It’s late February and I stumble out the door to grab another beer kept cold by winter’s free refrigeration. If it was anything but the high-octane variety, it would’ve frozen from a lack of alcohol. I pop the cap, drain it, and unzip my pants, melting as much snow as possible when I piss—anything to…
Coming to terms with a new reality This past December, I received an unwelcome holiday surprise. Our corporate overlords rounded up the staff at the magazine where I’ve worked since its inception, twenty-three and a half years prior, to announce our new direction. The upshot: We could still pursue exciting careers in magazine journalism, a…
The last time you wore that coat, campfire stories buried their scent into the seams above the elbow, where embers rose too quickly and charred patchy holes. By looking at the jacket, you taste the bourbon again and your throat burns. You scoured the entire Gunpowder River last fall, ending each weekend with a drink…
Trout fishing in northern Minnesota in the summer is a good way to inhale a lot of bugs. Same for splitting wood, or cutting the grass, or any other sweaty, breathy work. Supposedly, my great-great uncle had a line for this, whenever one of the kids was choking and spitting on a mosquito:
With the Winter 2017 issue of The Drake Magazine on its way to fly shops and mailboxes around the world, we figured we’d chat with Tom Bie about his favorite parts of the upcoming mag. We also hear from authors Dave Karczynski and Michael Graybrook about their recently published books, Smallmouth: Modern Fly Fishing Methods, Tactics…
From meth smuggling escapades and crash landings at the White House to this eagle’s-eye view of B.C.’s Skeena Country… welcome to the dawn of the drone.
Back in the fall, during the second presidential debate, President Obama and Mitt Romney got into a somewhat spirited exchange on the topic of energy. It began by Romney saying that “oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production is down nine percent. Why? Because the President cut in…
We had the winter itch. It needed to be scratched. So scratch we did. I’m not usually big into winter fishing. I’ve spent the vast majority of my life’s winter months in the mountains—riding a snowboard. It’s not I’m against fishing in the winter, it’s simply that I like being on the side of a…
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…
With the announcement this week by the American Fly Fishing Trade Association (AFFTA) that it would “sponsor and/or endorse and/or ignore and/or relocate an Independent Fly Fishing show in 2010,” it came as welcome news to the industry this morning that the trade group has settled on the lobby of the Rock Springs, Wyoming, EconoLodge…
In Montana there are two kinds of winter days-those that are warm enough for fishing and those that aren’t. Here, cold is a relative term. A week of high-sky, 40-degree weather in early November can send the Baetis hatch into submission and seem downright arctic after a month of Indian Summer. Yet a windless February…
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…