Trout Magazine

  • Trout Talk

    Finding an old friend on a new hunt

    If you board a jet in Anchorage, Alaska and fly southeast for three hours you can land in Seattle, Washington. Fly three hours southwest and you end up in Adak, a remote island in Alaska’s Aleutian chain.  Adak is equidistant from Seattle and Tokyo. It is 274 square miles of treeless tundra that’s constantly battered…

  • TROUT Magazine

    What’s your favorite TROUT magazine cover from the past 10 years?

    As we approached my 40th cover TROUT, I asked the editors which covers they liked best, and they came up with these.

    Our team at TROUT magazine likes to think that people can judge a magazine by its cover … at least in part. The cover image sets the tone for everything that follows, so we put a lot of collective thought into our choices. Sometimes we want to provoke you. Sometimes we want to cause you…

  • Restoration Conservation

    Surveying what’s left of Eklutna River’s Salmon

    Standing on the edge of the bridge, staring down the dry riverbed, I wondered what the Eklutna River would look like when it was allowed to flow again.

    This past fall I found myself frequenting the Eklutna River often, after plans solidified for the owners of the Eklutna Hydroelectric Project to briefly return water to the river for the first time since its construction in 1955. The water release was part of the study looking to mitigate the projects impacts on fish populations.…

  • Conservation

    ’Tis the Season

    When big browns are spawning, it’s a good time to stop and relish the moment What’s not to love about brown trout? They’re crafty, tenacious, mean, strong, and damn near invincible. Jason Bourne, Derrick Henry, Kaiser Soze, and Dracula all rolled into one fish. Increasingly concerned about the plight of North America’s native salmonids, I…

  • Snake River dams Fishing Fly tying steelhead

    Tying the Steelhead Coachman

    If you were to look in the box of a seasoned steelheader on the banks of the Snake, Grande Ronde or Clearwater chances are good you'll find.

    I can distinctly remember the first few flies I started fishing with. As I would imagine the case is with many people, that selection of a dozen flies was a 'who's who' of the classics. The Adams, Elk-hair Caddis, Muddler Minnow, Pheasant Tail, and Royal Wulff seem almost like names from scripture in the pantheon…

  • Snake River dams

    Naxiyam Wana and the Uniter

    A stream roiling dark with Chinook salmon in central Idaho’s wilderness high country. A throb, a pulse of life into a pristine river, the abundance of the ocean arriving in the flesh of thousands of salmon in a wild mountain river hundreds of miles inland. This was. This was life itself, for the land, for…