It’s likely to trigger a most difficult chicken and egg debate, considering us fly fishermen can save a trout stream or save a forest, but we can’t do both … Recent salmon studies suggest “you are what shades your banks” – and if the surrounding forest isn’t healthy, neither is your fish population. More insidious [...]

The only thing the fly shop can’t stock is that “icebreaker” needed to make the local fishing crowd greet you with open arms. It has to work at distance, so the wading throng clustered tight to the hole sees you and either motions you among them – or generates the en masse exodus, ensuring you’re [...]

A confirmed sighting of Didymo sent thousands screaming from Hartland Connecticut, as the West Branch of the Farmington rose out of her ancestral trench and descended on the town without warning, sending a massive algal backlash through two zipcodes and an isolated Dairy Queen. Casualties are streaming in from the countryside while the Connecticut Department [...]

I missed the third digit of the snowpack measurement yet instinctively I knew it really didn’t matter. Three digits means a repeat of last year’s watery excesses, and while I resolved myself to keep working on the dry flies like I’d planned, they were unlikely to see much action. There’ll be plenty of opportunities for [...]

I’d come across them many times, and while always cognizant of their presence, I’d always considered landlocked salmon more of a novelty fishery rather than something you spent a lot of time pursuing. Naturally that all changed if I was camped on the bank, in which case its bright red meat was a delicacy, and [...]

I’ll confess to a morbid fascination with the larger invasive species issue, I spend far too much time reading about all the horrors headed our way. With national parks mulling all manner of restrictions, before banning humans outright, it’s indicative of a war against an enemy that can’t be beaten. Just insert “seed” for diatom, [...]

I didn’t know much of anything when I saw first saw it, now I’m not sure I know more, but I’ve certainly scratched my head enough. Knowing that the only truism about “advances” in [insert angling gadget here] science, is that whatever the manufacturer claims can be discarded immediately. It’s up to all them other [...]

OK, so all the free thinking types live in Utah, home to plenty of desert and even more Mormons … Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed the bill into law this week, designating the Browning model M1911 automatic pistol as the official state firearm. Polygamists are big on the multiple hit theory of gunplay, hence their [...]

The lack of commentary on our previous article suggests fishermen are a stoic and heartless lot, unwilling even in the face of  insolvency to spend less of the government’s cash to balance budgets, bomb Libya, or any other semi-humanitarian act … So we’ll pose the question again, this time with science insisting that were we [...]

Tsunamis must be in fashion, given my last 48 hours crouched under the bed hoping a tree limb isn’t headed for the roof – and with it, thousands of gallons of California’s freshwater variant… Now as the water district trucks snarl and slide toward the abyss, counting the remaining feet from the lip, I’m wondering [...]