By Eric Booton A handful of my fellow Southcentral Alaska trout bums manage to fish year-round on one of the larger river systems that remains mostly open. Frigid waters flow between ice shelves, their invitingly shallow depths a recipe for cold toes and frozen boots. The sun creeps above the ridgetops providing a brief amount
Recovering salmon and steelhead in the Columbia Basin
Today, the U.S. House of Representatives will take up a bill, H.R. 3144, which would undercut the prospects for salmon and steelhead recovery in the Columbia River basin in the Pacific Northwest. HR 3144 offers a regressive response to the challenge of keeping the Columbia’s legendary salmon and steelhead runs viable while ensuring reliable and
Voices from the River: Lady angler goals
Baby Skeena and Baby Morgan on the Kenai River. Photo courtesy of the Williams family By Jenny Weis My dad and uncle fished at our family cabin growing up, my boyfriend taught me how to fly fish, and most fishing trips among my friends were male-only, with no invitation extended to the females. Truthfully, for
Video spotlight: Spawning rainbows
We see a lot of video footage of migrating salmon spawning in Alaska and in other places around the world, but we often forget that our inland trout and char run upstream—just like salmon—to spawn, too. The video below shows spawning rainbow trout spawning this spring in a small tributary stream on the Helena-Lewis and
Voices from the River: Lessons from ‘Curtis Creek’
By Eric Booton Learning to fly fish is always a mild struggle-fest. I personally endured the process with choice words, and extended periods of time with my rod catching more dust than fish. In the past few years I’ve watched friends and family go through a similar love and hate relationship with their fly rod,
Sport organizations tell potential Pebble investor to look elsewhere
“Wrong mine, wrong place.” That’s the message delivered today by 50 fishing and hunting businesses and organizations to First Quantum Minerals, the Canadian mining company currently deciding whether to sign an options agreement with proposed Pebble Mine backer, Northern Dynasty Minerals. In the letter entities including The Orvis Company, the American Fly Fishing Trade Association,
Time to weigh in on Pebble Mine – yes, again!
By: Jenny Weis, Alaska Program This month, we have the first formal chance to weigh in on Pebble’s latest mine plan. Our comments will help ensure the proposed Pebble mine doesn’t become a reality and irreparably harm the Bristol Bay region of Alaska. Photo: Ben Knight In December, the Pebble Partnership applied for the first