There was a time when I thought being a fishing guide would be about the coolest existence a guy could experience. That all changed one rainy Father’s Day weekend some 15 years ago when renowned guide Rod Patch floated me and my wife down the Cardiac Canyon reach of the Henry’s Fork. From bouncing the…
By Eric Booton A handful of my fellow Southcentral Alaska trout bums manage to fish year-round on one of the larger river systems that remains mostly open. Frigid waters flow between ice shelves, their invitingly shallow depths a recipe for cold toes and frozen boots. The sun creeps above the ridgetops providing a brief amount…
Today, the U.S. House of Representatives will take up a bill, H.R. 3144, which would undercut the prospects for salmon and steelhead recovery in the Columbia River basin in the Pacific Northwest. HR 3144 offers a regressive response to the challenge of keeping the Columbia’s legendary salmon and steelhead runs viable while ensuring reliable and…
Baby Skeena and Baby Morgan on the Kenai River. Photo courtesy of the Williams family By Jenny Weis My dad and uncle fished at our family cabin growing up, my boyfriend taught me how to fly fish, and most fishing trips among my friends were male-only, with no invitation extended to the females. Truthfully, for…
We see a lot of video footage of migrating salmon spawning in Alaska and in other places around the world, but we often forget that our inland trout and char run upstream—just like salmon—to spawn, too. The video below shows spawning rainbow trout spawning this spring in a small tributary stream on the Helena-Lewis and…
By Eric Booton Learning to fly fish is always a mild struggle-fest. I personally endured the process with choice words, and extended periods of time with my rod catching more dust than fish. In the past few years I’ve watched friends and family go through a similar love and hate relationship with their fly rod,…
“Wrong mine, wrong place.” That’s the message delivered today by 50 fishing and hunting businesses and organizations to First Quantum Minerals, the Canadian mining company currently deciding whether to sign an options agreement with proposed Pebble Mine backer, Northern Dynasty Minerals. In the letter entities including The Orvis Company, the American Fly Fishing Trade Association,…