Friend Roughfisher is adding his expertise to the USCARPPRO ezine, with a monthly column on flies for our favorite Cyprinid. It’s a great fit and a monstrous ezine, 150 pages of technology and insight into all forms of carp fishing – most of which we never knew existed.
Fly fishermen have more than our fair [...]

This was the weekend where my newly placid and emerald alma mater was to be violated cruelly by my large feet. Flows were perfect, the sun was out – and a balmy 67° predicted.
Friday night was the prenup. Rods inspected, reels freshly oiled, boots sterile from chemical bathes and three months of enforced idle, flies [...]

It’s only a blip on my radar, and  few are losing sleep over a dirty little dustbowl lined with “Quad” tracks.
This morning commences the Cache Creek Aggregate Producers Breakfast, where they’ll be attired in top hats and too-tight vests, an abundance of hearty backslaps and thick cheroots, and some environmental pipsqueak trying to be heard [...]

Little wonder that your typical Brownliner can get a little overbearing and evangelical, our beloved fish are tortured without mercy – just because they can be …

… and while you smack your lips in anticipation of the still beating heart – spleen or other choice viand, what you don’t know is our fish fight to [...]

Seeing a muskrat sends shivers down my spine.  It’s “freshwater Taliban” whose yen for burrows and tunneling are the source of hyperextended knees, unstable footing, and cursing fishermen.
I’d seen a couple last week and made every effort to move slow near the waters edge – and even slower in the water, but the little [...]

I’m on unfamiliar turf, unsure whether to be melancholy, maudlin, or go with chest thumping bravado. Guys are always conflicted that way as we aren’t allowed to “tear up” when Old Yeller gets lead out behind the barn, nor are we supposed to get melancholy when we see our home water laying there with bones [...]

In an earlier post I’d made a joking reference to the next great gamefish being the common carp. Assuming plenty naturally; the continual destruction of the pristine water via human interaction, global warming, acid rain, and all other ills.
That theory may have more legs than first imagined.
Of greatest concern to states, water districts, and the [...]

Doctor Mom would’ve given me a good scolding, the Evil Eye, and an increased ration of Chicken soup.
 A significant relapse this weekend suggested I’d returned to work much too early, and after feverishly climbing back into bed Saturday, I was just as feverishly climbing out of bed Sunday morning.
For the next couple of months we’re [...]

I may have been just a tad hasty distancing myself from all those blueline trout fiends –  now that I’ve been banned from all other venues, some dry fly purist dam operator just gave me my comeuppance.
 
Add three consecutive years of drought, a ton of tomatoes, and a satanic water manager with a grudge, and it’s [...]

I probably should’ve held off until next week to give it that “lived-in” look; coffee spills, discarded beer bottles, Simm’s pinups, and greasy wrappers from lunch – but I was too giddy to play coy.
 
The “before” is eloquence for us muddy cubicle warriors, yellow caution tape accent, paramilitary camo wall coverings, and the piece de resistance [...]