Enbridge Inc. is a Canadian oil company evidently owned and operated by a bunch of morons who may or may not have taken lessons from another bunch of morons over at BP. In fact, its recent spill of more than 1,000 barrels of oil in a Wisconsin field comes almost two years to the day after…
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HAVANA—Cuban President Raul Castro recently said that his government is willing to mend fences with the United States and sit down to discuss anything. A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G. If this means a chance to rap unlimited access to permit, tarpon, bonefish, mojitos, and the mambo… we’re listening.
What to do when stuck in Aitutaki—in the Cook Islands, north of Rarotonga? 1) Get shitfaced with locals. 2) Make music with Ricky. 3) Hook your first “big as hell” bonefish. Lose it. Laugh. Cry …to be continued.
Some styling mako jumps courtesy of our friend Dave Trimble at California Shark Fishing.
JACKSON—The Hoback River cutthroat fishery is rebounding well since Wyoming Game and Fish stopped stocking it with hatchery-raised fish. For years, the Hoback was run as a put-and-take trout factory jammed with 4- to 6-inch fry that mostly failed to reproduce in the wild. The waterway, along with several other rivers around Wyoming, was slowly weaned off…
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Flyfishing may be good in the West but it was definitely brought here, not born here. And if you’re looking to source the cradle of the sport, best turn a 180 and squint toward the bustling metropolises of the east and a little place called Pennsylvania. Its list of flyfishing trailblazers is long and Tulpehocken…
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Although we’re not huge on corporate newsletters, our own included, the latest edition of the Palometa Club’s version was dripping with enough permit porn to make us stand erect and salute. It also includes our Passports Mexico piece on Punta Allen and additional words on Mexico flats fishing by Drake contributor Chris Santella in the…
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Scouts are totally making a comeback this summer thanks to this doofy kid (Jared Gilman) and Wes Anderson’s new movie Moonrise Kingdom—an epic tale of young lovers on the lam from the law and their parents. Real life Boy Scout Robert Raycraft, 18, has taken the scouting rep a step further by earning “rare badges” in…
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WASHINGTON—The Wild Steelhead Coalition is asking you to take a minute to review the 2012 Rule Proposals developed by its Science and Policy Committee and submitted to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to help protect wild steelhead. Some highlights, that are sure to be controversial with the boat and bobber contingent, include NO…
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A Tacoma flyshop was recently jacked to the tune of $40,000. Anil Srivastava, owner of the Puget Sound Fly Company, says burglars snuck in through a vacant space next to the business and snatched a pile of rods, reels, and cash.
Dams have a finite lifespan. And for many of them across the nation, their time is up. DamNation is a story-driven film featuring the environments, fish, and people entrenched on both sides of the dam removal debate.
According to Orvis, its online Learning Center is an “incredible resource that is, in essence, as complete an education of fly fishing as can be had on the web.” But since you already know it all (smart asses) you can skip the flash cards and quizzes and get to the sweepstakes by entering your e-mail…
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For those following the High Park wildfire outside of Fort Collins, containment is coming full circle and looks like our backyard Poudre River is—at least for now—back in business. According to Forest Service officials, Highway 14 has been reopened. Big thanks to our local fire crews and Red Cross workers who’ve had their hands full…
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That’s a big “Hell yeah!” from our friends at Save Our Wild Salmon, who tell us the threat from Exxon to the lower Snake River and Idaho/Montana Highway 12 is over, at least for now. Imperial Oil, owned by Exxon, has withdrawn its application to the Montana Department of Transportation to transport massive tar sands…
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The mystery 20-foot fiberglass boat that recently washed ashore at Cape Disappointment State Park on Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula has been linked back to Japan’s March, 2011, tsunami. The long migrating, barnacled vessel spent 15 months in the Pacific Ocean before it hit the beach for a much needed breather.
Last year we were introduced to some wicked Bighorn Lake carping thanks to The Bighorn River Alliance’s annual carp tourney in Fort Smith, MT. Carp patrol consisted of 25 teams, launching en masse from the Ok-A-Beh Marina, and sourcing big lips hoovering down dry flies—cicada style. The 2012 “Big Lips International Carp Tournament” takes place…
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The California Public Utilities Commission has approved the largest dam demolition project in California history, calling for removal of the aging San Clemente Dam from the Carmel River on the Monterey Peninsula. Removing the dam will restore access to 25 miles of critical steelhead habitat, in addition to reestablishing ecological connectivity for other threatened species…
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COLORADO—For those unfamiliar with Louis Bacon—no relation to Kevin—he is a billionaire New York hedge-fund manager with buckets of land in Colorado’s southern Rockies. He has also pledged to protect 90,000 acres of his ranch properties from future in-state development (read: eminent domain) as part of federal conservation easements, the largest to date in the…
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Outside Magazine has evidently found its flyfishing equivalent of Lance Armstrong in the form of April Vokey. And it paints a dire straights image of the current state of flyfishing in this recent blog post, highlighting Vokey’s “crusade to save a foundering sport.” Does flyfishing need a savior a al Joan of Ark? Not so…
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Northern British Columbia is about to get ultra-gassy thanks to a recent find by Apache Corp. in the remote and largely unexplored Liard Basin area. The company is calling it the “best and highest quality” shale gas reservoir in North America, with enough volume to justify doubling the size of the Kitimat terminal it’s proposing with partners…
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One of the many appealing aspects of tarpon fishing is that tarpon come up for air, allowing anglers, in most cases, to view their quarry before casting to it. Just seeing a group of 100-pound ‘poons rolling on the surface can be almost as exciting as that first strip-set. So imagine taking the largest tarpon…
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Way back in August of 2010, we celebrated the 200th anniversary of the can—canned soup, canned beans, canned tuna. This summer, it’s about the beer. Once considered a sub-par compromise when bottles weren’t available, cans are quickly becoming the preferred vessel for many a craft beer-drinker, particularly flyfishers, rafters, and other marginally employed types. Cans…
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One of the only upsides to having a drought year out West is that we can backpack up to the high country a few weeks earlier than normal. And since it’s hard work getting up there, don’t shortchange your trip by bringing that broomstick of a six-weight or that noodley old fiberglass rod because “it…
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Bamboo fly rods are a little like herpes. Both are achieved out of lust which, in the light of day, provokes a certain retrospective guilt. Both, once acquired, invoke the sort of awe that elicits careful handling, and—be it split-cane rod or irritated genitalia—the newfound host might find himself wondering “Damn… should I even touch…
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I thought I was just sharing a lark—fine: I was bragging—when I posted a Facebook update a month after moving from Missoula, Montana, to Oberlin, Ohio: “Just caught a dozen bluegill on a fly rod in a light rain standing on the shore of Oberlin Reservoir. I think I’d forgot how much fun fishing could…
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At 37 feet long, 9,000 pounds, and three miles to the gallon, Clyde didn’t fit well in Berkeley, literally or figuratively. I passed an electric car with a bumper sticker that said, “Animals are just little people in fur coats,” and eased on toward the Sac.
RENO, NV—Dear aspiring showgirls and filmmakers… the 7th Annual Flyfishing Video Awards showdown, presented by Simms and The Drake, is slated for Thursday, August 16 at the Atlantis Casino in Reno. The official call-out for entries has been served, with movies due by Wednesday, August 1.