By Sam Davidson A few years back I saw a post on one of my social media feeds from a guy I know named Gabe. It was an image of a letter he had written to his mother from Salmon, Idaho, when he was a kid. This short note to a distant mom—with affection appended
About 800 miles from the ocean, high on the western slope of Lolo Pass, king salmon cling to life. By Warren Colyer You never know quite what to expect at a project site. And that’s one of the things I love most about my job. Granted, I don’t get too many field days anymore. It
By Scott Willoughby They call it Fisherman’s Nightmare. And as scare tactics go, it’s as accurate as it is effective. Floating into the chaotic jumble of rocks and water that serves as sentinel to the Colorado River’s daunting Gore Canyon, it’s easy to imag ine how the rapids earned their name. Dropping precipitously from the
By Toner Mitchell Conservation-oriented anglers have at least a foggy idea of what American landscapes and waterways have gone through on their way to their current state. Since Europeans first landed here, we have generally grazed, logged, mined, drilled, dammed, channelized, polluted and otherwise dewilded our natural estate to within an inch of its life.
By Chris Hunt Several years ago, I hosted a colleague from D.C. here in Idaho in mid-September, a generally dependable time of year for decent weather, solid fishing and some of prettiest fall colors of the season, especially in the high country. And it snowed. < /p> Not just the little early-season squall—a full-on dump
The stuff of dreams, Trinity River. By Sam Davidson The first hints of autumn always seem to bring things into sharper relief. When you have spent almost no time lately with a rod in hand, not taking advantage of the last wet-wadable days of the year, that clarity can be unwelcome. Thank goodness for social
Birkie. Not a fishing dog. By Jenny Weis If you’re my friend and you’ve just invited me to something, you can bet the next text I send you will say, “Can Birkie come?” For better or for worse, I’m the kind of person who brings my dog everywhere. Sure, she’s got her quirks (Whhyyyyy on
Trout Unlimited staffer Matt Green at the oars in a boat his father built. Courtesy Matt Green.
The icon of “Septemberfest,” the brown trout. Photo by Chris Hunt By Scott Willoughby Summer’s unofficial ending began the way it always should. With a truckload of kids, dog and angling accoutrements, Labor Day weekend started in reverse, backing down the busy boat ramp below Flaming Gorge Reservoir to roll an amply-provisioned raft off the
A recent proposal to do away with regulations on the San Juan could have impacted the fishery and the experience for anglers. Thankfully, the proposal to drop the regulations was rescinded. Trout Unlimited photo. By Toner Mitchell A rumor recently surfaced that the New Mexico Game and Fish Department was planning to eliminate two heavily
By Eric Booton I choose to wander through airports like a dazed drone, focusing on nothing but my destination and the gate that will get me there. I ignore most everyone. Not to be rude, I’m just not fully enthused to be killing time in such a mundane enclosure. The rows of bench seating occupied
Angler on California’s Trinity River. By Sam Davidson Every year, when the perseid meteor shower flings sparks across the night skies, I start thinking about fishing the Trinity River. The “Holy Trinity” is one of the best salmon and steelhead streams in California, and perhaps the Lower 48. In August summer run steelhead are in
By Don Duff An effort to protect fragile aquatic wetland ecosystems and the wildlife that uses them has been under way in northeast Nevada for 15 years. The Southern Nevada Water Authority is proposing a 300-mile pipeline, 7-feet in diameter, to move pumped groundwater from the Snake Valley near Baker on the Nevada/Utah border and
By Toner Mitchell The four-day gathering was a professional development course for secondary school teachers, its mission to explore the nexus of fly fishing, religion and philosophy, and how the re sulting ferment might motivate resource conservation in anglers (and students). We discussed several texts, some Thoreau, a PhD thesis arguing that fly fishing naturally
Getting bent on the lower Yuba River. The Yuba River is one of California’s many coldwater fishery jewels. In its upper forks the Yuba is a fine freestone trout stream; in the reach between Englebright Dam, where the river flows into the Central Valley, and its confluence with the Feather River near Marysville, the Yuba
A fat and happy Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat trout. By Chris Hunt Two summers ago, as I walked along a small alpine creek in the Caribou Range here in eastern Idaho, I spied what may rightly be called the sexiest stretch of trout water I’ve ever seen. The stream—by itself a modest flow—pushes down a
The iconic Sundial Bridge, spanning the Lower Sacramento River in downtown Redding, California before and during the Carr Fire. By Sam Davidson California is burning. There are 17 wildfires charring the Golden State, at present. The biggest and gnarliest (of 2018, anyway) is the Carr Fire, which has torched more than 100,000 acres, mostly of
By Mark Taylor The river was brown. Coffee-with-heavy-cream brown. It’s-been-raining-for-days brown. You-don’t-have-a-chance-in-hell brown. “Top off the raft and get the stuff down to the shore while I go drop off the truck,” I told my fishing partner for the day, Brett Prettyman. “I’ll probably be back before you’re done.” So, if conditions were more appropriate
A native Yellowstone cutthroat trout. A backcountry treasure. Photo by Chris Hunt. By Chris Hunt Who knows how many times I’d driven over the little creek as it flows southeast through an arched culvert toward its eventual confluence with the mighty Yellowstone River. A hundred? At least a hundred. And every time, I made a
