Technorati Tags: snow melt, shad, wading peril

It’s a simple question really. Given that Grizzly hackle is critical to most western dry flies, bass bugs, saltwater streamers, and most minnow imitations, just how long can you last on your current stockpile? … or are you waiting for the saddles to breach the $500 per barrier on eBay, before unloading while the market’s [...]

Dammit Goebbels, I read your book! … at least the part about how to bend society to your will using a mind deadening mix of rumor, fear, and alienation, playing up the perceived differences between the splinter group and mainstream. My quarry frequents the Tofu aisle. Impressionable vegetable radicals intent on turning lead into gold, planting [...]

I suppose the good news is that none of us has cracked under the pressure and sent pictures of The Family Jewels to some anonymous campus sweetheart, but that’s coming. Looking down, I think I’ll be safe enough, given that I haven’t seen mine in a couple of decades, but the rest of you concern [...]

I can finally ditch the expensive gear and G-suit necessary to keep arm, rod, and line in the same dimension. Shortly, I’ll be donating a Semi worth of rotting pelts, feathers and synthetics to the local casting club, along with my collection of waders and never used, newly illegal, felt soled wading shoes … … [...]

Before bamboo, before graphite, long before we learned to curl an upper lip, before we could distinguish light and heavy, spinning from bait casting, and fly – prior to swearing off the Unclean Thing – and back when everything  was mystery, fear, and wonderment, there was this fishing stuff… Dad mentioned it, and we assumed it was [...]

The latest issue of Angling Trade brings together a number of articles related to the growing gulf between anglers, fly shops, and manufacturers, given that each is struggling to evolve and survive in the face of a double dip recession. It’s probably their best issue yet, but after digesting it from cover to cover I’m unsettled [...]

The hardest of all fishing tasks falls on your circle of trusted companions. They’ve gone fishing with you enough  to recognize blatant from bald-faced, but they continue to wrestle with  facial tells on minor infractions, the stretching of truth, a couple inches added, or a couple phantom fish added to your evening’s tally. The biggest [...]

I remember peering through the bushes intently, awestruck at the grace them old duffers displayed while sawing their line back and forth in a double haul, back and forth seemingly without effort, leader never tangling, and I wondered whether I would ever be skilled enough to do likewise … … and whether I would ever lose my fear [...]