“A brook trout wouldn’t last five minutes in this water,” I say to Haroldo as he leans over the gunwale and washes the slime off his knife. “Never mind the water temperature he’d be dead before he ever felt the heat.” Haroldo looked up, smiled, and nodded like he understood. “You believe in natural selection?”…
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The sun is high overhead as I step out of the trees, drop my pack and flop down on the grass, watching the wind send long ripples across the lake. Bear, my grey-muzzled companion, quenches his thirst in the cool water We’ve been hiking all day and while my legs and lungs feel the mileage,…
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See them coming, swimming toward you like ducks across the sky at dawn. It’s hard for a Northern Rockies trout chaser to fathom: no hatch to match, no current seam to aim for, just you and a couple dozen bonefish headed your direction. Throw it too late and you’ll spook ’em. Too early and your…
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“It’s been a grand tournament so far – don’t you think?” asked the prideful chairman to the leather-tanned skiff guide approaching the trophy table. “Grand, perhaps, in the sense of fine weather,” the guide scoffed with a sidewise glance toward the competitors gathered on the dock. The chairman set down his Styrofoam cup with the…
DetailsI grew up in Detroit, a city whose belching smokestacks and clamoring auto plants preach a relentless contempt for mass transportation. Yet when I moved to Washington, D.C., I fell in love with trains—the grand stations and comforting rhythms of the ride hooked me. I eventually ditched my car completely, relying solely on bike, cab…
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–Mike Muri It’s an orgy that would have made caligula jealous. an unusually warm mid-may day filled with frenzied lovemaking, the participants’ bodies locked together coupling with a purpose, oblivious to all that surrounds them. Onlookers are left to gape in wonder as caddisflies in every shape, color, and size procreate with an intoxicating intensity.…
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Ephemerella grandis is, like the rest of us, a sex fiend. From the moment he sheds his heavy, heinous body of youth, his thoughts are dominated by mayfly fornication-drake nookie, if you will. He can’t sleep. He can’t eat. He can do nothing but flutter about on the breezes of desire, looking above the river…
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The pacific ocean covers 70 million square miles of this planet. A vast network of birthing rivers is needed to fill a biologically meaningful portion of so great a sea with salmon. One of the most crucial of such networks is the Columbia/Snake river system, a single great Y-shaped flow, each wing of the Y…
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Flyfishing is a sexy sport. This I know because I’m in awe of good fishermen, which has left me attracted to grubby guys I normally wouldn’t have noticed except maybe to offer them change. I’m not too experienced a flyfisher and I’m a terrible flirt, yet when it comes to mixing the two together I…
DetailsSpringtime on the Bighorn and the midges are thick, blanketing the water, your dory, and your legs if you let them. They look like ‘skeeters but aren’t, and despite their huge numbers on the surface, many trout will still hold tight to the river bottom, living large on midge larva trying to worm-wiggle their way…
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The second time I met R. L. Winston’s Bamboo Guru, Glenn Brackett, he was in the Twin Bridges Post Office. It was my first week in town and I was hot to get a few letters off with the new postmark. I walked in past Glenn and a couple of ranchers who were leaning up…
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Ka-plop! Okay, that’s it! The second cartop-to-windshield avalanche at a stop sign is a strong signal: Ditch Jackson winter for somewhere that mosquitoes, sunscreen and T-shirts outnumber gloves, parkas and plug-in car heaters. Evacuation by car is the answer. Unfortunately my ol’ gear room isn’t primed for fast winter getaways. I figure at least two…
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One is a ridiculed fish.One is a ridiculed haircut.We explain the difference.
When booking the trip, inform your guide that you are prone to epileptic seizures, get kidney dialysis twice a week, and are recoverÂing from surgery on both your knees. You can’t walk very far or stay confined in small spaces for more than a couple of hours, but would like to get on uncrowded waters…
DetailsFly shop guy is staunchly heterosexual, twentyÂsomething, and uncertain of his politics. Fly shop guy spent six or seven years at a southern university and is named Justin, Jeremy, Jonathan, Gifford, Trevor, Tripp or Tristan. Fly shop guy will say things across the river when fishing is poor like, “Holy shit, dude, even the choice…
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United States | Canada
IT STARTED WITH A CAST, an offering, that didn’t get hooked in the willows behind you or the pine tree overhead but instead sailed out above the water and landed near the intended zone, near enough anyway, that something took it. Whether or not a fish was hooked matters little. It was a proposal, and…
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— Michal Murri It’s getting dark now so I’m going for it. Through crawling along the bottom of this dark and dreary river, I’m headed for shore, across this riffle, bringing my wings and wishes with me. I’ve been here for two years, ya know, “foraging,” as they say, on tiny plant matter and other…
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Three, is the magic number — Blind Melon Portrait of a Passionate Trio On a fishing trip, or a road journey of any kind, really, three people offers the perfect mix. One to drive, one to handle tunes and navigate, and one to sit in back and pass important items up front when necessary.
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It only took a few minutes kneeling and staring into the ripples before I spotted a fish. A cutthroat, maybe 10 inches long, darted from behind a rock into the undercut bank. Walking this spread earlier in the afternoon, ranch broker Greg Fay told me that since he began restoring this creek along Montana’s Ruby…
DetailsSee them coming, swimming toward you like ducks across the sky at dawn. It’s hard for a Northern Rockies trout chaser to fathom: no hatch to match, no current seam to aim for, just you and a couple dozen bonefish headed your direction. Throw it too late and you’ll spook ’em. Too early and your…
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The game, it seems, is to see who can use the smallest boat to catch the biggest fish. And Adam Kimmerly is getting good at it. Kimmerly discovered sit-on-top kayak fishing a little more than a year ago, not long after moving to San Diego. Now it’s his passion.
You’re a cab driver in New York City in 1971, trying to make a right hand turn at a busy Manhattan intersection but there’s some cocky bike messenger in your way and he won’t move. So you nudge him. Not hard, just enough to let him know that you’re in a cab and he’s on…
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The sound builds slowly in early afternoon, decibel levels rising and fading in a never-ending sequence you recognize as cicadas. They emerge every 13 or 17 years, depending on species. It’s very predictable and natural, like the moon and tides, but hatches some years are more epic than others and when the cycles overlap, the…
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The fish were in, Savone said, had been since March. So we found them that April morning, a 45-minute upstream hike from the high tide mark. Steelhead. A threesome here, half dozen there, big, slab-sided, and salmon-sized, all holding in those tannic Alaskan riffles. We cast bright streamers at them well into the afternoon, flexing…
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