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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.
If I’d had a pipe and an Irish setter, we could have been in a Norman Rockwell painting. Puffy white clouds floated in a bluebird sky above vibrant green sage and the rolling red-dirt prairie. A man, at ease with the world and confident in his forthcoming conquest, strides forth, a shotgun cradled across, Read More
For months we had our fingers crossed. Eying snow reports and talking to the few who had been in the mountains, we were cautiously optimistic. Despite a big snow year we had a shot at hitting it right. A few days too early and ice would cover the high alpine lakes we hoped to, Read More
The horizon dropped away from the bow and for six long seconds the world contracted into torque and turbulence, angles and adrenaline, surges and slides. Then stillness.
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 the pull and, Read More
“It’s okay,” said Steven in a clipped, slightly strangled tone. He was kneeling in the riverbed, gazing into the middle distance as he spoke, as though looking for his happy place. I’d had it by the tail four seconds earlier – if not his happy place exactly, certainly a reasonable five-pound stand-in. But like, Read More
My son was giddy when I picked him up early from school. We’d been talking about this day for months, uncertain when it would finally come. It snuck up on us at last. Driving together in the pickup we had thirty minutes until we were all reunited. I’ll admit, I was giddy too. There are, Read More
The more I learn about hunting and fishing, the more I recognize how much I don’t know. Adding a kid to the mix has really driven that humbling realization home for me. Not only do I have the perpetual need to refine my approach in the field, but now I also need to develop, Read More
The morning started with coffee, getting kids off to school, and then heading to the river.By early afternoon we were into fish, wrists sunburned, and lost in the day.We watched the sunset form the tailgate, satiated by a much appreciated day on the river.
The big cat presses its belly to the frozen ground and crawls forward, inch by silent inch through the low sage. The midmorning sun rising at his back offers little warmth, but the cat has learned from hard won experience that low-angle light glinting off the glacier makes it difficult for his prey to, Read More
Mark reached under his pillow and pulled back the hammer of his pistol. My eyes are heavy as I started 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 up, Read More