It’s steelhead season, although here in the Northwest, most folks aren’t nearly as excited about it as they used to be thanks to dismal fish returns in the Columbia River system—it’s an unfortunate recurring theme for anglers in the region who are helplessly watching our prized ocean-going fish dwindle seemingly every season. But for those
We’ve all been there. It’s summer. We’re headed somewhere fishy and the sooner we get there, the sooner we can assemble the 4-weight and hit the water. We’ve squeezed a weekend’s worth of beer and grub into the back of the SUV, and we’re ready to stand knee-deep in a trout stream and wash away
Dave Kielar felt like he had to pinch himself. There he sat, surrounded by what amounted to fly fishing glitterati, at a dinner table at TroutHunter in Island Park, Idaho. Earlier in the week, he got to rub elbows with the venerable Craig Mathews, who for years owned and operated Blue Ribbon Flies in nearby
‘Tis the season. Over the weekend, my buddy and fellow TU-er Kirk Deeter and I faced off in fantasy football. We’re both underachieving this year–it seems we both have the bad fortune to play the highest-scoring opponents in the league every week this season, so we both find ourselves in the middle of the standings,
A fly fisherman searches the water of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho waiting for the elusive tug on the end of his line from a steelhead. Josh Duplechian/Trout Unlimited As a conservation officer with the Idaho Fish and Game Department, Eric Crawford’s work was largely reactive. “I could make a great
