Currently browsing… Fly fishing

  • Trout Talk

    Winter blues, cabin fever and Appalachian envy

    April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. —T.S. Elliot It’s still cold and gray here in the steppe country of eastern Idaho. Snow still covers the yard. Snow is still in the immediate forecast. Winter’s not done yet. Not even…

  • Trout Talk

    Bumping fists with trout

    So I finally shook off the COVID blues and decided to go fishing one day last week.  Yampa River, northern Colorado, and admittedly it might have been a better day to ski, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to fish.   So I trudged through the snowpack to a prime spot, and the sun…

  • Voices from the river

    The gift of the skunk

    One learns not to expect much when fly fishing during the winter months. At least around here, or if you’re me. Regardless of the season, sometimes you step into a river and just know something’s off. The water’s not moving right, or the sound of the wind rings particularly empty and distant. I envy steelhead die-hards their familiarity with this feeling, the impending, inevitable void, and how they march into it undaunted.   A guy I know…

  • Featured Trout Talk

    AFFTA’s Bulis steps down

    It may not be considered remarkable news when the head of an industry trade association steps down, but for fly fishers across America, this one's different. Ben Bulis, president of the American Fly Fishing Trade Association for the past nine years, announced his resignation this week. Bulis helped rejuvenate AFFTA, working to first save the…

  • Trout Talk

    What was your first real fly rod?

    Editor's note: Periodically, we'll pose questions to a " fly-fishing roundtable" of TU anglers in hopes of spurring discussion among all anglers about all things fly fishing. What was your first real fly rod? Mark Taylor Mark Taylor: My first fly rod was a 1970s-era Eagle Claw glass rod that I got as a teenager…

  • Trout Tips Featured

    Try the float-and-fly technique for still-water trout

    The "float-and-fly" technique is pretty similar to the old fly and bubble rig you might have tried as a youngster, or before you completely converted fly fishing

    Fly fishing on lakes in late fall can be a crapshoot. Same thing for chasing trout in the early spring after ice-out. Often, you're mingling at the edges of the season where a lake "turns over," or when surface water that's been heated by the sun all summer begins to cool and becomes more dense.…