Troutification
Our favorite troutified Swedes are at it again with their new Troutification site—and this banger Vimeo trailer—dedicated to all things troutish. Check it.
Tailwater Weekend: Tikal
Like many extinct civilizations, the ancient Mayans may have eventually just grown too big for their own brilliance. Tikal, for instance, once supported 60,000 to 80,000 inhabitants—part of an estimated population of five million in the overall Maya lowlands by AD 700. And like us, they also relied on dams to manipulate environments to help…
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Wham Bam Carp Slam
Since synchronized carp fondling didn’t make this year’s list of esteemed Olympic alternative sports, Denver once again will play host to the 6th Annual South Platte Carp Slam. The pro-am event, which raised more than $30k last year for local river rehab efforts, kicks off on August 25. Tickets for the New Belgium-fueled Evening on…
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Back to the Beach
Ma Nature continues to show she’s a badass on the Elwha River, where top to bottom changes are unfolding fast. Since the dams dropped the river has started coughing up millions of cubic yards of sediment and other debris trapped in its reservoirs since the early 1900s. According to experts on the scene the river…
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Enbridge the Ef Out
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 Affair
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.
Aitutaki Diaries
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.
White Man Can’t Mako (Uncut)
Some styling mako jumps courtesy of our friend Dave Trimble at California Shark Fishing.
Cutthroat Wage Hoback Comeback
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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TCO Fly Shop Friday
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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Permit Props and Propaganda
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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Rad Scout Earns Rare Badges
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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No Fishing from a Floating Device
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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Bottom Feeders Target Flyshop
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.
DamNation | Trailer
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.
Win Some Montana Fishing
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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High Park Fire Update
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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Highway to Hell Defeated
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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Washed Up in Washington
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.
Bighorn Carp Tourney
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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Goodbye Dam, Hello Steelhead
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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Billionaire Pledges New Easements
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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April’s Crusade to Save Flyfishing
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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Energy Developments—Top to Bottom
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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River Monsters
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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Canned Beer: 7 Standouts
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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Lighten Up: It’s time for a two-weight
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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