THE FIRST BONEFISH TO EAT MY DRY was tailing in ankle-deep water. I threw it two feet ahead of him and left it to dead drift. When he got near, I stripped it and he saw the wake, followed with his head up, hesitated, then turned away. I twitched the fly and he circled it…
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IN 1972 WALT “CLYDE” FRAZIER was holding down the New York Knicks’ backcourt with Earl “the Pearl” Monroe, and my dad came home one day to our suburban Connecticut home at the wheel of a shiny white Mercury Montego MX Brougham. Though it was classified a mid-size, the Montego, with its hood extending into next…
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HUDDLED IN THE CRAMPED HOTEL ROOM, I peer down at the creamer label and see that it and the sugar are both produced by the same Texas chemical company. Looking around, it’s hard to believe that they’ve actually fit two queen beds in here. Every inch of open space is filled with duffel bags, rod…
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DICK MCGUIRE DIED as we fishers should hope to die—fishing his home water. At 82 years of age in 2007, McGuire launched his boat on Ennis Lake and never came home. They found him the next day floating face down. The coroner didn’t perform an autopsy, so we don’t know exactly what caused his death,…
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It’s 2011, the economy’s in the toilet, and businesses are folding at an alarming rate. So what did Allen Gillespie and Jeremy Nelson do? They opened a fly shop. Foolish? A guaranteed loser? Others may have thought so, but these guys dove in, opening 3 Rivers Angler that fall. They wanted to alter the flyfishing…
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Media baron James Cox Kennedy, already owner of more than 3,000 acres in Montana, including both sides of an eight-mile stretch of the Ruby River, has filed a lawsuit this morning claiming that, in fact, he owns all of Montana.
In addition to coaxing Bo into his daily dump on the White House lawn, Obama has been busy declaring national monuments this week. Awesomely, and thanks the Antiquities Act, a President can protect public land through these designations—effectively bypassing Congressional holdups in the process. Theodore Roosevelt did it first when he protected Wyoming’s Devils tower back…
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Steelhead and ‘squatch have something in common. They range in areas dry of major development and soaked in mystique. And those pursuing both have appetites that go way, way beyond scientific benchmarks for sanity. Sasquatch occupies wide spaces in the imagination department. Steelhead, too… but at least we’ve got more than a couple grainy old…
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The great fishing states of Utah and Montana both saw critical public access announcements earlier this week. On the good news front, a 4th District judge rejected much of the Utah’s legal “reasoning” defending a 2010 law that restricts public access to rivers crossing private land, ruling that the public trust doctrine protects recreational use of…
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Chris Lewis over at Skinny Water Culture puts down the rod and rolls camera to the shuffle and glide of a happy, hungry bonefish.
TAOS, NEW MEXICO—After years of collaboration, the iconic Rio Grande del Norte area is finally slated to be protected as a national monument next week. According to TU the monument will be designated on Monday at the request of a diverse group of local interests including hunters, anglers, and traditional land users.
Conservation across Western public lands is not a cheap prospect, considering that what’s buried under the ground has been valued at treasure-like proportions by those intent on tapping it. But that hasn’t stopped groups from making headway in the fight to stymie drilling interests by outcompeting oil and gas companies in the race to purchase…
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Silly kids, tubes are for trout. Daniel Goz and Jan Bach Kristensen, who bucked that sentiment with their award-winning release Tapam at the 2010 Drake Five-Minute Video Awards, recently launched the new e-zine FinChasers.
Barracuda prowling the warm-water reaches of the Lower Keys are currently being targeted and killed by the hundreds for commercial sale at a price of $1 to $1.40 per pound. Is it really worth it?
Approximately 13 million pints of Guinness will be annihilated during this weekend’s St. Patrick’s Day festivities—enough to float 1,000 drift boats in a tidal wave of water, hops, yeast, malted barley, and a fifth fishy ingredient called isinglass.
In just a few hours the Senate is scheduled to vote on an amendment that would strip funding for steelhead and salmon restoration projects all over the west—including those on California’s Sacramento, Klamath, Trinity, Smith, Eel, and Ventura Rivers (among others).
Washington D.C.—rife with politicians and paved with legislative hurdles—is a far cry from the AK backcountry. But that hasn’t stopped Juneau-based flyfishing guide Matt Boline from ditching waders, donning a suit, and entering the melee.
Since Washington State’s Elwha Dam tumbled last year—part of the largest dam-removal project in history—salmon and steelhead are wriggling farther upstream than they have in more than a century. What’s flowing downstream is enough silt, sand, and gravel to carpet all of Seattle in a layer 3 inches thick.
The cratering of wild steelhead populations can be attributed to everything from development, logging, and grazing to climate change, water extraction, dams, commercial fisheries, and hatcheries. Those forces, either in combination or on their own, have led to Endangered Species Act-listings in 11 out of 15 regions on the West Coast. Can the last vestiges…
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“Perhaps the rebuilding of body and spirit is the greatest service derivable from our forests, for of what worth are material things if we lose the character and quality of people that are the soul of America?” Arthur Carhart—widely regarded as a pioneer in wilderness protection—posed that question more than 90 years ago after a…
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The wind blows in Wyoming. So much so that over much of its southern acreage, trees live in a constant state of sideways, bowing to the prevailing forces. Tumbleweed bounces through prairie sagebrush. The earth’s guts, buttes, and sawtooth ridgelines live outside its skin—exposed. There are rivers. And there are generally few roads and people…
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A telling 28-foot pair of scissors and a 160-foot dotted line appeared overnight on the Matilija Dam near Ojai California in 2011. The defunct impoundment on the upper Ventura River blocks steelhead migration and generates no electricity. Over the past decade, plans to remove it have been met with across-the-board agreement, as well as debate…
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For millions of years tarpon have been drawn to the shallow waters of the Florida Keys. In recent times, those fish and their habitats have been steadily displaced by the economic forces of cruise ship tourism. This October, Key West powers-that-be will gamble on a $35 million taxpayer-funded bill to accomplish additional widening of Key…
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Colorado’s Blue River through Dillon and Silverthorne is a city limits stretch complete with big rainbows, riverside outlet shopping, and a 7-Eleven across the street. The Fly Collective—a collaboration between Ivan Orsic (Yukon Goes Fishing) and Russell Schnitzer (schnitzerPHOTO)—goes covert to show a different, darker side of the scene. Just as fishy, just as cold, but entirely…
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In a game of inches the Grand Champion team of Rick Moeller and Capt. Mark Gilman of Islamorada scored big this past weekend, winning the Backcountry Fly Championship and capturing largest snook and redfish honors. Their redfish measured 26.5 inches and 27 inches alongside snook of 28 inches and 29.5 inches for a grand total…
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John Henry Merwin, one of America’s preeminent fishing writers, died at age 66 on Wednesday morning, February 20. He lived near the famous Battenkill River in Dorset, Vt., and died peacefully, surrounded by his family, at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H.
…elected officials need to get with the program. Colorado College’s recently released 2013 Western States Survey packs some compelling results, showing massive discrepancies between voter and politician views on natural resources and public lands—and the roles they play in our economy and quality of life. The poll grills 2,400 voters in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico,…
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