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Video spotlight: Big Pike on a Fly
The Canada-heavy series The New Fly Fisher (the show will occasionally come south of the border to highlight American fisheries, too) is one of my favorite fly-fishing shows to enjoy, largely because of episodes like the one below. I first ventured north to chase pike on the fly a little over a decade ago, and…
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Salmon & Steelhead habitat in Washington head toward new safeguards
Pictured: Washington's Yakima River. Photo by J Brew By: Dean Finnerty Suction dredge mining has spelled trouble for salmon and steelhead habitat in Washington state. Recently, Trout Unlimited unearthed documents that suggest that motorized suction dredge mining has been allowed as an accident for the last 20 years. As a result of this oversight, some…
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Short casts: Old dog, new tricks; Far Cry fishing; Instagram fishing pics; the town dock, and more
Never underestimate the town dock. Photo courtesy of Hatch Magazine. We've all been there ... fishing the methods we know and have generally mastered, or the methods we truly enjoy. Sometimes our hubris gets in the way of being effective—this is how we like it, therefore, this is how it's done. Chester Allen had a…
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Voices from the River: The BFW pattern
"The friends I can count on, I can count on one hand". — Anonymous I have a fishing buddy who's fond of sayings and that particular one has resonated with me. He's always been one of the guys I have counted on. Not sure he can say the same thing about m e. We are…
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Video spotlight: Into the Wild
When the float plane disappears into the ether and all you're left with is the pile of gear you unceremoniously tossed from the hold, it takes a minute to realize that you're actually "out here," on the margins of survivability. You're alone (not lonely—that's different). You've got nothing but time to kill before that plane…
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Good Tunes, Good Times and Tight Lines!
Good Tunes, Good Times and Tight Lines! Hard to argue with that. When I asked Ben Noland recently if he’d be interested in supporting Trout Unlimited and my steelhead conservation work in the west, he immediately replied, “Of course, the biggest trout I ever caught was an Idaho steelhead!” Ben passed me along a photo…
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Fly tying: UV resin to secure parachute hackle
Proof that really good fly tiers are also real innovators, Tim Flagler, in the short video below, demonstrates yet another way to tie a parachute-style dry fly. The method he demonstrates below seemed pretty dubious to me, but Flagler swears by it. Video of Parachute Hackle Method - "UV to the Post"Parachute-style dry flies are…