Since Clyde spews more fumes than the collective exhale of a Dead concert audience, an upcoming emissions inspection had him sweating some serious anti-freeze. No more. The issue has been resolved thanks to scoring these sweet 5-year collector plates from DMV.
The Sacramento There’s a special kind of summertime heat reserved for the valleys of California. Even up north, triple digits are common in the Sacramento Valley, which is where I found Clyde parked in Ryan Peterson’s driveway, its black exterior soaking up every ray in Redding. With no AC and an afternoon departure, my first…
George Washington Served: April 30, 1789 – March 4, 1797 America’s Founding Father was not only the Brits’ worst nightmare, he was also a badass woodsman, whiskey distiller, tobacco farmer, and once dabbled in spinning and weaving. We’re excusing the last two knowing that the First Prez also hauled in cash via commercial fishing on…
I recently had the pleasure of visiting Royal Treatment Fly Fishing in West Linn, OR. Upon walking in the door I was greeted by owner, Joel La Follette, who waved me in, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, “Hi Sarah, make yourself comfortable at the fly table, Rob [Crandall] is tying winter steelhead…
Members of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe will tell you that 100-pound Chinook salmon once returned to their namesake river on the northeastern tip of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. While no one can substantiate the existence of these behemoths, one thing is certain: The construction of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams between 1913 and 1927 cut…
When most of us hear the words “steelhead river,” we think “remote.” We imagine bright wild fish and hairy mofos wading waist-deep, bombing Intruders to the far shore. And maybe that’s why so many people cherish Oregon’s Sandy River: it offers the best of steelheading—only thirty minutes from one of the hippist cities in America,…
When you first climb up there, scrambling over the bait well to your perch above the Baja blue, the bow of a panga feels like love itself beneath the soles of your naked feet—warm, slippery, perilous, unstable. The sea, you sense, lies at your command; the authority seems daunting, then reckless, even appalling. For at…
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…
The Fly Fisher’s Place has been a fixture in the quaint town of Sisters, Oregon for nearly 25 years, and is the longest continuously owned shop in all of central Oregon. Jeff Perin, owner of The Fly Fisher’s Place, purchased it 20 years ago, fulfilling a life-long dream of owning a shop just like the…
An excerpt from the winter/spring issue—on shelves now. April rains are metaphysical fertilizers that pollinate your inner wuss, thus giving life to an emotional suckathon. This can threaten to close down winter steelhead season. Yet, despite few fresh upriver fish, with even fewer windows of fishable conditions, and with wet campfires that seldom aspire to…
When John and Shirley Hagan first opened Portland’s Northwest Flyfishing in May of 1993, Czechoslovakia was dissolving, Rodney King was testifying, and the Second Coming of the Spey rod was still a decade away. But 17 years later, the Hagens still offer the quality products and service that East Side Portlanders have come to expect.