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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 was still raining as I settled into my bag under the flimsy yellow tarp, a gentle but relentless rain that fell as though it meant to keep it up all night, all day or all week. A mixed blessing…
Bucking in circles like a rodeo bull, her enthusiasm belied her age. I was scrambling around the cold garage looking for duck hunting gear that hasn’t been used much lately. The temps started to drop, from a high of 20 F, as soon as the sun dipped below the mountains. Waterfowl was our game when, Read More
He’s down there. That’s beyond dispute, an open secret. Any fool can look at that deep, dark, juicy run and know, without further evidence, that it holds fish… lots of fish… big, fat, healthy fish. The only question, really, is what you’re going to do with that information once those fish have ignored your, Read More
We’ve never met. I get his mail on occasion though. I moved into the house last June. He rented it for the previous couple of years. The house was cleaned out, but the few items that lingered in the garage led me to believe we might have a lot in common. One Carlisle oar, leaning against, Read More
It was the year’s first post-work outing. With the equinox behind us and daylight savings time tacking an extra hour onto the evenings, there was finally enough afternoon sunlight to give it a go… and not a day too soon.
Before its hollow bottle baritone – “H’hoohoohoo… hoo… hoo” – interrupted the predawn stillness of a snow-draped January morning, I’d done most of my “bird watching” down the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun. In fact, I was only in the backyard at four a.m. as a potty-break escort for our weeks-old Labrador, my new bird dog in training.
It’s the second largest state in the union, yet contains only two percent public land. High fences abound and expensive private leases are often required to hunt or fish, making it easy to write off Texas as a destination for the average sportsmen. However this winter my eyes were opened to another side of the Lone, Read More
“Did you know those things are like… way old?” the shop kid said of the soft hackled flies I’d asked for. “I hear they still work though.” “Yeah, I’ve heard that too,” I said. Had I not already felt so unfashionable in the hip, resort-town fly shop I might have mentioned the old Guy, Read More
I’ve made a habit over the past few years of shooting elk farther and farther from the truck, in places with no motorized access and only my back to pack em out on. Many have asked why I’m willing to put in so much effort and, at times, suffering. For me the answer is, Read More