Steelheading in the late 90s, before gloves were invented.

Steelheading in the late 90s, before gloves were invented. Photo: Forrest Arakawa

Thanksgiving Fireball. Redemption on the Babine.

Daily Drake, Destination travel, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2020, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Fall 2020, Homepage Content, Lifestyle1 Comment

The whole trip was Forrest’s dumb idea. But for Forrest, enthusiasm overcomes all obstacles. In his world, “Rad” is always capitalized. As in, “Dude! It’ll be so Rad to go fishing right now!” But Smithers over Thanksgiving? Not Canadian Thanksgiving, mind you—on October 12, a perfectly reasonable time to be fishing in northern British Columbia—but American Thanksgiving, a month and a half later.

Alaska West Lodge

Photo: Tosh Brown

American Greed, Inc.

Daily Drake, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Winter 2019, Fly Fishing Industry, Fly Fishing Industry News, Fly Fishing News, Homepage Content, Lodges, Outfitters, and Guides, Policy/Politics/Laws12 Comments

riter and historian David T. Courtwright calls them “limbic capitalists”—people or companies that target our limbic system, the part of our brains primarily responsible for emotion, especially as it relates to pleasure, motivation, and survival. Courtwright is author of The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business. “Biological evolution shaped the limbic system,…

Chasing pike in the Yukon Territory

Yukon – Inconnu Lodge Flyfishing

Destination travel, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Summer 2017, Lodges, Outfitters, and Guides, TroutLeave a comment

Dan caught the only inconnu. Let’s get that out of the way. “Dan” is Dan Armstrong, a well-traveled, Bozeman-based photographer who occasionally gets invited on spectacular fishing trips with the tacit understanding that his job is to record the heroics of the writer and keep his hands off the rod. But it was our last…

IT’S AN EARLY MAY MORNING IN SOUTHEAST ALASKA AND I WAKE TO THE SOUND OF SOMETHING EATING CRACKERS.

Two Sides of Southeast Alaska

Destination travel, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2012, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Spring 2012, Lifestyle, Salmon/Steelhead, U.S. places2 Comments

Rolling over from my plywood perch on the top bunk, I peer down to see all three of my cabinmates asleep. So I rule them out. Slipping the headlamp from beneath my pillow and turning on the light reveals not one but two Alaska-sized mice sitting on top of a cooler, munching saltines. I stare…

Meet the Deke

Meet the Deke

Destination travel, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2007, Freshwater Fly Fishing, Salmon/SteelheadLeave a comment

FLOWING WATER, BY DESIGN, HAS A SANCTIMONIOUS way of pre-qualifying its clientele. Gentle riffles and wide gravel bars lure the false-casting masses, and boiling black holes rimmed with mossy ledge rock frighten them away. That said, I suppose there’s really no great mystery why the easy flows produce the fussy little degree-candidate fish, while the…

Retracing steps in the Skeena Valley

(Still) Steelhead Paradise

Destination travel, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Fall 2013, Humor, Lifestyle, Salmon/SteelheadLeave a comment

I pulled into the Aspen Recreation Site just before 10 a.m. on Wednesday, October 3rd, after a 13-hour, nearly nonstop rental-car bender from Vancouver. The site is the lowest of three B.C. Ministry campgrounds along the Morice River, sitting about eleven miles southwest of Houston—home of the world’s largest fly rod, the world’s largest sawmill,…

APOSTLES : SCOTT HED

Apostles : Scott Hed

Conservation, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2011, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Winter 2011, Lifestyle, Salmon/Steelhead, U.S. placesLeave a comment

Severed by North Dakota, the Saskatchewan plains, Alberta tar-sands, and British Columbia’s snow-covered Coast Mountains, Gaylord, Minnesota, is far removed from a proposed large-scale Alaskan mining operation and the toll it would take on anadromous fish runs. But it’s in Gaylord that Sportsman’s Alliance of Alaska Director Scott Hed had lived a quintessential Midwestern life—playing…

Trask

A Fishing Dog: The Life and Times of Trask

Destination travel, Dogs, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2011, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Summer 2011, HumorLeave a comment

Steelheading in Smithers was a little different fourteen years ago than it is today. For starters, there were very few spey rods. Also, a hotel in town was about $80—a week. But then, as now, as always, which river you fished was sometimes decided by the weather. We’d hauled a skiff all the way from…

Steelhead Highways

Photo by Tim Scott

Seven Steelhead Highways

Destination travel, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2009, Salmon/Steelhead, U.S. placesLeave a comment

Hwy 101, from Northern California to Port Angeles, Washington. No stretch of highway in the country crosses more prime steelhead water than this one. Start on California’s Klamath or Smith, then head up to Oregon’s Rogue or the great Tillamook Bay rivers like the Trask and Wilson, and then finish up on the drippy Washington…