Currently browsing… rainbow trout
-
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…
-
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…
-
High mountain streams feed the soul
After some much-needed good news on the cancer front, I grabbed my cowboy hat and 1-weight and headed out the door. It was time to celebrate and I intended on doing just that by mountain biking and fishing (sometimes combined) on my gorgeous public lands. I pulled into the spot where I hiked out last week and trekked to see what this next section…
-
It’s OK to have a few secret spots
[et_pb_section admin_label="section"] [et_pb_row admin_label="row"] [et_pb_column type="4_4"][et_pb_text admin_label="Text"] Rabid protection of secret spots can be tricky. I think back to one I protected with a vigor that bordered on irrational paranoia. It was a small stream not far from Roanoke, Va., and I fished it for the first time not long after I moved to the…
-
Skate punks and disc golf
In praise of urban trout streams The thought occurred to me while I was fishing under the Highway 20 bridge over the lower Yuba River in California’s Gold Country. To reach the water I had crossed a floodplain so altered by quarrying, mining and off-road vehicles that it more resembled a moonscape than a functional…
-
Mousing the Aniak
Oh, to be Brian O'Keefe for a day last summer in western Alaska. O'Keefe served as Todd Moen's fishing subject in Moen's new short film, "Alaska Fly Fishing with a Mouse," that's been crawling the interwebs with a vengeance over the last few days. And rightly so—the footage of massive Alaskan rainbows erupting beneath mouse…
-
The Gibralter is special
The place you catch a rainbow trout as big as a silver salmon is a place you hold with reverence. A place you plan to someday return.
Imagine a place that’s wild — save for an ATV trail, there are no roads leading to it, and no fences. Swap the idea of any buildings on the horizon for grass and fireweed. Add the awareness that there might be a brown bear around the next bend, or a fox watching from a gravel…