Yesterday’s post suggests a combination of poor economics and seasonal excess have woken you to fly fishing’s retail malaise, where you’re prepared to let the vendors auger in under the weight of pricey zipper-front waders, multi-thousand dollar fly rods, and titanium imbued vest accessories, featuring trout shaped drink openers … Given that bleak economic outlook, and if [...]

… and I was hoping I had the lock on death and despair. Tackle Trade World has easily one upped me by presenting the rumors of Cortland’s demise were premature, Hardy & Grey’s lays off 27 staff (31% of their Alnwick workforce), and both Hardy and O. Mustad & Sons have been hemorrhaging money and [...]

With less than a week before you’re consumed by those, “what was I thinking …” resolutions that stem from another year of excess, and you’re reminded that along with Aerosmith you bought the 2011 version of the Hula Hoop, while cackling Internet pundits gleefully point fingers and publish the Top 10 worst fads of 2011 [...]

… and on a trifling note, Carnegie Mellon University has given up attempting to alert us citizens to the perils of the Asian Carp Menace, mostly because we are bored senseless by scientific dialog, and they’ve opted to make a free web game so us anglers can walk a mile in their environmental shoes … [...]

… and you figured that Christmas was immune to one of my “there are no fish left and what’s left ain’t worth the trouble,” articles – where one or more scientific bodies posts some graph with the big red arrow heading south … But you’re wrong. Christmas isn’t sacred, and now the cat’s out of the [...]

When tying on hackle tip wings you can save yourself grief if you take the time to prune the duff that is part of the tie-in area created when the tips were mounted. Most tiers simply leave the fibers trapped by the thread, lifting and pushing them back towards the wing when the hackle is [...]

You’ve survived another long and tiresome year as spouse of an ardent fly fisherman, and while a great many promises were made, most were followed by profuse apologies and much hand wringing, and none were kept … … and now rather than raking leaves like you asked, he’s expecting you to wait table as his [...]

It’s one of the great conspiracies of our industry; how SIMM’s, Orvis, Columbia, and Gander Mountain, have spent time and money marketing clothing to anglers, yet only when the catalog falls from our nerveless, napping fingers does our girlfriend insist we buy something … We don’t tell because it would simply kill the bastards to know that only [...]

Prohibits the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture (USDA) from taking action on public lands which impede the border security activities of the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) (Secretary). States that the Secretary shall have immediate access to any public land managed by the federal government in order to conduct activities that [...]

“Feelers” and Latin have gone hand in hand with one another for the last half century. Each time we get enamored over insect science via the teachings of some new prophet, we tiers feel compelled to add them to everything that floats, sinks, or simply drifts fetchingly between the two … … and us fishermen [...]