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Two things anglers can do in times of drought
I had a choice this weekend. I could head down to Shenandoah National Park and fish for native brookies or ply the Potomac for blue catfish and perhaps an occasional schoolie striper. I chose the Potomac. While I love fishing the Potomac, after multiple days of high temperatures, I didn’t feel great about tugging on bespeckled jewels, even in cold small mountain streams. Your actions…
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Roadless areas help define the character of America
“There he is.” Stepping over deadfall and keeping a distance, we followed and periodically bugled to a herd of elk. I was leaning with my rifle against a tree when the rag-horn bull separated from the herd in response to Scott’s bugle. Elk hunting in roadless areas is prime thanks to great habitat After I shot the…
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Gratitude
TU makes it easy to be thankful
November is a pensive month for me. The leaves color and then let go. The plants lovingly cared for all spring and summer, decay. The days grow shorter and the nights longer. This will also be the first year that my brothers and I will not celebrate Mom’s November birthday, as she passed in July.…
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Every river needs a champion.
Look in the mirror. What you see is a champion.
My home-water, the Potomac River, is far from trout country (although TU’s restoration work in the headwaters has anglers now catching native brook trout). This spring, the Friends of Fletcher’s Cove hosted a day on the Potomac for kids from D.C. who had never been near the river, much less caught fish from it. On…
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Thanks for those who serve
I was in my 20s and working for the Bureau of Land Management when the second longest shutdown of the federal government occurred. It lasted three weeks and was punctuated by “a storm like no other,” so I spent much of the three weeks shoveling neighbors’ sidewalks and helping push out snowbound cars. When the…
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The greatest threat to wildlands and native trout in a generation
And you can do something about it
And you can do something about it “This country has been swinging the hammer of development so long and so hard that it has forgotten the anvil of wilderness which gave value and significance to its labors. The momentum of our blows is so unprecedented that the remaining remnant of wilderness will be pounded into…
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Mom, the Rosary, fly fishing and conservation
Even though they never fished, I always think of Mom and Dad when I hear the line, “In our family there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.” Norman Maclean wrote that on the opening page of what’s arguably the most influential novella in the history of fly fishing. Describing his father and…
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