• 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.

Chef’s are underrated.  The products of a gifted Chef de Cuisine should, by my estimation, rate right alongside those of lauded musicians, painters, dancers and poets. Maybe they get short shrift because of the transitory nature of their art – it will all eventually, literally, become crap.  That seems unfair to me. But maybe, Read More

My fingers were almost numb inside gloves that had been left in the truck all night. Cold metal from the trailer hitch and scraping ice off the windows had quickly taken their toll. Feeling was slowly coming back as the defrost blasted. Headlights guided me through the darkness as I headed to the put in., Read More

  Upon discovering my hunting pack, loaded and stashed for the morning, my 3 year old ignored the knife, the saw, the lighter, the rope, the Snickers, the Fritos, the laser range finder, the flagging tape, the camelback, the .30-06 cartridges and other tempting tools of mess and mayhem. He went instead, straight for, Read More

The opening monologue and imagery grabbed my attention…and held it. The film isn’t fast, flashy or full of big fish, but that’s what I like about it. Reflective and contemplative we are reminded why we fish. Russ Schnitzer, part of the team at The Fly Collective, is a friend of ours who recently traded, Read More

“Can I use those?” I was looking for deer. Everett, my three year old, was looking to score my binoculars… again. I usually have a cheap compact pair on hand for him to use, but we’d accidentally left them at home, along with any chance of peace and quiet. What I’d hoped would be, Read More

Over the years I’ve done a handful of european mounts myself. It’s always tedious and doesn’t turn out as well as it would if done by a professional. But I like the process and often don’t want to throw down the money to have a taxidermist do the job. This year I had decent, Read More

You left the house at 4 a.m. By 5 you were hiking through the frozen darkness. 6 found you prepared, your body and your gear positioned just so. The blackness is absolute, the limestone at your back cold and sharp. A favorable wind brings imagined smells to your nose, half-heard noises to your ears, Read More

My attention ebbs and flows. A month ago I had almost no interest in hunting, I was immersed in fishing. There were years where my focus was waterfowl, then it switched to upland birds for the last couple. While introduced early, passions for fishing and bird hunting came later to me. Big game hunting, Read More

“Ok” challenged my brother “Where are you going with this?” A few days, and more than a few rum and tonics into vacation, our evening card game had morphed into a heated discussion of such light fare as original sin, man’s inhumanity to man, and our collective ability to affect positive change. I’d made, Read More

Quarterly I receive a shipment of beer from my father-in-law. This has been going on for nearly ten years. It started with a house warming present meant for his daughter. A care package that, along with some other goodies, included a couple bottles of beer. I drank the beer and sent a thank you, Read More