Dear McDonalds Management, I was at a loss when I found out the New Zealand Hoki had made the Endangered Species List. It’s not front page news as the name is unfamiliar to most, but you and I know it as the fourth fish  used in your popular Fillet O’ Fish sandwich. You started with Halibut whose price thankfully [...]

The mystery solved. Why fly fisherman have cropped up hawking everything from credit cards to Snicker bars … We … is back in style. Goretex and Redwings rub shoulders with plunging strapless and Italian leather, and all the gals is wishing their man wore Pendleton. Actual outdoor usage is still tawdry and forbidden, but looking [...]

This winter I’ll be busy restocking tiny and gossamer, as each trip has required both small and unique dry flies. With failing vision it’s not realism that’ll motivate the sizes and patterns needed, it’ll be small yet visible as the requirement. Both trips North featured few organized hatches, and the evening grab was comprised of [...]

You’re looking down at the tailgate wondering “how’d my five weight line wind up on a System 6 reel, and why is the SOB set for left hand wind?” That’s when the cold prickly happens. Three hundred miles away from home, 20 miles from camp, and your buddy has his waders paused at his midsection [...]

We keep cropping up in the strangest places, tagged with even stranger attributes. How fly fishing can be linked with leadership is a stretch, given that we’re proponents of an antiquated sport that limits our casting distance, doesn’t sink very well, and lacks scent. The taglines best suited for the above picture should have been [...]

Some fellows just can’t help dancing with lightning bolts. With us already on the outs with numerous humane societies the idea of incurring the wrath of Modern Bride is fearful and heady stuff … But that’s why us fly fishermen trod the path less taken, which goes double for the crowd at myexwifesweddingdress.com who are [...]

I’d  assumed “leave the dance with them as brung you” was an unspoken truism, yet it doesn’t hold for the  Madison Ave crowd who are abandoning us fishermen in favor of the prime 22-30 age group. Despite the century old tie between beer drinking and fishing, the self-styled “King of Beers” figures youth will abandon sour energy [...]

My poppa was overly fond of the Hershey with Almonds, as he cared nothing for money or markets, it was the yardstick by which he measured the US economy. …in between telling us when he was a kid, it was only a nickel. We learned the brightly emblazoned text, “33% more, Free” meant the economy was [...]

“Extra labeling only confuses the consumer,” said David Edwards, director of animal biotechnology at the Biotechnology Industry Organization. “It differentiates products that are not different. As we stick more labels on products that don’t really tell us anything more, it makes it harder for consumers to make their choices.” Which is exactly what troubled me [...]

Outside of some rare conservation program that’s reshaped a creek with instream cover or dredging, regulations, or fish plants, I don’t think any angler will make the claim that his favorite creek fishes better than it did a decade ago. Intervention at any level is always a temporary boon. The organizations that promote quality public [...]