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The Steelhead With A Thousand Faces
Maybe if I take five more steps, throw one more mend, skate one more fly, a hero will appear, armored in chrome, and dance to the music of my singing reel.
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The Birth of A Fishing Town
Calf deep now in the cold river, Trent’s completed his prelude of silky false casts and is ready to start the show in earnest.
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In The End, Style Might Be All We Have
Over the course of 6 trips, in and out, and nearly 40 miles, I question whether or not it’s worth it.
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Banded
Folding neatly the greenhead splashed soundly onto the water. The old lady made quick work of the retrieve.
Hands down, bar none, the single best investment you can make. Frankly, I can’t afford not too.
Only an hour from home we get a cheap hotel room. My mistress insists on leaving the toilet seat up. She farts and snores all night long. Subtle twitches and whimpers indicate good dreams. I toss and turn as the the wall mounted heater turns on and off, on and off. As blackness turns to grey, Read More
Pronghorn antelope get a bad rap as table fare. I have a theory as to why. Somewhere along the way, their abundance, combined with their preference for wide-open country, spawned a hunting culture that, in some corners, accepted long range shooting as the norm. This in turn resulted in too many wounded critters putting in, Read More
Frozen ground made for easy driving. We knew temps would rise and conditions would change, but thoughts of mud, chains and spending the night were shoved to the back of our minds. Instead we hunted. Side hilling steep faces, post holing through snow on north facing slopes. following the noses of our dogs. As the sun, Read More
The new neighbors are a noisy bunch. They’ve been raising hell every morning for weeks now. I put the neighborhood watch on the case. “There’s um, Dada there’s three now. I know because’n I heard a quieter one from way over… um over there and it had a different pattern,” reports my four, Read More
Staying comfortable outdoors is difficult in wet, soak you to the bone, conditions. Think early season snow storms while elk hunting or non stop rain while chasing steelhead. Weather you are out for multiple days or just trying to get warm midday, lighting the stove to make a hot drink or starting a fire to, Read More
Parents often tell me that having and raising kids really cemented their place in a community. They’d been disconnected from whole populations of neighbors, ignorant of critical institutions and uninvolved in many cultural rituals until the demands of parenthood thrust them into the fray. I think that might be overstating it a bit, and, Read More
Be willing to go where others won’t. Keep casting, even when it seems futile. The Reward will come.
“What’s the temperature out there?” is usually the first questions I get when catching up with east coast family and friends on the phone. “Ten below this morning… but it’s a dry cold, really not that uncomfortable,” is typically met with a snort of derision or a dismissive chuckle. “I’ll take it over a, Read More
Coffee coursed through my veins. My trap was running well above the speed limit. “SHEEP” yelled my buddy from the passenger seat, just in time for me to step on the breaks and avoid a ewe and lamb big horn crossing the highway. It was an unusual sighting, but that hardly registered at the, Read More