Currently browsing… Fly fishing
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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.…
-
Bajio enters fly-fishing market on a mission to save saltwater flats
This is the most significant new company/product entry in the fly-fishing market in at least a decade. And it comes at seminal moment for sport fishing as a whole. “Bajio,” named after the Spanish word for “shallows,” will make its North American debut this month by unveiling a base lineup of fishing lifestyle sunglass frames with…
-
Finding ‘lake mode’ out of angling necessity
I'm not much of a lake guy. Don't misunderstand that statement. I like lakes as an idea. Fishing them, though, is problematic, mostly because the lakes I would relish fishing are well off the beaten track — I'm only willing to tote a float tube so far before I lose interest, and I'm only willing…
-
Long live the Gila trout
Seven of us pierced the Gila wildlands that day, and, despite the best efforts of a clueless pot-shotter, all seven of us made it out without holes in our hides. We never figured out who was shooting or what they were shooting at
Huddled as close to the fallen tree as we could get, Kirk and I looked at each other, our eyes wide with surprise and a touch of fear. The bullet had missed us by a wide margin, but the fact that we could hear it as it zinged overhead after the ricochet was unnerving. "Wait…