Articles

The bad luck banana

Ever wonder where the superstitions about bananas and boats originated?

by Chris Hunt - Tuesday, Oct 20th, 2026

Mythbusting (photo: Justin Hamblin).

As a kid on a party boat charter off the coast of Galveston more than 40 years ago, I learned first-hand that having a banana on board a fishing vessel is a more egregious sin than letting the engine oil run dry, hoisting the Jolly Roger, or even throwing the captain overboard. Much of my first taste of this maritime wives tale was theater, but even initiating a seance and conjuring up the ghost of Fletcher Christian, I was told, would be more forgivable than pulling a banana out of your lunch bag while out at sea.

Spoiled rotten with BC bull trout

In search of mammoth backcountry char in southern British Columbia

by Chris Hunt - Thursday, Oct 15th, 2026

Photo: Chris Hunt.

Spoiled. Rotten.

There’s no other reasonable way to describe the feeling that washed over me as Andre Lafferma guided the metallic blue Bell Jet Ranger II helicopter off the gravel bar, elevated into the cold, gray sky, and disappeared into the rain-blurred ether. Light three passengers and some fly-fishing gear, the chopper climbed to the lip of the river canyon, topped the spruce and cedar trees that reached to the slate-gray heavens, and, just like that, we were alone on a remote, emerald-green river somewhere in British Columbia’s Cariboo Mountains.

Orvis celebrates 50 years of Tom Rosenbauer with special edition Helios rod, net, and more

Each of these half century-celebrating items will be released in limited supply

by Hatch Magazine - Wednesday, Oct 7th, 2026

Photo: Orvis Fly Fishing.

You know you’ve made an indelible mark on your craft when your longtime employer launches a premium line of gear and then puts your name on it. Chuck Taylor, eat your heart out. Michael Jordan? Pfft. Congratulations, Tom Rosenbauer. You have officially arrived.

A river of reckoning

What a warming world means for the Arkansas River and the people living along its course

by Johnny Carrol Sain - Monday, Oct 5th, 2026

June 14, 2019. High levels on the Arkansas River flood the nearby banks in downtown Dardanelle, Arkansas (photo: Jocelyn Augustino/FEMA).

Back home, it’s just “the river.” I was born about a mile from its sandbar banks in Dardanelle, Arkansas, and I’ve never lived anywhere that’s more than a 30-minute drive from watching tugboats muscle massive barges through Dardanelle Lock.

The river is where we baked in the August afternoon sun while setting up camp and woke to a sopping wet sauna the next morning. It’s where scuba divers brushed up against catfish “big as cars,” or at least that’s what the old-timers at the bait shop told me.

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