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Joy and Wonder
I caught my first fish with a fine, mesh net in the creek behind my childhood home. The silver minnow measured no more than a couple inches, but your uncle and I placed it and a couple others in a bucket and carried them into our house like treasures pulled from the deep. We kept…
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The True Cast – My money is on the frog hunter…
(This will make sense at the end of the story) Here are two true-life scenarios that played out in the past couple weeks in the waters where I fish and call home. Situation 1: A father comes into the fly shop, hires out a guide trip for his two sons, ages 12 and 14. Dad…
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New and Ongoing Stewardship on the Metolius River
Education and restoration overlap in Darek Staab’s projects along a spring-fed watershed in Central Oregon In the heart of central Oregon lies the Metolius River, a key tributary of the Deschutes River and one of the largest spring-fed rivers in the United States. The Metolius flows for 29 miles through the Deschutes National Forest and…
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The True Cast: Upstream, downstream.
Some thoughts on teaching kids about fly fishing.
Some thoughts on teaching kids about fly fishing. I’m often asked by eager parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, what is the right age to introduce a kid to fly fishing? My answer is always the same: It depends on the kid! And, more important, it depends on how you define “introduce to fly fishing.” A…
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Photo Gallery: First Float
Over the Memorial Day weekend, my family and three others took a wonderfully run whitewater class from River Rescue Dynamics (@riverrescuedynamics) in Grand Junction, Colo., then had the privilege of spending three days in Ruby and Horsethief canyons in far western Colorado and Utah. This was a “let the kids (all nine of them) run…
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Light the pilot for a young angler and share the craft
I look back on my fishing life, and I can play certain moments in my mind like black-and-white highlight reels. That first snout of a brown trout sipping a grasshopper fly I cast in the right spot along the riverbank. That first tarpon jump, that made my knees knock as the silver king splashed down on…
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Teach the kids to row their own watercraft
What do you do when the kids get a bit older and you're tired of handing out snack after snack on big river trips? Get them their own watercraft. We all want our kids to learn the river from their own perspective and to safely make mistakes and corrections while the consequences are low. The…
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