The fireworks have already begun, not in earnest yet, but occasional pops and cracks are audible throughout the city. Coolers are filled with cold beer and lawn chairs line main streets across America. It’s our collective birthday and we have a lot to celebrate. This year my family was fortunate enough to be asked to, Read More

Cherry cheeks, gaudy red flanks, a painted belly and that alluring blue aura, this fish cruised the bank like a super-model on a catwalk. Who knew that golden trout could strut?…

An 800 foot descent, that is more like a free fall, leads to a stream narrower than my desk. It might get fished a handful of times per year. Nearby the Green sees more traffic in a day than this creek might see in a decade. But it’s position is what makes it special. In, Read More

Coastal fisheries are ruled by the tides. High in the northern Rockies though, the productivity of an outing can be made or broken by timing the snowline. Unlike the tides, no reliable lunar cycle can forecast the elevation and condition of the snowpack. Rather you have to cobble together your own charts from investigatory day, Read More

If you’ve been following STS for awhile you have probably noticed that we like photography. We’ve been lucky to have some of the best in the business share their work and insights with us, see here, here, and here, but we haven’t talked much about our own photography. We’ve been fielding more questions about how, Read More

He is not inviting. A bottom dweller, feeding on death and decay in the dark. At first he is only a twitching, tugging, gnawing sensation of menace at the end of some twine. Then, lifted inch by inch, finger over finger into the murky green fringe of surface water light, he materializes as a, Read More

We wanted to get out of town. Even if just for a night, an evening of camping would do us all good. While snow was melting and beginning to loosen it’s grip on the high country many of our favorite spots were still inaccessible. Rumors of a perfect brook trout stream, nestled in a seldom visited, Read More

Bait Fish (n) – An individual animal from any of the numerous small coastal ichthyological species (typically of the taxonomical class Osteichthyes) which when netted early (often on the first furtive stab) of a lengthy expedition induces in its captor a certain wide-eyed wonder, chest puffing strut, and incessant retelling of conquest. The name is believed, Read More

I’d been hearing it for weeks. Hushed reports from friends that it was happening. The talk became so pervasive it was clear it wasn’t a secret any more. The buzz was becoming unbearable. No matter how hard I tried the stars were not aligning. I wasn’t able to get in on the action. There are many, Read More

The sun dips in the Western Sky. Water rushes past but the river is empty. The boat hardly makes a sound as it is lowered into the water. No words are spoken as the boat is coaxed to a speed that matches the fly. All eyes are transfixed on one spot, filled with optimism, that at, Read More