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What’s on your fly-fishing bucket list?
The bowfin, once a bucket-list fish on the fly. When I stared fly fishing, it was solely an endeavor I saved for trout. In fact, I thought fly fishing for anything but trout was foolhardy. Then I started really soaking up the information put out there by the magazines of the day. Old Rod &…
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Video spotlight: Fly fishing the Delta
Not too long ago, the Sacramento River Delta was almost exclusively a salmon and steelhead fishery—kings would stage in great numbers before taking to the river and running throughout the system. Same with chromers. Today, the delta is likely better known for its striped bass and smallmouth bass fisheries, as well as for its carp,…
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Book review: Streamwalker’s Journey—Fishing the Triple Divide
As a western fly fisherman who has never wet a line east of Colorado, I was drawn into Walt Franklin’s account of fishing a variety of rivers and streams near his home along the Pennsylvania/New York border. The watersheds of three rivers – the Genesee, the Allegheny, and Pine Creek – can be traced to…
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Trout Tips: Ditch the indicator
First, a disclaimer: There is absolutely nothing wrong with fishing nymphs with a strike indicator. For a lot of folks, this is a go-to rig for nymphing, and it can be very effective.But, as Garrison Doctor of Rep Your Water points out in the video below, using an indicator isn't the most ... delicate way…
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Voices from the River: Black water
By Chris Hunt The first time I visited a blackwater swamp, I was probably about 12. My dad rented a little jon boat from the marina near Uncertain, Texas, and he manned the tiller as we glided over the glassy waters of Caddo Lake. I was instantly enchanted. At the time, 35 years ago, East…
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Video spotlight: Santa Cruz—Atlantic Steelhead
Steelhead? In the Atlantic?In far southern Patagonia in Argentina's Santa Cruz River, it's a reality. Patagonia, of course, is perhaps the troutiest destination on the planet, and there's a significant amount of irony in that statement, given that not a single salmonid is native to this sweeping region of mountains, deserts and rivers. Tres Amigos…
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Spritzer season
Years ago, when I worked for TU's Public Lands Initiative, we'd often wind down a big day in the field with a cocktail. Back then, the PLI was what I liked to call the TU Delta Force. We existed, but we never really acknowledged that fact—our staffers weren't biologists or policy wonks. We were anglers,…
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