Over the years, Bear’s Den Fly Fishing Company in Taunton, Mass., about forty minutes south of Boston, has earned a reputation for knowing not just the best new gear, but also the value of vintage. It’s a robust shop with an unusually wide range of rod brands: Beulah, Diamondback, Douglas, Echo, G. Loomis, Hardy, Nam, Orvis, Redington, Sage, Scott, St. Croix, TFO, Thomas & Thomas, and Winston…
Spending more time at home lately? Fancy yourself a writer? Could you use $2,500? Then consider entering a submission for the 2020 Robert Traver Fly Fishing Award, sponsored by the John D. Voelker Foundation and the American Museum of Fly Fishing (AMFF). Here is the link to the awards page: https://www.voelkerfoundation.com/traveraward/ and below is the winning submission from 2019—”A Wet World that Burns” by Jimmy Watts (photos by Carson Artac), which first appeared in the summer 2018 issue of The Drake
“I CALL THESE OUR FEEL-GOOD PROGRAMS,” says Dennis Dunsmoor, Director of Colorado Correctional Industries (CCI), referring to several small-scale businesses he oversees, including rod-building, that are run out of the Arrowhead Correctional Center in Cañon City. “We don’t make money off of them, but the offenders learn skills that will help them on the outside.…
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…
Matt Schliske isn’t 90 years old. He does not have a scraggly beard or a cabin in the woods. His driveway shows no signs of potholes and decrepit pickup trucks. And from what I can tell, the 37-year-old does not fit many of the clichés associated with “bamboo rod maker,” other than one: the pursuit…