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Terrestrial season arrives, but is it wise to fish?
It's my favorite time of the year. Big, fat terrestrial insects have had a summer to mature, and they're prominent along trout streams all over the West. Normally, I'd have stuffed a couple of fly boxes with hopper and beetle patterns, and I'd be spending any free time I had throwing big bugs at fish…
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The popper-dropper? You bet
My friend Rob McConnell is the Texas equivalent of a Rocky Mountain creek freak -- a kindred soul if you will ... a fellow traveler. But, instead of searching out small, out-of-the-way cutthroat trout streams in little-traveled reaches of high-elevation backcountry, he combs the precious few acres of public lands in East Texas for swampy…
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The Gurgler: The under-utilized foam fly
I'm headed to East Texas this week for some bass and panfish fishing in some of the region's swampier areas, and I've done some tying over the last few days to make sure I'm armed with "all the right stuff." But I didn't feel like I was ideally equipped until I tied up a handful…
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‘To thine ownself be true’
The Roan Plateau in northwest Colorado. Sharing creates advocates, while oversharing creates problems “To share or not to share…” If Hamlet were a fly fisher instead of just an angst-ridden 30-something pining for his dead father, this might have been what he uttered as he pondered the value of his own life. For, much like…
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Tying the After Hours Stonefly
It's later in the season, but not too late for stoneflies. Below, TU's Nick Halle ties his After Hours Stonefly, a solid "tweener" of a bug that could be seen by trout as either a smaller Yellow Sally or even a larger, nocturnal stone. Even more likely? This pattern, at least this time of year,…
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Light the pilot for a young angler and share the craft
I look back on my fishing life, and I can play certain moments in my mind like black-and-white highlight reels. That first snout of a brown trout sipping a grasshopper fly I cast in the right spot along the riverbank. That first tarpon jump, that made my knees knock as the silver king splashed down on…
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When the weather breaks and the rains come
Photo by Mark H. Anbinder A group of friends had meticulously planned a big float of the upper Henry's Fork from Big Springs to Mack's Inn this past weekend. It's been a hell of summer — we went the better part of a month without rain and here in Idaho Falls, we went through the latter…
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