Trout Tips: Your fellow anglers

This last week, I ventured high into the eastern Idaho backcountry to chase native Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat trout on a small mountain stream that clears early from runoff and sports some sizable trout for a stream its size. I’d scoped out a large bend in the creek that, I had calculated, would have me…

Voices from the River: Five questions for Tess

If you’ve spent much time fishing in Montana, you’re probably familiar with Rock Creek just outside of Missoula. While it’s importance to fly anglers has been long known, it’s key role in trout recruitment for the Clark Fork River is starting to come to light. With that in mind, Trout Unlimited brought in Tess Scanlon,…

Video spotlight: High Country Cutthroat

Featuring Heather Hodson of United Women on the Fly, this great new Todd Moen film shows why those of us who live in the West absolutely love native cutthroat trout. These are the fish that always seem to be looking up, always seem to be hungry and, when we’re chasing them, the wallpaper is pretty…

Wild and Native: Rules of the River

Last week, Trout Unlimited posted a clip describing the proper way to de-bone a trout. Perhaps predictably, this was met by a few howls of outrage. “How can the organization that practically invented catch-and-release advocate eating a trout? Shame. Shame!” The fact is, however, that not all wild fish are equal, and whacking one can…

New science promotes trout recovery

By Chris Wood Some define conservation as overseeing loss. Loss of wetlands; loss of open space; loss of water quality; loss of species. Aldo Leopold harkened to this when he wrote in the Sand County Almanac that “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.…

Voices from the River: Haunted

By Mark Taylor You know how time can seem to slow down in an emergency or stressful situation? It’s a real thing, basically a function of the brain sending a big old shot of adrenaline into the bloodstream. The fancy word for it is tachypsychia, and it what I was experiencing as stood waist deep…