Madison River Fishing Companies

Daily Drake, Fly Fishing News, Flyshop Friday, Homepage Content, Lodges, Outfitters, and Guides, TroutLeave a comment

“I don’t really want to talk you into coming here,” said Capt. Joe Dilschnieder, owner of the Madison River Fishing Company in Ennis, Montana, while chatting a few weeks ago. I’m personally not a huge fan of the Madison River, well, mostly the crowds that come to fish this iconic Montana stream. In fact, when I was an outfitter in Livingston, I judged our fishing by how rarely I was forced to make the drive to the Madison. But even back then, I always enjoyed running into Joe. He makes everyone feel welcome, whether on the river or in his shop. I also found Joe’s path to being a fly shop owner and renowned guide on the Madison to be a compelling tale…trout bum makes good.

St. Peter’s Fly Shops

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In the late 1880s, a stone mason in Fort Collins, Colorado began building a home out of materials he had salvaged from the decommissioned county jail. After its completion in 1889, this structure would go on to house several mayors, serve as a hospital, and enter the national register of historic places before becoming a fly shop. The shop’s founder had a brother who was a Trappist monk so he named the shop after St. Peter, the great fisherman and disciple of Jesus. Since 1992, St. Peter’s Fly Shop has been servicing, outfitting, and educating Colorado’s Front Range.

Sunset over Hungry Trout Resort and the Adirondacks

Hungry Trout, Tasty Flies

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Evan Bottcher grew up in the Hungry Trout Fly Shop located in the heart of the Adirondacks. The Shop is deep in upstate New York about 90 minutes south of Montreal, Canada. “I would get off the school bus at my dad’s fly shop and hang out until my mom got home,” Evan says. “In those days, it felt like it was full of old timers. It was all anglers older than 50.” Evan, who took over the shop from his father in 2011, explains that in the last decade the younger guides and patrons have given the shop a new, cooler spirit. “The industry has evolved. It is more affordable for people to get into the sport now with less expensive packages, new techniques, and new flies,” explains Evan. “But there is so much knowledge from the old timers that will be lost if it isn’t written down.”

Hilary Hutcheson and Ebon Robinson in Columbia Falls, Montana's Lary's Fly & Supply

Lary’s Fly & Supply

Daily Drake, Fly Fishing Industry, Fly Fishing Industry News, Fly Fishing News, Flyshop Friday, Homepage Content, Trout1 Comment

“Are you Lary?” is a question Ebon Robinson, shop manager, gets asked often. He is not, but you can’t blame folks for asking the question. He is standing behind the counter of Lary’s Fly and Supply in Columbia Falls, Montana. And he is a dude. 

Deschutes Angler Fly Shop

Daily Drake, Fly Fishing Industry, Fly Fishing Industry News, Flyshop Friday, Homepage Content, Lodges, Outfitters, and Guides, Salmon/Steelhead, Trout, U.S. placesLeave a comment

Amy and John Hazel, owners of Deschutes Angler Fly Shop in Maupin, Oregon, are committed to consistency. “I’ve never had anybody fish a single-handed rod, and we’ve never had anyone nymph fish for steelhead,” says Amy. “It’s always been swinging, it’s always been a floating line, and it’s always been small surface-flies that are no deeper than a couple inches.” For more than twenty-five years the couple has guided the Deschutes the way they wanted to, mainly because they feel it’s the most effective way to target the river’s summer-run steelhead. 

Laurel Hell Featured Pic

Finding solitude in Appalachia

Fishing a Laurel Hell

Daily Drake, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2021, Fly Fishing News, Homepage Content, U.S. places1 Comment

In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost. —Dante Alighieri, The Inferno

In Appalachia, there’s no straight way to travel. Laurel hell grows thick, and the only way to navigate it is to put your feet in a streambed and follow every meander and oxbow of the creek.

Photo by James Fuller

Rodney Noel Jarvis

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Sitting on my fly-tying desk, on a shelf above the straggle chenille and holographic tinsel, is an 80-year-old Richard Wheatley fly tin. The edges of its aluminum lid, with that distinctive satin finish, are rubbed bright from the friction of bouncing about in a fly-vest pocket. It bears the inscription:

R.N. Jarvis

4, Short St.

Cambridge

Drake Magazine 2020 Winter

JUST OUT CATCHING LAS VEGAS LUNKERS.

Flyfishing Sin City

Daily Drake, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Winter 2020, Freshwater Fly Fishing, Homepage Content, Humor, Lifestyle, U.S. places1 Comment

I thought I was still buzzed from the night before when I first saw what appeared to be a person lounging in a yellow pool-floatie on the water. “Only in Vegas,” I thought. Some drunk idiot ends up using Lake Bellagio as his personal swimming pool. But looking closer, I could see that the person was a man moving his arm back and forth a few times before bringing it to rest. “Is he casting?”

Drake Magazine Southeast Alaska Tongass

Photo by Jim Klug

The Roadless Rule in America’s Salmon Forest

Conservation, Daily Drake, Destination travel, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Winter 2019, Freshwater Fly Fishing, Homepage Content, Lodges, Outfitters, and Guides, Opinion, Policy/Politics/Laws, Salmon/SteelheadLeave a comment

“Judge Sharon Gleason, U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Alaska, ruled last week that the Forest Service violated federal law by approving future logging in the 16.7 million-acre Tongass National Forest.”

I pay my bills here in Southeast Alaska, at least in part, by having short and intense conversations on airplanes. I help wedge wadered clients from all over the globe into DeHavilland Beavers, then drop in on some of the planet’s most spectacular temperate rainforest

A FAT BATCH OF NEWLY MINTED ELWHA CHROME.

PHOTO BY SHANE ANDERSON

Undeleted – Story of Elwha River

Conservation, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Fall 2019, Salmon/Steelhead, The Put In, TroutLeave a comment

The return of the Elwha’s steelhead Give a rainbow trout a direct line to the ocean and you have a potential steelhead. Throw a dam in its path and watch anadromy hit a wall. Salmonids in Washington State’s Elwha River, on the northeastern edge of the rain-soaked Olympic Peninsula, found their long-lost gateway to the…

"HOW CAN I BE THE ONLY ONE OUT HERE FISHING?"

PHOTO BY NICK PRICE

Snook and Solitude

Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Summer 2019, Lifestyle, The Put In, U.S. placesLeave a comment

Just another walk on the beach My primary tactic for snook in South Florida revolves around what my friend, Bear, calls “people avoidance.” It’s become a mantra that leads us toward, through, and past things—not only what river-section to float or campsite to choose, but when to pick up or set down certain hobbies, learn…

Patagonia's Riverside Warehouse

Photo: Julie Brown

Patagonia’s Riverside Warehouse

Conservation, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Winter 2018, The Put In, U.S. placesLeave a comment

The wader-repair department at Patagonia is a standalone, self-sustained operation in a hard-to-find corner of a 342,000-square-foot warehouse in Reno, Nevada, just steps from the rainbows, browns, and—as of last summer—native Lahontan cutthroat of the Truckee River. The department is little more than a series of temporary walls erected on the edge of the receiving…

Slow Motion Masterpiece

Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Fall 2018, Fly Fishing Art, Fly Fishing Industry, The Put In, Trout, U.S. places, Video/FilmLeave a comment

The film opens with a ten-second zoom toward campfire flames that dance and swirl in the darkness. The viewer’s eyes are drawn to the underbelly of the largest log, crosshatched and ashen from the heat. Jump-cut to a small stream, lit by autumn light, shorelines framed by a blaze of fallen leaves. An angler appears,…