• 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Banded

    Folding neatly the greenhead splashed soundly onto the water. The old lady made quick work of the retrieve.

(or Rivanna, Part 2) I am a man now, thirty something, and far from innocent, but my desires at least have grown more comfortable, their barbs crimped by conflict and compromise.  I bristle still at boundaries, but their effrontery is less personal and I’ve long since learned to circumvent the ones that I can’t, Read More

Upland birds have gained my favor the past few years. Maybe it’s the country, maybe it’s because I don’t have to get up at 3am, maybe it’s the exercise that both my dogs and I appreciate. Whatever the reason waterfowl have been on the back burner. However, time spent in the uplands has not, Read More

We were boys, 16 maybe 17, and newly possessed of ancient desires.  Our ill-defined hungers for something slippery, pulsing, and mysterious were poorly met by the confines of our asphalt and strip-mall world, confines erected by sensible elders to keep us in the navigable middle channel and away from the rapids.  But being boys,, Read More

Admittedly, I’m not much for cooking and taking the time to make a mixed drink isn’t my style either. However, following in the footsteps of my father and grandfather before me I have developed a liking for single malt scotch. Here’s one to put in the quiver if you haven’t already. Bruichladdich: The Laddie, Read More

I learn something every time I go fishing. Yet with every lesson I realize that the boundaries of my ignorance are farther away than ever. Usually this “progress” comes in bight sized chunks that, like parenting, are great for maintaining humility. It’s a puzzle here  (jab),  a challenge there (jab, cross) and maybe even, Read More

All day I had been swinging my fly through some of the best steelhead water on the planet, but I hadn’t connected with a fish. The Dean had been kind to me over the past few days and I was utterly spoiled on what was my first steelhead trip. Still, I was addicted to, Read More

Meat, as we’ve discussed, is a fundamental USOB asset.  Keep bringing it home, and you’re more likely to score the hall pass for a trip to go get more. Take it up a notch though, by fixing a knock their socks off supper, and you’ll get unsolicited inquiries into when you’re going hunting again., Read More

Mark reaches under his pillow and pulls back the hammer of his pistol. My eyes are heavy as I’m about to drift off to sleep. I barely hear the pickup rolling into camp. More shocked by the pistol than the pickup, I urge Mark to put away the gun. Throwing on a shirt I get, Read More

He’s peering skeptically from behind a boulder at a shin-deep seam that looks to be another of his son-in-law’s eccentricities. The koi pond back home in Florida looks more promising. Fishing? Sure, he loves fishing, been doing it all his life. 360 degrees of Gulf Stream blue horizon, a mile of water under the, Read More

Wyoming contains 7 river basins and serves as the headwaters for 4 major river basins in the Western United States. These major river basins are the Missouri-Mississippi, Green-Colorado, Snake-Columbia, and Great Salt Lake. I feel fortunate to live in a state with such great water resources and consequently great fishing. I log a lot of, Read More