dates for its first ever outdoor and fishing photography workshop in Belize. The…
Stripping away the Buffs and mirrored shades for a minute, “Through the Guides” reveals the inner workings of three respected flyfishing guides from divergent backgrounds, targeting remarkably different fisheries. Despite their differences these coaches, moms, and contrasting personalities all share something Dr. Phil calls, “raging fish addiction.” Via The Noble Lab: “Maybe they were born…
KEY WEST, Florida Keys—Idaho angler Mike Dawes caught and released two permit to win the 2016 March Merkin Permit Tournament that ended on March 17.
British Columbia’s Thompson River steelhead have been in deep trouble since the early 1990s. Now, after decades of collapsing numbers, and with a fragile run hovering in the hundreds, anglers are petitioning local politicians to get behind the beleaguered fish and consider protecting it under Canada’s Species At Risk Act (SARA).
Sarasota, Florida—It’s a bold concept: run an open skiff from the Florida Panhandle down along the western coast of Florida all the way to Key West before heading north up the East Coast and then back across the state through the Okeechobee Waterway, eventually finishing in Sarasota. It’s been attempted once before (unsuccessfully, in 2015)…
Last spring the Texas Hill Country was slammed with massive amounts of rain, far more than its rivers and tributaries could handle. As a result of the ensuing devastation people lost their homes and a few unfortunate residents lost loved ones forever. Powered by dramatic footage from the floods, Come and Take It follows a group…
Young girls are often told they can become anything, do anything; that they’re tough, loving, and resilient. But rarely does anyone prepare us for the day we may have to face breast cancer. It’s a sobering fact that about 1 in 8 U.S. women develop invasive breast cancer over the course of a lifetime.
The largest dam removal and river restoration project in California history is reaping rewards in the form of ESA-listed Carmel River steelhead happily spawning upstream of the old San Clemente Dam site. Last summer the 106-foot-tall, 7,000-square-foot dam was demolished, allowing fish access to 6.5 miles of “new” river.
From March 1 to March 23, Bonefish & Tarpon Trust (BTT) is asking anglers to collect as many bonefish fin clip samples as possible from South Florida waters. The samples will be used for genetic analysis in support of YETI’s Bonefish Genetics Program. Whoever submits the most fin clip samples before the March 23 deadline…
NORTHERN B.C.—Salmon advocates defending the globally important Skeena River are calling on people throughout North America to support the river in the face of a new threat. The latest plans from PacificNorthwest LNG have developers building a Golden Gate Bridge-sized causeway over the bank to service 350 tankers a year at a new deepwater port…
Steve Franklin was surprised to learn last week that his top-secret spot is no longer a secret. Steve told Jim about the prime piece—complete with both a riffle and a dandy tailout—back in 2014. Since then it’s come to light that Jim told Harlan, who everyone in Forks knows can’t keep his mouth shut. “Oh,…
Owners and an associate of Missoula, Montana-based film company Montana Wild have been issued 38 state and 11 federal citations following a two-year investigation into violations that stem from commercial filming in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, on USFS lands, without valid permits. The filmmakers were slapped with additional fines—more than $5k total—for breaking state fishing…
The Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC), Wild Steelhead Coalition (WSC) and three other groups filed suit in Seattle federal court this week, accusing the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) of sucking at its job by failing to propose and implement a Puget Sound wild steelhead recovery plan.
One is reared in a pristine stream. The other shares a concrete box with a posse of 50,000 pellet-fed siblings. And, according to a new study on steelhead in Oregon, these wild and hatchery fish are officially different at the DNA level. The research, published today in Nature Communications, found that after one generation of hatchery…
FlatsPirate Angling drops in this week with some deep thoughts on finding purpose in a life rigged by institutionalized assumptions. Play close attention students, as far as we can tell the keys to success and happiness lie somewhere amidst the mud and grass and schools of tailing reds. “Better to have a short life that…
During the past 60 years, the Florida Everglades has been converted from a naturally functioning wonder to a system of manmade dams, diversions and “improvements” that are leading to its ecological collapse. Sitting at the center of it all is Lake Okeechobee, which has become a cesspool of fertilizers and pesticides from not so sweet…
Mayflies in HD meet creepy narration and a medieval fantasy storyline in Cine Fly Fishing’s absurdly awesome edit, “Vulgata Nazgûl”. “Whether you are a dedicated fly fisher or an eager entomologist we are confident that you will find this gem entertaining.”
A bear-spotting playlist for southeast AK’s remote salmon streams SPOTIFY EMBED I occasionally work as a guide in America’s Tongass National Forest, leading bear-watching trips among towering old growth trees and creeks flush with salmon. Though more than one million people visit this sparsely populated maze of islands in southeast Alaska every year, few venture…
The extraordinary ordeal of Troy Bachmann Up until a few months ago, Derek Bachmann had a closet full of fly rods, one of the perks of a lifetime spent in service of his family’s business, The Fly Fishing Shop, located in Welches, Oregon, not far from the Sandy River. Now he’s down to four. “I’ve…
Back at the fly shop, swilling on a hoppy brew, the inflated catch rate is steadily swelling. The guide’s mathematically magical formula looks something like this: Whatever number client X got to hand, add 10. Ass hooked. Leader stroked. SJ worm sniffed. Saw a GOOD one rise. Yep, those count. But in the grand scheme…
“Eternally Wild” showcases northern California’s Smith River; its steelhead, its history and its current plight. Here there are no dams, no clear-cut blocks, no mitigating hatcheries. Instead: ancient forest, iconic redwoods and a powerful symbol of freedom — THE SMITH. But 4,000 acres of the river’s pristine North Fork are now threatened by a toxic mine operation. The…
Idyllic impressions of the Grand Canyon—tall walls with an emerald ribbon cutting through its underbelly—got slapped with a dose of ugly last week, when the U.S. Department of Interior released a vilifying report on sexual harassment among river guides employed by the National Park Service (NPS).
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is seeking public comment on two new steelhead gene bank proposals targeting lower Columbia River tributaries. Options under consideration include either the Grays and Chinook rivers or Mill, Abernathy, and Germany creeks.
What does a thriving “salmon forest” look like? Trees and fish, rivers and streams, and not much else. Southeast Alaska’s 17-million acre Tongass National Forest embodies that image pretty much perfectly. During the last several years Trout Unlimited has worked with scientists in the region to keep it that way, identifying more than 70 areas…
Big money from James Cox Kennedy and Charles Schwab shows up in Montana Supreme Court race Last month’s finding by the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices sheds new light on some shady, significantly large contributions by anti stream-access donors in a 2012 Supreme Court race.
Speculation about the decline of pure cutthroat trout due to hybridization has been around since the ’50s. Meantime, we’ve rotenoned lakes, bashed brains, and written at length about the ills of pure trout populations mingling with introduced species and diluting the gene pools. Turns out our worst fears are unfounded, at least according to a…