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Postcards
I didn’t fish the opener of the winter steelhead season this year. Apparently, I have a thing about symmetry as I didn’t fish the close, either. A combination of real-life factors kept me off the water on these dates. I found solace in a petition to the Steelhead Whisperer for on-the-water reports. Thus it was…
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Win for Washington waters: What it took
Steelheaders, anglers and river-lovers of all types in Washington state have new water quality improvements and greater protections for critical wild fish populations to celebrate this month. Washington is currently the only state in the Pacific Northwest that allows suction dredge mining* in fish habitat listed as critical in the Endangered Species Act, meaning it allows an activity known to…
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Tying with bucktail
When I first started tying flies, I would avoid tying with bucktail altogether—it was unwieldy and my flies never seemed to come out the way I liked them. But, when I started fishing bigger water, and when I started chasing fish in saltwater, I had to get my head around tying with bucktail, and now,…
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Ice fishing for the converted
Ice fishing in Montana When I was a kid, I had this recurring nightmare. I was probably around 7 or 8 at the time. In it, I would be walking down a dirt road with my dad and in the road were a series of big, muddy puddles, the kind you get after a long…
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Querencia: A love of place
In 2011, when I was still president of New Mexico’s Santa Fe (Truchas) Chapter, I was approached by Nick Streit, president of the Taos (Enchanted Circle) Chapter and owner of the Taos Fly Shop, about restoring a section of the Red River in Questa. The Red had been a workhorse for several decades, impacted by…
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Join us for the #CleantheGreen2020 campaign
Whether or not they publicly admit it, every angler has a home river or stream — the place they think of first when even the slightest of openings appear on the calendar. The Green River below Flaming Gorge Dam in northeastern Utah is 200 miles from my front door but it is my home river.…
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More progress on Klamath River dam removal
The impacts of dams on anadromous (sea-run) fish are well documented. But today, many dams have outlived their usefulness, or become unprofitable or unsafe. Removing such dams is now a proven way to recover salmon and steelhead populations. Trout Unlimited has supported the removal or retrofitting of dams on a number of high-profile salmon and…
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