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Virginia Trout Slam a surprising, and fun, challenge
The cast was too good. The drift was too good. There was no way this was not going to work. And it did. A trout dimpled the surface as it slurped in the little olive Stimulator. It wasn’t a big trout, but I played it carefully in the fading light of a sultry Virginia May…
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High mountain streams feed the soul
After some much-needed good news on the cancer front, I grabbed my cowboy hat and 1-weight and headed out the door. It was time to celebrate and I intended on doing just that by mountain biking and fishing (sometimes combined) on my gorgeous public lands. I pulled into the spot where I hiked out last week and trekked to see what this next section…
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Old memories with Dad … new ones as Dad
My dad and my youngest son don’t know each other very well. Initially it was because my dad lived in another part of the state and visits were too few and far between. In more recent years their ability to connect on a personal level has been hampered by Alzheimer’s, and now, appropriate separation issues…
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Teaching Dad
One would think my fishing addiction would be at least partially hereditary, and this is true, insofar as my father’s family fell in love with New Mexico upon first laying eyes on the mountains around the Moreno Valley. My grandfather and his sons couldn’t get enough of fishing those creeks, the Cimarron, Rio Chiquito and Pot Creek, by worm, spinner or fly. By sons,…
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Bonds of brothers
As age takes its toll, the memories become stronger By Drew Irby I was browsing through a collection of scanned photos the other day and came across a vintage pic from the family archives. I had been randomly thinking about what happened to certain friends from my college days in northern Arizona. Seeing this shot…
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An introspection about working with water and trout
By Andy Rasmussen I learned in school that rivers are the lifeblood of nature and civilization. Draining entire continents in their meandering course, the great river systems deliver lifegiving water and commerce to much of the earth’s surface. And as fishers we know that “eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.” On…
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Wet wading season arrives
A great day for a double feature.
As I stepped into the rushing water, the cold instantly filled my wading boots and flooded over my calves. The crystal-clear water rushed up to the bases of trees and shrubs and hid most of the rocks I know in this stretch of river. With that, the typical lies of the high mountain brook trout were also obscured,…
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