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Giving a voice to Montana rivers
By Joe Newman There is a little run about 200 meters or so upstream of the confluence of Sheep Creek and the Smith River at Camp Baker, where the water rushes over a rock garden creating a melodic "glug glug glug." This past summer I would stand on river left, jus t below those rocks,…
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Fly tying: The Peacock Caddis
Some flies just work, and there's no real explanation as to why that is. The Peacock Caddis is one of those flies, as Tim Flagler perfectly describes in the video below. Video of Peacock CaddisI like this fly for two reasons. First, I think any fly with that "insect green" color put forth by peacock…
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The mystery of Alaska’s missing kings
Alaskans are painfully aware of the recent downturn in king salmon populations on many of our streams. There have, fortunately, been a few glimmers of hope when it comes to this iconic symbol of Alaska. For instance, there was a better than expected return to the Yukon River, which saw the largest number of chinook…
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Video spotlight: Catching Escaped Atlantic Salmon in Puget Sound
Last week, about 300,000 farm-raised Atlantic salmon escaped from a Cooke Aquaculture net pen near Cypress Island in Puget Sound. The fish are not native to the Pacific and there are a host of really good reasons for anglers to get out there are try to catch as many of these fish as possible, not…
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TU bids Chief Tidwell a fond farewell
Tom Tidwell is retiring as Chief of the US Forest Service. It is difficult to overstate the importance of the 191 million acres that the Forest Service manages to trout and salmon. Half of the blue-ribbon trout streams in the country flow across national forests. A vast majority of western native trout and salmon depend…
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Short casts: Casting accuracy, new Orvis book on trout fishing, photos from Labrador and more
Photo by Earl Harper/Hatch Magazine I saw this piece today in Hatch Magazine, and was immediately reminded of this simple lesson when, just the other day while out chasing native cutts in Idaho, I couldn't figure out why my casting accuracy had blown up in my face. It's a longer story than that, of course,…
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Video spotlight: The Fix
About this time every year, anglers in Idaho start watching the numbers of steelhead topping Bonneville Dam on the Columbia. Every steelhead bound for the Gem State has to pass over Bonneville Dam and several more dams, including four on the Lower Snake, before finding their way into the Salmon and Clearwater rivers to spawn…