If you’ve ever flyfished for musky, or even seen a video of others doing so, you have in part to credit (or blame, for those of you who caught the bug) Larry Mann and Wendy Williamson. The pair had cut their teeth guiding in Colorado but in the late 1990s familial obligations brought them to Hayward, Wisconsin. “Our friends in Colorado pretty much thought we were crazy,” remembers Mann. “Then they came and fished with us. And they said, ‘maybe not so crazy…’”
Over the years, Bear’s Den Fly Fishing Company in Taunton, Mass., about forty minutes south of Boston, has earned a reputation for knowing not just the best new gear, but also the value of vintage. It’s a robust shop with an unusually wide range of rod brands: Beulah, Diamondback, Douglas, Echo, G. Loomis, Hardy, Nam, Orvis, Redington, Sage, Scott, St. Croix, TFO, Thomas & Thomas, and Winston…
“I don’t really want to talk you into coming here,” said Capt. Joe Dilschnieder, owner of the Madison River Fishing Company in Ennis, Montana, while chatting a few weeks ago. I’m personally not a huge fan of the Madison River, well, mostly the crowds that come to fish this iconic Montana stream. In fact, when I was an outfitter in Livingston, I judged our fishing by how rarely I was forced to make the drive to the Madison. But even back then, I always enjoyed running into Joe. He makes everyone feel welcome, whether on the river or in his shop. I also found Joe’s path to being a fly shop owner and renowned guide on the Madison to be a compelling tale…trout bum makes good.
In the late 1880s, a stone mason in Fort Collins, Colorado began building a home out of materials he had salvaged from the decommissioned county jail. After its completion in 1889, this structure would go on to house several mayors, serve as a hospital, and enter the national register of historic places before becoming a fly shop. The shop’s founder had a brother who was a Trappist monk so he named the shop after St. Peter, the great fisherman and disciple of Jesus. Since 1992, St. Peter’s Fly Shop has been servicing, outfitting, and educating Colorado’s Front Range.
Evan Bottcher grew up in the Hungry Trout Fly Shop located in the heart of the Adirondacks. The Shop is deep in upstate New York about 90 minutes south of Montreal, Canada. “I would get off the school bus at my dad’s fly shop and hang out until my mom got home,” Evan says. “In those days, it felt like it was full of old timers. It was all anglers older than 50.” Evan, who took over the shop from his father in 2011, explains that in the last decade the younger guides and patrons have given the shop a new, cooler spirit. “The industry has evolved. It is more affordable for people to get into the sport now with less expensive packages, new techniques, and new flies,” explains Evan. “But there is so much knowledge from the old timers that will be lost if it isn’t written down.”
“Are you Lary?” is a question Ebon Robinson, shop manager, gets asked often. He is not, but you can’t blame folks for asking the question. He is standing behind the counter of Lary’s Fly and Supply in Columbia Falls, Montana. And he is a dude.
Amy and John Hazel, owners of Deschutes Angler Fly Shop in Maupin, Oregon, are committed to consistency. “I’ve never had anybody fish a single-handed rod, and we’ve never had anyone nymph fish for steelhead,” says Amy. “It’s always been swinging, it’s always been a floating line, and it’s always been small surface-flies that are no deeper than a couple inches.” For more than twenty-five years the couple has guided the Deschutes the way they wanted to, mainly because they feel it’s the most effective way to target the river’s summer-run steelhead.
In my experience, the best fly shops typically have shop dogs in them. And if the owner is a hockey fan, then that dog will be named Stanley. Such is the case with Littleton, Colorado-based Anglers All fly shop, which owner Chris Keeley, a native North Dakotan, bought in 2009 from Terry and Lori Nicholson.
The first email arrived on July 14. “Reaching out to pass along some fresh ‘industry happenings’ from the heart of Bolivia’s golden dorado region,” it began. “I figured the Drake might be interested in looking into it, as it seems on par with the prior articles investigating Deneki.”
Once known as little more than a railroad hub, prime agricultural center, and adjacent to the first economically viable nuclear reactor in the United States, the community of Idaho Falls has since become known as centrally located to some of the best trout fisheries in the country. These include the main Snake River, the Bear River, American Falls, the South Fork of the Snake, the Henry’s Fork, Yellowstone National Park, and more water in-between than you can literally and metaphorically shake a stick at. And, if you’re looking for one of the best all-purpose and all-species fly shops to service you in this flyfishing mecca, look no further than Jimmy’s All Seasons Angler in Idaho Falls.
In the fall of 1993, then-President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12866, requiring all Federal regulatory agencies to publish a list of anticipated rulemaking actions for the upcoming twelve-month period. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) is such an agency, and its rulemaking process requires four steps: Publishing a proposed rule in the Federal Register; Inviting public comment; Considering the public comments received, and Publishing a final rule in the Federal Register.
Clyde had been sitting in a barn outside of Gadsden, in West Etowah County, Alabama, for nearly six months, with a flat front tire and a massive gash in his gas tank. He wanted to rumble his Detroit muscles, but hadn’t done so for some time under my watch. I never developed any mechanical skills, but my friend Adam has worked on cars since his youth, tinkering with his grandfather in their garage in Decatur. He put on a new gas tank in a little more than an hour, performing what seemed to me a mannish miracle. Clyde was purring again, and my passion for flyfishing culture would be realized at the Fly Fishing Film Festival at Cahaba Brewing in Birmingham the following weekend.
Mighty Waters, a wonderful movie released last year by Austin-based filmmaker Shannon Vandivier, tells the story of beloved Bimini-based guide and boat-builder Ansil Saunders, in particular how Saunders had taken Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. out for a peaceful day on Bahamian waters just four days before King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. The fascinating story was part of the 2021 Fly Fishing Film Tour and was broadly shared with the public in early February by two of its sponsors, Simms and Costa.
Let’s Go Bass’nIt’s time to test the warmwaters By Beau Davis and Tom Bie Photo by Jeremiah Watt Want to avoid bumping elbows with ten million new trout-chasers this summer? Then consider a guided day on some warmwater. You’ll surely face a less-pressured fishery, and if the trip includes kicking around in a float-tube, you…
“Look at that baby!” Bob Jacklin exclaims as the foamy waters of Montana’s Madison River churn steadily around him. Elegantly draped out of the net he’s holding is the tail of a now-famous 30-inch brown trout—a fish that Jacklin had caught before. “You talk about a fish—that is a big boy!”
None of us guessed what was coming. Within hours of our leaving the river, the county would close all boat ramps and Oregon’s governor would implement stay-at-home guidelines. We were fishing on the last days of winter steelhead season 2020 and we didn’t even know it.
In April 2019, Congressman Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, gave a somewhat stunning keynote address at an environmental conference hosted by Boise State’s Andrus Center for Public Policy. His comments were thoughtful, educated, and encouraging. But mostly, they were surprising, particularly his thoughts about what might be necessary to save Idaho salmon. Rep. Simpson and I discussed the topic in mid-December, and his quotes below come from his keynote and our conversation. Can Idaho salmon truly be saved? No one knows. But the Congressman has been down a similarly daunting path. In 2015, Mr. Simpson’s 15-year effort to broker a seemingly impossible deal resulted in the creation of Idaho’s Boulder-White Clouds Wilderness. (Which Mark Menlove covered in his 2014 feature, “A Fisherman’s Monument.”) If wild salmon and steelhead can indeed be saved, then Rep. Simpson is providing these essential fish the best shot they’ve had in decades.
Wild Steelhead are not corn, wheat, or cattle. They are not oranges, apples, or anything that we can control with expected specific outcomes and pounds delivered to market. Put them in a box and they will swim right out of it.
Even among anadromous fish, steelhead are the least predictable of any salmonid swimming the North Pacific. They are never a species of multitude, like Kings, Coho, or even Pinks, that come home in a rush of biological delivery to the rivers spanning the West Coast. They cruise along the edges, arriving to their natal rivers in fits and spurts, with dozens of life histories across each watershed. In short, there were never that many steelhead to begin with.
It was a brisk and beautiful morning, the sky cloudless, the sunlight sharp. It was the kind of day that under different circumstances would have you looking forward to the coming seasons of warmth and splendor and carefree fun. We began packing the car. I’ll never forget the looks on some of my neighbors’ faces as I took the bags of groceries—canned goods, pasta, rice and yes, even some toilet paper—to the car. Those faces betrayed thoughts. Wait, should I be doing the same thing? Fear may be the only thing more contagious than this virus.
RAPIDS CAMP LODGE, built from the ground by founder Jerry Shults, is nestled in the Katmai-Naknek region—a short jump from Anchorage, depositing anglers in a Bristol Bay nucleus noted for its big rainbows and all five species of salmon.
riter and historian David T. Courtwright calls them “limbic capitalists”—people or companies that target our limbic system, the part of our brains primarily responsible for emotion, especially as it relates to pleasure, motivation, and survival. Courtwright is author of The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business. “Biological evolution shaped the limbic system,…
Coming to terms with a new reality This past December, I received an unwelcome holiday surprise. Our corporate overlords rounded up the staff at the magazine where I’ve worked since its inception, twenty-three and a half years prior, to announce our new direction. The upshot: We could still pursue exciting careers in magazine journalism, a…
For noted fly tyer and guide Blane Chocklett, it is creativity that has set him apart from the folks throwing the same old patterns at the same old fish. Chocklett has made himself a life and career by searching out new fisheries and new fly patterns. If you have flyfished for a while, especially for…
The film opens with a ten-second zoom toward campfire flames that dance and swirl in the darkness. The viewer’s eyes are drawn to the underbelly of the largest log, crosshatched and ashen from the heat. Jump-cut to a small stream, lit by autumn light, shorelines framed by a blaze of fallen leaves. An angler appears,…
The last week in September can be one of the finest of the year for flyfishers, but lodge owner Jerry Shults and his daughter Amy Herrig did not look to be enjoying it in 2018, as they spent the week in the Federal courthouse in Dallas facing 17 counts of drug trafficking, conspiracy, and money…
Kaieteur Falls is a superlative 800-foot single-drop waterfall located in the heart of Guyana’s Kaieteur National Park. And although the falls are heavily photographed by gapers from around the globe, the area is also home to another famous inhabitant that is equally quirky, cool. The non-poisonous Golden Frog (Anomaloglossus beebei) is endemic to a 600-hectare…
The best thing about a nightmare is the split-second you wake up and realize it was only a dream. Author Kirk W. Johnson skipped that moment, when, on December 29, 2005, he sleepwalked out of his second-floor hotel window in what he describes in the prologue of his new book, The Feather Thief, as a…