The brown water looks bad enough already, now the federal government will be requiring California’s many thousands of aqueducts and levees to be shorn of all vegetation. … meaning all those 100 year old oaks will be chipped and shredded, all the bankside willows and cottonwoods will be ripped up and vanished, and goats will [...]

It was the same story he used when in Italy, “… imagine my surprise when I rummaged in my pocket and found a single Little Stinking Olive!” I told him not to run it through the ponds at the Vatican, and doubly don’t dare hand twitch it through the green water at the Roman baths, [...]

Girls prefer some well coifed, clean-smelling fellow to sweep them off their feet. Guys would prefer romance include some stunning female who’s statuesque, fulsome, and completely chaste, unless it’s them she’s disrobing … as that’s entirely proper. Nine web sites and nine supersaturated pictures of the dots on a trout’s tail, and I wonder how [...]

The myth has it patrolled ruthlessly by a grizzled fellow in overalls whose well oiled Blunderbuss is flanked by aimlessly scratching hounds – who are wary of his large plug of chaw – which is spat indiscriminately at dogs, feet, and anything else that ain’t nailed down. Last week while surveying the fishless Little Stinking, Travelwriter let [...]

You can’t fault them as it’s worked well for the environmentally conscious types. Stop the creek with a well placed cork, extinct everything but ATV hellions and gravity donations from the housing dispossessed – and when no one’s looking – slap up new signs to keep out the dog walkers and environmentalists. Are they worried [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]