Humor

Some nice notes. Photo by Jim Klug

Taste Test

Daily Drake, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2022, Freshwater Fly Fishing, Homepage Content, Humor, LifestyleLeave a comment

I wish I knew more about bourbon. All I really know is that I like the taste, and that there are some I enjoy more than others. This may be the result of growing up in Kentucky, where my friends and I were introduced to good bourbon at an early age. Had I grown up in Poland or Scotland or the Caribbean, perhaps I’d prefer vodka or Scotch or rum. But bourbon is my thing. The details don’t interest me, however. Percentages of various mashes, types of wood in the barrels, the aging process? I just don’t get it. From people with more discerning palettes, I’ll hear things like “vanilla overtones” or “notes of cherry and chocolate.” Here is part of an actual description I found on a website for one of my favorite Kentucky bourbons:

Appreciating Clyde

Clyde Appreciation. Photo by Chad Hoffman

Clyde Pride

Conservation, Daily Drake, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2022, Fly Fishing Industry, Humor, Lodges, Outfitters, and Guides, Ride With Clyde, U.S. placesLeave a comment

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.

Photo by Kurt Budliger

Tiger King

Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2021, Homepage Content, Humor, Lodges, Outfitters, and Guides, MuskyLeave a comment

My older brother Charlie—the red-haired menace of my youth, and the protagonist of so many fishing adventures—came to visit me in Canada. It was mid-August when I picked him up from the airport. He was hungover and indignant, as one of his rods had been lost in transit. We headed straight for a well-regarded trout stream in southern Ontario where there were rumors of giant browns, stopping eight hours later at the local fly shop to book a half-day trip with some dude named Larry.

Drake Magazine 2020 Winter

JUST OUT CATCHING LAS VEGAS LUNKERS.

Flyfishing Sin City

Daily Drake, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Winter 2020, Freshwater Fly Fishing, Homepage Content, Humor, Lifestyle, U.S. places1 Comment

I thought I was still buzzed from the night before when I first saw what appeared to be a person lounging in a yellow pool-floatie on the water. “Only in Vegas,” I thought. Some drunk idiot ends up using Lake Bellagio as his personal swimming pool. But looking closer, I could see that the person was a man moving his arm back and forth a few times before bringing it to rest. “Is he casting?”

Drake Magazine 2020 Winter

Photo by Corey Kruitbosch

End-Times Steelhead. Group therapy on the Oregon Coast.

Conservation, Daily Drake, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Winter 2020, Fly Fishing Industry News, Freshwater Fly Fishing, Homepage Content, Humor, Lifestyle, Salmon/Steelhead, TroutLeave a comment

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.

Drake Magazine Winter Fly Fishing

Photo: Corey Kruitbosch

The Winter Writhe

Daily Drake, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Winter 2019, Fly Fishing News, Homepage Content, Humor, LifestyleLeave a comment

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…

ANDREW UCLES (FRONT), AND BRIAN GROSSENBACHER, ON THE SET IN MYANMAR. COURTESY HOT SNAKES MEDIA/ HISTORY CHANNEL

A Star is Born

Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Spring 2019, Humor, The Put In, Video/Film3 Comments

Facing the Beast with Brian Grossenbacher If you’ve paid even the slightest attention to flyfishing media over the past two decades, then you’ve seen plenty of shots taken by Bozeman, Montana-based photographer Brian Grossenbacher. Whether shooting commercially for clients like Simms, Orvis, and Yeti, or editorially for this magazine and many others, Grossenbacher has made…

EMMA SANSOM, POINTING TO A CARP. GADSDEN, ALABAMA, SPRING 1863. PHOTO BY DAVID FRANCK

PHOTO BY DAVID FRANCK

Carping with Emma

Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Spring 2019, Humor, Lodges, Outfitters, and Guides, The Put InLeave a comment

Statuary in the Southern Imagination “What do we do with hundreds of Confederate monuments and related statuary across the United States? Americans face a challenge that might be called the mass curation of our public spaces, in light of contemporary sensibilities, yes, but just as important, in service of what has always been the truth.”…

Competition runs deep in the Biloxi Marsh

Sheepish – Sheepy Tournament Competition

Destination travel, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Fall 2017, Humor, Lifestyle1 Comment

Booze consumed me as I sat listless in the upper bar of the Dogwood; a restored Mississippi riverboat docked a few hundred yards east of the Hopedale, Louisiana, boat launch. For the next two days and nights, the Dogwood would serve as home and headquarters to anglers competing in the 2017 Sheepy tournament—a tongue-in-cheek backcountry…