America has such a well-earned reputation for innovating our way out of problems that we sometimes miss the obvious natural solution. In a series of open houses this summer in Great Basin communities, the Trump administration revealed a plan to reduce wildfire risk by constructing 11,000 acres of fuel breaks across public lands in parts…
Native Rio Grande cutthroat trout. Contrary to many conservation-minded anglers, I am one who believes that, along with cockroaches, coyotes and Siberian elm trees, brown trout will survive the apocalypse. They possess many of the traits we Americans admire most: they are intelligent, confident, adaptable, rugged, ambitious and breathtakingly handsome. And for the time being…
I was around 8 or 9 when I last participated in a fishing derby. Whenever we had a big runoff and the city let the Santa Fe River run, Game and Fish would make some pools with sandbags and dump in a few loads of stockers. The river was just a block away from my house,…
The lifeblood of the Village of Pecos, the Pecos River flows through public and private lands in a narrow canyon flanked by in aspen, Gambel oak, and mixed conifer. The Pecos boasts a fun salmon fly hatch in early summer, and I love how spooky the fish are in autumn, when elk bugles echo, the banks blaze with yellow cottonwoods, and the water resembles the air above, cold, clear and…
GRTU president Mark Dillow in his element on the Guadalupe River. Trout Unlimited has 4,000 members in Texas, all part of one Texas-sized chapter: Guadalupe River TU (GRTU). Amazing for a state that has no native trout, and relatively few trout streams. When I lived in Colorado, it was commonly believed that all anglers residing…
As TU founder Art Neumann famously stated, “Take care of the fish and the fishing will take care of itself.” But we’re predominantly fly fishing, after all. So what about the bugs? Who’s looking after them? As it turns out — on the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam, anyway — the U.S. Geological Survey is doing just that. It may mark the dawn…
According to one stereotype, a rancher’s commitment to the lifestyle is mainly self-serving. The fences they build are as much to keep the public out as to detain resident wildlife (translation: elk) for the purpose of selling high-dollar hunting opportunities. When not dewatering streams, they restore and stock them for their own fishing pleasure and that of paying anglers in search of lunkers in a crowd-free…
