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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.
It doesn’t come with a time stamp. There’re no ghostly green forms, no shining eyes, no startled expressions. If it contains clues to trophy status, they’re invisible to me.
Fishing isn’t necessarily about numbers but when the sun sets and you’ve brought maybe three fish to hand compared to thirty that were caught by the eight year old fishing in the boat next to you, on what you consider one of your home waters, you can’t help but take notice.
Can’t see her, but I could find her even without the GPS collar. She’s radiating bird vibes. It’s the only place in the willows with negative sound. And tension.
When I turn into some crazed version of a body builder with a fly swatter my chances of catching anything greatly diminish.
The subsurface safari that is our backyard helps keep the squirt in the sun, off the couch and out of our hair. And wouldn’t you know it… the worms are even helpful for catching the occasional fish.
Utter joy on the part of the kids was punctuated by complaints that “this is a terrible day to be out, the bugs are awful”. We worked to connect the dots.
Experiences shared in the field are different from those of life in town. The terrain and the elements raise the stakes and narrow the margins for error. Guns and knives at use in close quarters demand a rare level of reciprocal faith. The unavoidable intimacy of life and death made immediate bonds people. So, Read More
Yesterday I was risking sunburn and drinking gin and tonics. Today a chain law was in effect. Grouse about it all you want, but in Wyoming this is how it works. And it’s not just the weather. Wyoming is rough around the edges.
I’m not one to fish and tell, but there’s a fine line between keeping your honey-holes secret and writing manifestos in a shack in the woods.
It had been a lackluster day for pheasant hunting in Montana. Tragically, after covering nearly a mazillion miles of normally productive cover we had seen exactly one rooster. A rooster far enough out we would have needed a .243 to take down, not the 12 gauge I was lugging.