A confession at the outset: I love Chaco’s sandals. I bought my first pair more than 15 years ago before a trip to Costa Rica that was going to require a lot of walking. The toe strap on these sandals have always made them perfect for an active lifestyle, and because they break-in to fit…
Millions pour into western Montana to reconnect the watershed and restore endangered bull trout populations
There is a risk to presuming that the first few minutes of a fishing outing will portend how the entire day will unfold. How often do we struggle early, and then rally? How often do we dominate early and then fade? But we often can’t help ourselves, which is part of why I got a…
By Jamie Vaughan Trout Unlimited and local partners recently completed construction on a wetland restoration in downtown Cedar Springs, Mich. With help from a grant from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) this is the second wetland restoration that Trout Unlimited has implemented in this community, which is home to Cedar Creek, an important coldwater tributary to the Rogue River. …
TU’s Jack Rodgers recently connected with Alberto Rey, the 2021 Orvis Fly Fishing Guide of the Year, to chase steelhead in Lake Erie tributaries. He learned that Rey is not only a skilled guide but also a talented artist.
Region: New EnglandActivities: Fishing, hunting, hikingSpecies: Brook and brown trout; whitetail deer; ruffed grouse; moose Where: The White Mountain National Forest comprises more than 750,000 acres in the eastern New Hampshire counties of Grafton, Coos and Carroll with a small portion of the forest extending into Maine. The forest includes over 100 miles of the…
Region: Southern RockiesActivities: Hiking, fishing, rafting, hunting, mountain biking, campingSpecies: Rainbow and brown trout Where: The Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument is a swath of more than 240,000 acres of protected public land in Taos County, in north central New Mexico. Much of the land abuts about 50 miles of its eponymous river. The…
Articulated streamers are quickly becoming some of my favorite patterns to tie at the vise
My first introduction to Red Rock Lakes came a decade and a half ago when a friend suggested that I might think about applying for an antelope hunting license in the area. I was new to Montana and knew nothing about wildlife refuges except for some vague understanding that they were a different type of public land that I guess maybe you could hunt on?
As Orvis Guide to Fly Fishing Host Tom Rosenbauer notes, bass are the top sportfish in North America, and he’s right. Just about anywhere you go, from the lakes of Canada to the swamps of the Deep South, bass are readily available. But, as Tom notes, most folks don’t chase bass with flies. “The key…
Fly fishing lakes for trout can be tricky. With an entire of body of water at their disposal and no need to make quick decisions on food that floats by like it might in a river, trout tend to dial in on what’s in the water at any given time. Still Water Retrieve from Trout…
We recently chatted with Zoë Mihalas, a former TU Teen Leader, recipient of TU’s Distinguished Service Award for Youth Education, and current president of the Sewanee 5 Rivers club.
I always look forward to the transition to wet-wading season. Here in the mid-Atlantic that usually hits in mid-May, unless you’re fishing a tailwater just downstream from a dam, in which case waders are still a must. Even with neoprene wading socks, the first steps into a chilly (but not frigid) trout stream can be…
Northern Pike, Bass, Bluegill, and other warmwater fish are great fly alternatives when trout need a break
By Matthias Bonzo In 2019, TU worked with its partners to complete two road stream crossings in the Huron-Manistee National Forest in Michigan. The crossings were on Boswell Creek, in Manistee County, and on Hinton Creek in Wexford County. Boswell Creek is a tributary of Bear Creek and contains a healthy population of brook trout.…
No, southern Florida isn’t a trout fishery (at least not of the salmonid variety). But we’re all connected by water, and the Everglades might be the best living laboratory in the country that explains the virtues of water, not just to people, but to every living thing. Our friends at Orvis took to the Everglades…
Matt Jennings and I are standing on the bank of Wisconsin’s Root River on an early spring day. And we are plotting. “I think we need to cross down there,” says Jennings, who then starts pointing his fly rod at various spots in the river. “We’ll hit that one first, then that one, and then…
Today we only have Lahontan cutthroat trout in 73 streams across the Great Basin — almost all are isolated and most of those populations exhibit low genetic diversity
Making fishing better in a Muskegon River tributary
In the early 1990s, TU volunteer Rich Redmen had the idea to use large Willow stakes to resurrect a deeply eroding stream bank on the Boquet River in Wadhams, N.Y. At the time, it was a common practice to load eroding banks with large rocks, often called rip rap. But rip rap could cost 15…
