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Is it good … or bad to obsess?
Fly fishing is arguably the ideal pastime for someone with obsessive tendencies. Inches matter on the stream, as do thousandths when it comes to spools of tippet or fly-tying thread. A guy I once fished with said he never saved leftovers from home-cooked meals; it was a sanitary thing. Sure. I remember thinking he probably ironed his underwear before putting them away, but…
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Where hope lives: lessons from a limber pine
Editor's note: This piece first appeared in the Summer 2020 print edition of TROUT Magazine. To subscribe to TROUT, simply join Trout Unlimited. The current of the pessimist’s river is strong and dangerous, swift and life-taking. It drowns those who enter its waters, for they do not swim, they bob along, float with it for…
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Do it for the fish that made a river famous
If the determining factor in the effort to save the native Yellowstone cutthroat trout of Idaho’s South Fork of the Snake River is how hard cutthroats fight at the end of a leader … well, then, the fight is already lost. The perception that introduced rainbows—spawned from mongrel strains engineered in hatcheries over decades—offer anglers…
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The Fly Fishing Film Tour goes virtual on Aug. 27
The annual Fly Fishing Film Tour was forced to hit "pause" earlier this spring thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, but, as they say, "The show must go on." After months of deliberations, the film tour's organizers are moving forward with the 2020 F3T, albeit in a virtual fashion. Consumers can purchase tickets to the Fly…
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Don’t ‘dis’ the whitefish that swim next to the trout we love
There’s trout water, and then there’s trout water that also holds mountain whitefish. The latter is likely healthier. Whitefish (Prosopium williamsoni) are often greeted by anglers with the same enthusiasm they might afford a creek chub or a sucker. The slightly downturned snout may not be as appealing as the maw of a wild brown…
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Praying for rain on the Western Slope of Colorado
The thin, cool air and the end of high mountain wildflower season were calling my name. It’s been hot, dry and windy across Colorado, as evidenced by the four wildfires burning vast landscapes across its Western Slope. Rivers are still flowing where I live, but just barely. Many are a trickle and almost all except those in the…
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The desert browns of the Owyhee
TU is leading a coalition of sportsmen to permanently protect the Owyhee Canyonlands The thing that strikes me most about the Owyhee River is the incongruity. This amazing trout stream springs from, and flows for many miles through, a desert. Okay, most of this country is technically sagebrush steppe. But it’s dry, hot and largely…
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