By Jenny Weis This’ll be one of my shortest blog posts. For pertinent background information and full appreciation of what follows, first check out this post from earlier this season. (TL;DR: I came so close to catching a great rainbow trout on a beautiful river, on a perfect evening, but it eluded the net and
By Eric Booton The countdown begins every winter when I receive my Trout Unlimited calendar (thanks TU!). I immediately spend several minutes noting the important dates, trips and plans that need to be remembered; several of which are the closures and openers of my favorite Alaska fishing holes. I am surrounded by, or just a
Abandoned mines are a problem for water quality across the West. There are more than a half million sites, many leaking toxic pollution like acid mine drainage and heavy metals into our streams and rivers. In other places, streams and rivers have been re-routed, straightened into unsustainable channels that make it difficult for aquatic life
Nature’s chiaroscuro. Carmel River, June 2018 By Sam Davidson One of the required courses at the high school I attended was a class called Western Civilization. It was basically a survey course of ancient Greek and Roman art and architecture, and Western European art, architecture, and music since the Renaissance. In those days I was
Last week, Trout Unlimited posted a clip describing the proper way to de-bone a trout. Perhaps predictably, this was met by a few howls of outrage. “How can the organization that practically invented catch-and-release advocate eating a trout? Shame. Shame!” The fact is, however, that not all wild fish are equal, and whacking one can
By Mark Taylor You know how time can seem to slow down in an emergency or stressful situation? It’s a real thing, basically a function of the brain sending a big old shot of adrenaline into the bloodstream. The fancy word for it is tachypsychia, and it what I was experiencing as stood waist deep
Education and restoration overlap in Darek Staub’s projects along a spring-fed watershed in Central Oregon
Photo by Chris Hunt by Dave Ammons There exist a number of memorable fish in my experience. The little brook trout caught in a narrow, tumbling stream whose encounter caused us both to blush. A cutthroat from the depths of a mountain tarn so clear it reflected a Colorado sky all the way through to
The author’s father, Steve, enjoys a laugh with dedicated steelhead angler Pat Wright on the South Umpqua River in Southern Oregon. By Mark Taylor I’ve been hearing the fish stories for years. “Lost a chromer today. Man, she was hot. Jumped six times.” “Hooked three and got a nice 7-pound buck. Pat got a 15-pounder.”
By Mark Taylor BALDWIN, Mich. — My fellow passenger was friendly. “What is that?” she asked, looking at the 3-foot-long, cordura-covered tube in my grasp. “A fishing rod,” I said. “You’re going fishing in Michigan in February?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Like, ice fishing?” Actually, I was going to a meeting with TU’s Great
“You take it on faith, you take it to the heart. The waiting is the hardest part. “ — Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers I made my plane reservations in December. I booked the little house across the street from the beach in November. It sits in the heart of a little fishing village in
Fly fishing trophy hunters are all about traveling to far-flung places to chase big fish. Heck, we just highlighted a pair of videos that focus on chasing giant browns and rainbows in New Zealand, where both species of trout are interlopers in Kiwi waters. And then there’s Patagonia, where big trout swim in rivers where
Photo by Chris Hunt By Chris Hunt I’ve got a trip planned to a remote little fishing village in Mexico later this winter, and one of the first things I was warned of when I reserved a little cottage on the beach was (after hitting Google Translate), “There is no cell service here.” I do
By Dave Ammons My earliest memories of The Bend were of grand childhood adventures. We skipped stones, a challenge in riffles and rapids. We built rock rings to hold small fires where we cooked hot dogs on sticks freshly snapped and stripped from a willow on the bank. We s plashed at the water’s edge
Todd Moen’s latest fly-fishing film is a story of three women and their fights with breast cancer. It’s a sobering reminder that, while the “river of life” moves on, some of us fall victim to the cruelest of conditions. And, yet, some find ways to persist, and for these three ladies, fly fishing proved to
By Eric Booton It’s early and it takes some encouragement to get my wife out of bed and ready to roll. I amazingly manage to botch the breakfast burritos in the microwave and spill her coffee all over the kitchen. It’s a morning reminiscent of most summer or fall weekend in the Booton house, except
The Steelhead Whisperer cradles the object of his affection on his home water during the recent steelhead season opener. By Sam Davidson It was with some trepidation that I paid my respects to a stream with a heavy reputation on the recent opening day of steelhead season. I should have had no worries, as I
The Steelhead Whisperer on the legendary Trinity River By Sam Davidson Knowing full well the inexorable influence of superstition on fishing success, I have no excuse for my gross negligence which weighed heavily on our recent experience on the Trinity River. The warning signs were there, including this fine piece from TU’s Eric Booten on
You can help restore the third most productive river for salmon and steelhead on the West Coast
By Chris Hunt There’s a stretch of the drive between my home in Idaho Falls and my former home in Colorado that often lulls me into a state of semi-consciousness—a state of being where driving becomes the innate foundation of my psyche while the rest of my mind wanders off into the mountains. Starting just
