Currently browsing… Steelhead

• Short casts: Pike in the shallows, good water in the West, hope for Skagit steelhead

  

  From ice out until late spring, pike are in the shallows and ready to hit a fly. Here in the Lower 48, it's prime time for pike. From ice out until lakes "turn over" in the late spring, pike can be found cruising the shallows of lakes and in the froggy water of rivers in…

• Voices from the river

  Voices from the River: Enhance your skills at fishing shows

  

  Jason Dyer working on his casting while on a fishing trip in Canada. Agustina Boitano Davidson photo By Jason Dyer I grew up on the East Coast and fished a lot of small streams and deep hidden ponds in the White Mountains during my adolescent years. I did do a fair amount of surf casting,…

• What Trump’s budget means for anglers

  

  "The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value."-- President Teddy Roosevelt [STAND UP FOR CONSE RVATION FUNDING HERE] Land and water conservation are taking a direct hit in President Trumps proposed budget. In his message to…

• Short casts: Smith River mining, albies off shore, coho coming home

  

  Photo by Thom Bridge, Helena Independent Record There are a handful of happy boaters and anglers this week in Montana, and a whole lot of disappointed folks, too, as Smith River float permits were announced. You win some, you lose some. The Smith, perhaps Montana's best-known backcountry float-fishing excursion, is a great early season float,…

• A River’s Last Chance

  

  The first time I saw the Eel River flowing under the remote redwood forest along Humboldt County's Avenue of the Giants, I saw a dirty, blown-out river that the locals swore to me was home to massive steelhead. I lived in the small city of Eureka for a couple of years in the late 90s,…

• Voices from the river

  Voices from the River: Knocking on Heaven’s Door

  

  by Sam Davidson Maybe the most difficult thing about being an avid winter steelhead angler isn’t the guaranteed frigid digits, abominable weather, mostly blown-out rivers or the challenge of actually hooking one of those transcendent slabs of muscle. For me, anyway, it is coming to terms with March 7, and the increasing probability of wearing…

• Short casts: Spring in Montana, steelhead in the Tongass, Minnesota expo

  

  Every year about this time, I'm lured over Monida Pass into the Beaverhead drainage, and, inevitably, after a day or two of fishing, I go a bit farther. I'll venture from there, up the Big Hole to the Bitterroot, or maybe even farther north to Rock Creek, where I tell myself a sqwala might make…