Currently browsing… Fly fishing
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High school fishing tournament opens new doors in central Massachusetts
As a staff member in the TU Headwaters Youth program, I have an insider’s perspective on just how hard our chapters work to get young people involved in TU. This involvement may take the shape of a fly- tying workshop or a visit to a TIC classroom, possibly even a full day of Fly Fishing…
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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…
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Broad coalition urges Northwest governors to action on salmon, steelhead
Editor's note: The following was delivered today to Govs. Kate Brown (Ore.), Steve Bullock (Mont.), Jay Inslee (Wash.) and Brad Little (Idaho) from a coalition power companies, conservation groups, the transportation sector and community utility coops. Feb. 24, 2020 Dear Governors Brown, Bullock, Inslee and Little: The debate over the management and impacts of the…
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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…
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Mousing the Aniak
Oh, to be Brian O'Keefe for a day last summer in western Alaska. O'Keefe served as Todd Moen's fishing subject in Moen's new short film, "Alaska Fly Fishing with a Mouse," that's been crawling the interwebs with a vengeance over the last few days. And rightly so—the footage of massive Alaskan rainbows erupting beneath mouse…
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Management matters
By Garrett Hanks Wolf Creek pass in the San Juan mountains of Colorado serves as the tipping point between the westward San Juan basin, home to the recently rediscovered San Juan cutthroat trout, and the Rio Grande cutthroat’s namesake river to the east. Unlike trout, bear, mule deer and other wildlife are unhindered by the ridgeline; their tracks freely cross the divide. Look north and you’ll notice the burn scar from the West Fork fire of 2013. Setting off south along the Continental Divide Trail, you quickly…
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The Gibralter is special
The place you catch a rainbow trout as big as a silver salmon is a place you hold with reverence. A place you plan to someday return.
Imagine a place that’s wild — save for an ATV trail, there are no roads leading to it, and no fences. Swap the idea of any buildings on the horizon for grass and fireweed. Add the awareness that there might be a brown bear around the next bend, or a fox watching from a gravel…