I’ve always postulated that the only two groups that are always unhappy with the weather are farmers and firemen. Both think it’s too dry or too wet, and either the crop is a loss or the woods are ablaze … Normally I’d have my lower lip pooched, regaling you with how I was all set [...]

When I worked in fly shops I was surprised and unsettled at the “us versus them” culture. Somehow my working for “Shop A” meant I couldn’t refer customers to “Shop B”, as my coworkers quickly taught me they were unworthy, mostly stereo and car salesmen, criminals all … Then when I started guiding, I was [...]

… and I do so in good humor, despite blood rushing to my cheek, as I’ve been called “liberal” about as often as the Fair Sex has called me, “fat”, “disgusting”, or “slovenly.” I’ve always associated the “Liberal” tag as nothing more than describing someone that lives on the coast, or resides in a “blue” [...]

Today being “National Hoody Day” we thought we’d stray outside the boundaries of begging for trout stream protection (from an unfeeling and uncaring mob), to throwing our massive weight behind larger social issues … … and you’re right, they do look pretty sinister. Technorati Tags: trout,hoody,national hoody day,humor

With all the hormones in the water column you’d think us old guys and our yen for little blue pills would be able to pee a little stability into native Brook Trout populations, at least enough to overcome the ill effects of global warming … New research suggests an increase of as little as a [...]

Can it be that the root cause of declining outdoors participation isn’t Nintendo, nor the warm confines of the couch, rather it’s a lack of appreciation for straight liquor? Campfires and the out-of-doors have always been associated with a return to the simple, unsophisticated life of our adventurer-hunter-gatherer ancestors, and the measure of what we [...]

Only recently recovered from the attempt to make Striped Bass the killer of all salmonids, and now on the eve of my Spring Shad orgy, West Coast scientists are suddenly spraying my favorite quarry with the invasive label. … and while they readily admit that most of the science on American Shad has been done on [...]

It was San Francisco in the mid-Seventies … the Vietnam War had ended two years earlier, so there was plenty of Peace, the Castro District was filling rapidly, so there was oodles of Love, and the Haight-Ashbury had degenerated from counter-cultural nexus to outright Heroin addiction, so there was plenty of Dope … … and [...]

I don’t believe a word of it myself, mostly because I buy into every conspiracy theory possible … and … they were replaying Spartacus in my hotel room last night … The incident occurred on state Route 124 south of Hillsboro and involved a truck  hauling a tank filled with rainbow trout en route to [...]

Naturally I’d rather not dwell on the fact that I was right and you was horribly wrong … actually I would, but I’d exhaust the subject of my presumed greatness in about three seconds. Just long enough for your next tired exhale … Now every recruitment drive to enlist them thick-witted kids of yours into [...]