Why flyfishing works for traumatically wounded combat veterans The two pairs of boots sit next to each other on my closet floor: old, waterproof, knee-high LaCrosse Alphas, and the tan combat boots that I wore as a paratrooper fighting in Afghanistan. I’m attached to them both, but for very different reasons. I enlisted in 2008,…
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“The Mend” is a heartfelt story about a promising high-school football coach, who’s star player is also his son. After losing the championship game to crosstown rivals, a rift forms in the family dynamic. Years later the father-son duo, with the help of a river, find a way to reconnect. Directed by Broc J. Isabelle.…
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Revivalists and renegades in South Florida’s Everglades It begins as a subtle unzippering across the surface. Nothing more than shape and motion—forcing the brain to calculate distance to target, direction of movement, and speed of travel. These computations form the basis of what comes next: an attempt to drop a bottlecap-sized fly in the path…
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Not the leave-behind you wanted My father stood in the middle of the Beaverhead River, looking upstream calmly but urgently, almost how he looks when he’s sorting cows. This was a little different. His reel and his rod’s butt section were sitting on the bank. And he had a question. “Do fly rods float?” We’d…
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Just another walk on the beach My primary tactic for snook in South Florida revolves around what my friend, Bear, calls “people avoidance.” It’s become a mantra that leads us toward, through, and past things—not only what river-section to float or campsite to choose, but when to pick up or set down certain hobbies, learn…
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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…
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A winter of discontent in Ennis If your summer plans include a tailwater weekend along Montana’s Madison River, you won’t be alone. In early April 2018, after years of surveys, public meetings, and citizen advisory committees, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) released its draft Recreational Management Plan for the Madison, which included some alarming…
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Horseshoes & Hand Grenades’ Russell Pedersen releases fishy solo album Deliverance references notwithstanding, a drive to the river is always made better with banjo music. Good banjo tunes, like good trout streams or musky rivers, find just the right pace, yet still flow and wind toward unexpected places. Few people understand that better than Russell…
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“Journey of the Silver King” follows Megalops Atlanticus on his poon-y quest for sex, grub and a seat at the throne. With the help of Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, his Keys Kingdom is looking prime for an on-time royal welcome. Journey of the Silver King from Bonefish and Tarpon Trust on Vimeo.
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Chica de Mayo has proven to be a massively successful women’s flyfishing fiesta. And, if you’re anywhere near Bozeman on Saturday, May 11, be sure to drop by The River’s Edge West and SIMMS Fishing Products to see what’s new. “This year, we’re expanding our educational offerings and also hosting an event kick off social/trunk…
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The John D. Voelker Foundation and the American Museum of Fly Fishing are now accepting submissions for the 2019 Robert Traver Flyfishing Writing Award. The author of the winning essay will pocket $2,500. (Enough beer money to see you through run off. Maybe.) The Traver Award was created in 1994 by Nick Lyons and the…
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The West may experience a lengthy runoff in 2019 While it’s always tricky making May or June runoff predictions in March, Snotel data from around the West indicates that snowpack levels, especially in Southern Colorado, Southern Utah, and parts of California’s Central Sierras, are poised in 2019 to create high flows or a long runoff…
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Lager for good times and good causes On a recent redfishing trip to Louisiana, I was introduced to SweetWater Brewing Company’s newest offering, Guide Beer, which officially launches to the public in May. On our way out of Atlanta, I’d managed to score a six-pack of a promotional run from my friend Andy Bowen, who…
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Mystique, mayhem, and the palolo worm hatch Late May, Florida Keys. Four in the afternoon. Skiffs buzz back to docks with tired guides and sun-drunk clients. Thoughts of missed shots and cold beer. A dying easterly rustles palm fronds; thunderheads lurk like massive silver anvils. Oceanside, brown bonefish flats sport crisscrossing prop scars. Between the…
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Sowbellies and baseball in the Cornhusker State Dawn comes early to southern Nebraska on the 16th of June. Nautical twilight, second of the earth’s three twilight phases, begins before 5 a.m. in Kearney, a town of some 30,000 sitting just off I-80 about three hours west of Omaha. I stopped in Kearney last summer on…
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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…
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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.”…
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We’ve followed Chris Owens, Brian Jill, Thad Robinson and Jay Johnson onscreen, navigating gnarly fishing terrain and living to tell about it, for years. This month the well-vaccinated foursome brings the “Fish or Die” party to Animal Planet. “They are not survival experts, but these close friends are determined to work together and boldly follow…
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Plastic is not only filling our landfills but is finding its way into our waterways and onto the flats. Kick Plastic was launched by Costa to help reduce the amount of plastic it uses as a company and to mobilize a movement. Abaco Lodge owner Oliver White is on board, eliminating single-use water bottles at…
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“This summer I had a single task: spread my mother’s ashes somewhere in Alaska. In May I set out, two black Labs in tow, with the idea of finding the ideal resting spot. I drove the 3,000 miles of the Al-Can Highway, my mom’s ashes bumping along somewhere among the camping gear, bags of dog…
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The wader-repair department at Patagonia is a standalone, self-sustained operation in a hard-to-find corner of a 342,000-square-foot warehouse in Reno, Nevada, just steps from the rainbows, browns, and—as of last summer—native Lahontan cutthroat of the Truckee River. The department is little more than a series of temporary walls erected on the edge of the receiving…
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Two Florida anglers who lost tens of thousands of dollars in fly shop inventory are now back in the hunt for a new business location after recovering most of their pilfered merchandise.
This episode of the DrakeCast takes a deep dive into the seedy underworld of a fishy religion in the Ozarks. Think Deliverance but with john boats instead of canoes. And at the center of this aquatic orthodox are two deities: the almighty streamer and the holy brown trout. But these aren’t your typical streamers or browns.…
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Meet Jack Buccola — a 12-year-old angler from Bend, Oregon. In RA Beattie’s new film, NexGen, we see the rivers of the American West unfold through Jack’s eyes as he witnesses the impact of wildfires on his home waters, and explores new adventures on a road trip with his father, Ryan, friend, Judd Field, and…
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If you linger around a fly shop long enough on a slow day, you’ll eventually hear some crazy and creative fishing plans. My shop—Arbor Anglers in Golden, Colorado—is no exception, and on a recent afternoon in late October, the fishing plans got a little nuts. What started with: “We should find a big-ass shark-mount somewhere…
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The last time you wore that coat, campfire stories buried their scent into the seams above the elbow, where embers rose too quickly and charred patchy holes. By looking at the jacket, you taste the bourbon again and your throat burns. You scoured the entire Gunpowder River last fall, ending each weekend with a drink…
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