Daybreak on the last day of the March Merkin permit tournament in Key West. The sky is virtually cloudless, the winds light. It’s not what Nathaniel Linville and Ian Slater had in mind. “We like it when it’s tough out,” Linville says. In 2024, he and Slater had won the Gold Cup tarpon tournament in horrific conditions. “Our strength is outlasting and outworking everyone else when it’s like that.”
I saw the man with the machete first. He was leaning on the fat end of a downed mangrove that was blocking the way upstream. He stood on a branch chopping away, but his efforts had produced only a slight notch in the tree. There were three others waiting in the boat, the youngest resting the butt of an automatic rifle on his knee. Their uniforms gave them away as members of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s National Guard—as notorious as the waters they patrolled. The State Department estimates that 200 metric tons of cocaine makes its way through the country annually, much of it through this vast river system, which extends into Colombia.
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.
Sunset over Hungry Trout Resort and the Adirondacks
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.”
Hilary Hutcheson and Ebon Robinson in Columbia Falls, Montana's Lary's Fly & Supply
“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.
With every victory comes new challenges to public lands. After concerted pressure from conservation groups, the House of Representatives dropped any public land sales from President Trump’s budget reconciliation bill. But the Senate is trying to sneak it back in… in a big way.
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.
We never found the "water" we were searching for, but it didn't quite much matter when we stumbled upon this view and this stream, full of little wild trout. When we first walked down we saw red flashes - thinking we had stumbled upon native cutties, we began casting, only to catch the char gems we cherish back in the Southeast, somehow slightly dissapointed that we did not find the native fish to this region we were hoping for. Angler: Adam White. Photo: Sammy Chang
ON JUNE FIFTH, the seven members of Colorado’s court of last resort unanimously ruled that 81-year-old flyfisherman Roger Hill “lacks standing” to continue his decade-long legal battle for public access along the Arkansas River (Hill v. Warsewa).
Despite the whole universe seeming to conspire against me, I made it to Russia for steelhead season this fall. Even better, I made it back home, although my mother and sister had their doubts. It wasn’t easy, to say the least. But I wanted to be there, and I felt it was important that I be there. Obviously, I do not in any way support the invasion of Ukraine. But I also don’t blame my friends in Russia for their government’s decisions.
Flyfishing for carp holds about as much appeal for me as getting a face tattoo. But what if my ancestors—or yours—were doing just that at the dawn of civilization? University of Connecticut anthropology professor Natalie Munro hypothesizes that this may indeed have been the case among the prehistoric people who regularly visited an ancient lake in what is today northern Israel.
Late summer over the Patoka River near the Patoka River National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), Indiana, USA. Photo by Brent Waltermire
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.
I was caught between two worlds: human and piscine. I had been welcomed into the school. I moved with them, as they moved. I observed their feeding habits, their societal structures. I was like a salt-crusted, Ichthyological Jane Goodall, except that my silverbacks weren’t gorillas. They were bonefish. Scores of them. Possibly hundreds. All around me, glimmering tails flapped like the banners of their clan—a clan of which I was now an adopted son.
In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost. —Dante Alighieri, The Inferno
In Appalachia, there’s no straight way to travel. Laurel hell grows thick, and the only way to navigate it is to put your feet in a streambed and follow every meander and oxbow of the creek.
Until January 4, I’d never even heard the term “float-n-fly.” It sounded like a kid’s ride at the fairground, or the street name for some illicit new drug. But I Googled it that day—the same day Oroville, California-based flyfishing guide Ryan Williams, and his partner, Logan McDaniel, won the Shasta Lake Wild West Bass Trail tournament.
Photo Courtesy Rep. Simpson's Office. Idaho's 2nd District G.O.P. Rep. Mike Simpson, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Stanley-to-Redfish Lake Trail.
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.
Archie Creek Fire along the Umpqua Hwy (OR 138) Photo taken Sept. 12, 2020. INCIWEB/NWCG (National Wildfire Coordinating Group)
When Matthew Churchman woke up on a recent Sunday morning, at first the only thing growling was his stomach. Coffee and a cold breakfast took care of that. Camp, nestled in a 300-yard-long, cottonwood-and-willow stretch of river bottom, was in the process of being broken down. Skies…
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.
Spending more time at home lately? Fancy yourself a writer? Could you use $2,500? Then consider entering a submission for the 2020 Robert Traver Fly Fishing Award, sponsored by the John D. Voelker Foundation and the American Museum of Fly Fishing (AMFF). Here is the link to the awards page: https://www.voelkerfoundation.com/traveraward/ and below is the winning submission from 2019—”A Wet World that Burns” by Jimmy Watts (photos by Carson Artac), which first appeared in the summer 2018 issue of The Drake
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.
Survive, is what an angler does the first few minutes after hooking a striped marlin. My friend Nick and I shout with joy, accompanied by excited words in Spanish from our new friends. We watch a reel getting emptied and watch the fish leap, flip, and dive. Thirty minutes later and it’s the post-release chatter,…
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,…
As a lifetime Oregon resident, angler, and guide, I spend 40-60 days a year on the rivers of the Southern Oregon coast. I interact with anglers that use all types of methods, and every one of them I’ve talked to has noticed a significant decline in encounters with wild steelhead. How can this be explained?…
It’s late February and I stumble out the door to grab another beer kept cold by winter’s free refrigeration. If it was anything but the high-octane variety, it would’ve frozen from a lack of alcohol. I pop the cap, drain it, and unzip my pants, melting as much snow as possible when I piss—anything to…
Every year, a small number of striped bass winter over in the bays, marshes, and salt ponds of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. We call them “holdovers.” They’re not big, they can be tough to find, and by the middle of the winter, they look a little haggard. Their flanks, once polished a gleaming silver by a…
