Trout art and paraphernalia

When I was young, our family had a condo in a nearby ski town that was affectionately known as the ‘hatchery’ due to the copious amounts of trout art and decorations adorning the walls and tables. I recall attempting to count them at one point, but I couldn’t keep up, especially since I knew of hidden pieces I drew on the studs…

The Michigan Arctic grayling

Arctic-grayling-Michigan

Grayling are a tough fish to reintroduce to former habitat. For a long time, it was assumed that once the sailfish of the north winked out of a certain watershed, they were gone for good. Over the last 20 years, though, grayling reintroduction in Montana has shown promise. And, in just the last five years,…

Still on top

Efforts to fix habitat are as much for people as they are for the planet It’s legislature season in New Mexico, a time I’ve come to abhor for how it represents my species and, perhaps more likely, my deficiencies as a chess player.  Sausage making is a circus, spectacular flights of ethical and logical acrobatics…

Skate punks and disc golf

In praise of urban trout streams The thought occurred to me while I was fishing under the Highway 20 bridge over the lower Yuba River in California’s Gold Country. To reach the water I had crossed a floodplain so altered by quarrying, mining and off-road vehicles that it more resembled a moonscape than a functional…

Ponderosas have secrets

The giant ponderosa peers over blue-green water cascading and flowing around boulders, plunging into pools and meandering in eddies. This tree must be well over 100-years old. It stretches skyward with giant, twisted branches leading to more twists and turns extending over a spectacular reach of river. The pumpkin and burnt-orange bark has splits and cracks in its puzzle-like texture and its hunter-green needles extend long at each…