Articles

Chasing Grayling

by Chris Hunt - Monday, Apr 28th, 2014

In a day when all the fly fishing rage seems to be centered on salty critters that induce screaming reels and stylish expletive “bleeps” in one of the hundreds of new-era videos sucking up bandwidth these days, the essence of the craft seems to have gone south. Literally and figuratively.

Oh, I’m part of the problem. Believe me. I dig the flats and the fish that swim them. But it’s spring up here where we can actually tell a difference between the seasons, and my thoughts are shifting from bones and permit to chasing lighter fare in places where, when summer finally does arrive, it’s damn near over.

Places like the Alaskan interior, where the sun is shining now and pushing snowmelt into the region’s many rivers. And in those rivers, under brown, rushing waters lined by birch and alder, one of the most game of fly fishing targets is busy pair up, ensuring anglers yet another generation of wonderment.

Arctic grayling might be the perfect dry fly target, and while our nation’s creative fisheries managers have done their level best to bring grayling to the masses in the Lower 48, the most reliable American destination to catch this gorgeous cousin of the trout remains Alaska. And perhaps no other river in the Last Frontier is more identified with grayling than the Chena.

The Carp Flats of the Snake River

by Chris Hunt - Friday, Apr 25th, 2014

Certainly, no one in their right mind would claim the Snake as a “secret water,” but I do believe that most Idaho anglers forsake the Snake when it comes to what I believe to be the most game freshwater fish in America -- even if carp are considered trash fish by most American anglers.

I also hold to the notion that carp are perhaps the ideal freshwater fish for fly rodders -- their general wariness combined with their liberal diet provide challenge and opportunity all at once.

Carp were first introduced into American waters under the U.S. Grant administration -- they were brought in as a source of protein for a developing nation. Since they were first stocked in a pond in Maryland in the 1860s, they’ve spread to every state in the Lower 48 -- and Idaho enjoys a thriving population, particularly in the carp-friendly waters of the Snake River as it flows along the state’s southern third.

First Land-Raised Farmed Atlantic Salmon On Its Way to Market

by Ben Kryzinski - Thursday, Apr 24th, 2014

A view of Kuterra's contained, land-based salmon farming operation. (photo: Kuterra)

The first farm raised salmon reared in land-based, fully contained system will soon hit the shelves of Canadian supermarkets. These salmon, which entered Vancouver Island-based Kuterra's aquaculture system in March of last year, are the first salmon of their kind to be harvested and sold for human consumption. The salmon harvested by Kuterra, owned by the 'Namgis First Nation, will be marketed by British Columbia seafood distributor Albion Seafood with the first harvest of Kuterra's salmon to be sold at Safeway stores across Canada.

The salmon farming industry, across the globe, has a checkered and filthy past. Marine-based salmon farms are known as incubators of disease, often requiring the salmon be fed antibiotics to control pathogens, and have also repeatedly been linked to spreading the very dangerous disease ISA (infectious salmon anemia) to waters of the Pacific Ocean. They litter the sea with waste, often leading to uncontrolled algal blooms, lead to the deaths of other marine mammals, serve as hot beds for sea lice and escaped farm fish -- ill-adapted to the rigors of the wild and bred for farm-friendly traits, not survivability -- pollute the gene pools of wild fish.

The repeatedly failing report card of the massive marine salmon farming industry is a driving force behind Kuterra's marketing efforts and many hope it is also behind Kuterra's guiding principles. Kuterra has indicated that its system strives to achieve the pinnacle of sustainability, operating without the use of chemicals -- no antibiotics or pesticides -- and with a 30% reduction in food use when compared to marine-based operations.

Size 12s

by Steve Zakur - Wednesday, Apr 23rd, 2014

I never stop fishing for trout. Closing day. Opening day. The season's milestones hold little meaning in a state where there is a generous open season and many options during the brief off season. Even in the depths of winter, when the fishing yields little catching, the lure of the water draws me if for no other reason that to revisit the places where rising trout slashed at bugs and came to hand with abundance when the water was warmer and the air was thick.

Spring is late this year. There have been frosts well into April and it's almost Easter and the forsythia are not yet in full bloom. The peepers have started but their songs but are not yet at max volume. Good fishing is coming, just not fast enough.

I took the boys out on opening day when they were younger. There is a pond the next town over, too warm in the summer for trout, that the state stocks heavily in the spring. We never caught a trout on those opening day forays. My sons weren't eager enough to roll out of bed at the obscene hour required to get a good seat and, frankly, neither was I. We stopped fishing that pond the year a small boy fishing next to us hooked his brother on the inside if the mouth with a Rapala. This was not the experience I was looking to share with my children.

A soft spot for holdovers

by Chad Shmukler - Tuesday, Apr 22nd, 2014

This brightly dressed holdover brook trout was far and away the highlight of the day.

I am an unabashed wild trout snob. And I'm not alone. Many others would also proudly proclaim themselves to be so because, put simply, wild trout are better in every way than their stocked counterpart. Wild trout are typically stronger, faster, more wily, more feisty and often considerably more beautiful. Stocked trout, on the other hand, so often underwhelm. As strangers to the environment they've found themselves planted in, having been raised in a tank and fed with pellets, they behave unnaturally, rarely present us with challenges and teach us little that will allow us to become better anglers. They bore us with their snubbed noses and tattered fins. And so wild trout snobs like myself seek out waters where wild trout predominate. For those of us that live in the east, this often comes often at the expense of convenience, fish size or both. But it's worth it.

Yet, despite my disdain for stocked trout, I have a soft spot for holdovers, those ill-equipped transplants that beat the odds by leveraging instinct and likely more than a bit of luck to persist through the winter and cement themselves as full fledged residents of the waters they swim in.

Even in big, bug-rich tailwaters, stocked trout that make it through a full year to greet the bucket loads of their brethren that get dumped in come spring earn a measure of respect. Regardless of the plentiful food supply and abundance of good lies, these holdovers have still defied their likely fate. In unwelcoming, icy mountain freestoners like one I recently fished — where the food supply is scarce even in the height of summer — holdover trout inspire a significant amount of awe.