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Pining for salt
The coronavirus outbreak has put many a travel plan on the back burner this year.
Normally, I would’ve recently returned from a saltwater fishing trip this time of year. But as we all know, 2020 is far from normal. COVID-19 isn’t a great excuse for me because I haven’t even seen the ocean in three years. Priorities, huh? But I can still dream about the trip that could’ve been and reminisce about…
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Nick point
Nick points abound in nature, but are also created by man
For good or ill, nick points change rivers, sometimes forever To put my amateur science skills on full display, I’ve always associated the term with the sins humans have committed against rivers. We built our structures too close, grazed and beat down their banks. We diverted their flows, channelized and dammed them until they were forced to remind us, often…
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Time to get away
A thankful get-away to the river
It was time. Actually, it was well past time. I had to get out of the house. I work from home and have for years, so these stay-at-home orders weren’t a big change for me. But because I’m immunocompromised thanks to ongoing cancer treatments, I haven’t been in town, seen friends nor been anywhere but doctors’ offices for well over…
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The Drunken Two-step
The panga makes for an unsteady dance floor
Fly fishing from a boat is a dance, rarely elegant and frequently anything but. While some watercrafts and bodies of water are more conducive to shaking a leg while wetting a line, a partly covered panga (which truthfully only accommodates approximately 1.5 fly anglers) rolling with tide of the Pacific Ocean will never be high on the list of suitable dance floors. South of the border and 4,500 miles away from the glacial rivers and cold creeks that I call home,…
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Looking back to look forward
These are strange and scary times. The yearning for a return to the normal is palpable. I feel it too, even though the shelter-in-place orders affect me less than many, since I have worked from home for years. No question, this coronavirus business put me in a funk. Fishing is a great funk reliever. But…
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Put, take … and eat
Early season trout fishing on the high desert of Idaho
There’s a little desert trout stream that catches runoff from the Bitterroot and Lemhi ranges in eastern Idaho, and it’s easy to get to, even during spring “mud season.” The creek isn’t anything terribly special, really. It’s managed for water delivery and as a put-and-take fishery—its habitat is pretty marginal, given its high gradient and…
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It’s OK to have a few secret spots
[et_pb_section admin_label="section"] [et_pb_row admin_label="row"] [et_pb_column type="4_4"][et_pb_text admin_label="Text"] Rabid protection of secret spots can be tricky. I think back to one I protected with a vigor that bordered on irrational paranoia. It was a small stream not far from Roanoke, Va., and I fished it for the first time not long after I moved to the…
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