Humor
Last we left you, Clyde was crashing shoddy motel rooms, pounding Coors Light silos, and scarfing large Hawaiians from Pizza Hut—clearly reveling in Peach State culture—as he meandered through Georgia’s Blue Ridge mountains. Where’ll Clyde curb-check next? Here, the Southern Revival Tour rolls on.
Clyde may be of industrial-strength Detroit stock. But his love of nuclear northern winters is only lukewarm. Road salt gives him an itchy undercarriage rash. And all that ice fishing ain’t all that, unless it involves Great Lakes-size servings of Fireball. So having spent most of his winter vacay lurking in the Wisconsin Northwoods, it…
I woke to the sound of slaughter. Several times a night this happened. The noise was caused by a pair of prehistoric animals hunting beneath my bed at Brazil’s Uakari Lodge, a floating eco-resort nestled along a protected stretch of the Amazon River, about 400 miles west of Manaus. Guests are advised to sleep with…
IN MARCH OF 2016, C1 films released a permit movie called t. Falcatus Ch. 1: Day of Days. The film opens with Nathaniel Linville, owner of The Angling Company fly shop in Key West, giving viewers advice: “I recommend anyone who’s watching this, turn the volume down; I got nothing interesting to say.”
STATE OF ARMS AS WOULD ANY GUY SPAWNED FROM THE gravels of Oregon, I had deep reservations about driving the backroads of my home state in a rig blasphemed by California plates. It was a red Tacoma with a watertight canopy and a rod rack permanently bolted to its hood, an otherwise brilliant fishing truck,…
EVEN IN THE END, Cliff Hansen—one of the most influential advocates of local control and state rights in Wyoming history—thought it was a good idea. But thank the river gods he didn’t get his way back in the day. Otherwise, the Snake River in what is now Grand Teton National Park would be a whole…
A few years ago, I was sitting on the porch of a house I no longer live in, venting to a friend about “too much work, not enough fishing.” I told him I wanted to fish again, and said I knew just the guy to get me back on the water. The porch had great…
FOR MANY YEARS after I met Jeff Cottrell, I would have said that SoCal’s Bear Creek was the best small stream I’ve ever fished. A secretive tributary of the San Gabriel River not far from the troubled sprawl of the L.A. basin, it was the kind of place only fishing kids knew about.…
The IGFA calls Steve Huff “the most well-respected guide in the history of flats fishing.” In Andy Mill’s book, A Passion for Tarpon, he calls Huff “bar none, the best tarpon guide alive, the best there was and the best there ever will be.” Though he spent the first half of his career guiding the…
Anyone who’s ever spent a season working in a national park will relate to Fong’s heartfelt recollections. And for anyone considering it, this story helps illustrate how hard it can sometimes be to re-enter the real world. From the second issue of The Drake, Fong reminds us that fiction often speaks the greater truth.
DEEP INSIDE MOST TROUT anglers lies an understanding that the existence of clean water and healthy public habitat are what get us out of bed in the morning, especially on weekends. Many have sacrificed lucrative careers, either by stalling out in the middle when the job-responsibility-to-annual-vacation-day ratio became optimal for fishing, or by running away…
THE BEST-KEPT SECRET in all of Colorado is on the Taylor River. Every fisherman in the state knows the river itself, and those who think they’re special know to fish it at night, but a select few know the real spot. In the town of Almont, just across the bridge on Taylor River Road, sits…
NO ONE IS SURE where the brook trout found in Soda Butte Creek came from. Maybe a flood washed them over from a neighboring drainage. Maybe somebody in Cooke City had a bucket and a brookie fetish. Then again, the source doesn’t exactly matter. The fish are interlopers in one of Yellowstone National Park’s most…
“I CALL THESE OUR FEEL-GOOD PROGRAMS,” says Dennis Dunsmoor, Director of Colorado Correctional Industries (CCI), referring to several small-scale businesses he oversees, including rod-building, that are run out of the Arrowhead Correctional Center in Cañon City. “We don’t make money off of them, but the offenders learn skills that will help them on the outside.…
Upon learning of Jim Harrison’s death, reputedly hunched over his typewriter at work on a poem, I gather some of my favorite books and walk to a nearby bar. Perching on a stool by the window, I order a tequila cocktail and a half dozen Malpeque oysters. The oysters arrive, lascivious, nearly quivering in their…
Cleaning a meat slicer requires a certain kind of finesse. It takes concentration, patience, and that funny muscle in your upper forearm. I’m standing awkwardly behind the glass counter at Terri’s Deli in upstate New York, my oddly shaped teenage torso hunched over the slicer. My toothpick arms move carefully back and forth as my fingers get…
The inaugural unfurling took place four years ago in Yellowstone, on Slough Creek’s high meadow reaches. Plush 650-fill down internals provided a cozy bulwark against the still frigid nighttime lows of early spring. Her rugged inflatable underside took the edge off pointy rocks and smothered knobby roots for a comfortable night’s slumber. While her lightweight…
We were steelhead junkies, hooked on moving water. Rivers flowed through us like a stiff Texas breeze. Over a weekend we’d soak up enough to keep us sane for a while, but eventually the beetles would begin to scutter around in our heads again, and we knew it was time to load the truck with…
Just before midnight on March 27, 2009, South African flyfishing outfitter Gerhard Laubscher and his FlyCastaway guide crew were several hours deep into an end-of-the-season bender on the island of Mahe, the principal destination for tourists in the Seychelles.
After just two days of Western Montana’s “Get Your Guide On” Flyfishing Guide School, seasoned two-year vets Maddox and Karter say they can totally separate the future guides from the wannabees. Here’s a partial list of giveaway blunders they have witnessed:
I’M NOT MUCH A HORSEPOWER GUY—I don’t lust after motorcycles or muscle cars—but I am a sucker for a skiff on plane. Back from the ramp, turn toward the fish, and lean into the throttle. Wind in the face never gets old. Just yesterday, I ran several miles up a narrow tidal channel here in…
I HATE FLYFISHING FILMS. I watch them religiously, but I hate them. Every time a new one comes out, I pay to go see it, I’ll even pay to rent Fly Fishing Film Tour films from years past, on Amazon at home. I pay to torture myself repeatedly, and each time I’m left thinking the…
LAST JANUARY, researchers from the University Health Network in Toronto, Canada, published the results of its study on the effects of long-term inactivity. In a word, the scientists who conducted the study found that sitting around all day can kill you.
THE ROCKS ON THIS JETTY were all once uniform and composed. They say that, long ago, you could drive a car on them, all the way out to the tower, where the greasy cormorants preen their feathers. This is no longer possible. The Long Island Express hit it with 100 mile-an-hour winds and 15-foot swells…
I STOOD AT ATTENTION in front of my Colonel after a firm and deliberate salute: “Captain Church reporting as ordered Ma’am.” “Yes, Captain Church, why did I just find out during my executive staff meeting that you were detained in a Qatari jail?” Her look said that she demanded more of the story than the…
LET’S GET THIS OUT OF THE WAY: I’m not going to win any casting competitions. As a self-taught angler, my poor habits are deeply ingrained, the result of years spent with mismanaged routines and questionable form. My tailing loops have tailing loops. I’ll often find my backcast hurtling toward something behind me because I’ve managed…
The problem was simple: We were thirsty and couldn’t find beer. Barreling north out of Little Rock, we careened through Ozark mountain highways, pushing that little rented Ford like we were competing in some sort of Redneck Indy Invitational. K.V. must have been as thirsty as I was, because he took the corners fast enough…