Currently browsing… Fly fishing
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Texas fly fisher lands giant blue catfish … on a 4-weight
Ben Christensen with his record blue catfish from Texas' Pedernales River. Photo courtesy of Instagram. From the "holy smokes!" department, here you go... Texas fly fisher Ben Christensen convinced a 31.55-pound blue catfish in the Pedernales River to eat an olive damselfly nymph, and after 40 minutes and a couple of backing runs, the fish…
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What’s the best polarized lens for fishing?
I get asked this question all the time. If you let the sunglasses companies answer, they’ll say there is no answer—they want to sell you one lens for low-light, one for saltwater fishing, one for cloudy days on a river, and on and on. Can’t say I blame them for wanting to make money, and…
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The lost art of roll casting
I wonder why we don’t pay more attention to roll casting. I can’t count the number of books written about perfecting loops and the overhead cast, but there’s a lot less on roll casting. This, despite the fact that when I’m actually fishing, I find myself rolling over false casting at about a 3-to-1 ratio……
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Love in the time of climate change
For one angler, a wounded California is better than no California at all It was a classic Yuba day with Joe and the Butler brothers—a 105-degree scorcher with the river inviting swimming as much as fishing. As typical as it seemed, the river was in many ways new to me. It had been two years…
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Quick tip: How to rehab an old rusty trailer
One of the trailers was already prepped and ready to go while the other one was dirty and had surface rust covering most of it. We remove the wheels, I then hit the rusty one with a sander
This tip came to me from newly found friend Cody Richardson. You may know Cody from his incredibly creative use of license plates to make customized fish art. Apparently he's a bit of a boat head too, and definitely knows his way around a shop. This past weekend, he made use of some fancy Sherwin-Williams…
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Choosing a rod is about the flies, not the fish
I had always assumed that an angler chooses a fly rod based on the type of fish they wanted to chase. Turns out, that’s not exactly true. Sure, a 5-weight is probably still the gold standard “trout rod,” but that has less to do with fighting the fish, and more to do with the range of…
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Is ‘destination marketing’ bad for our fishy resources?
Oh, those innocent little hashtags. I’m in Vermont at the annual Outdoor Writers Association of America’s annual conference, and I just stepped out of a session about how writers, communicators and influencers can work with destinations to promote the activities at those destinations to encourage readers and viewers to take the plunge and take a…