by Todd Tanner - Friday, Mar 21st, 2025
Experts always have opinions. As they should. Any expert worth his or her salt will have strong views regarding their areas of expertise, and any expert who isn’t opinionated is either holding back or being disingenuous. In fact, an “expert” without opinions likely isn’t an expert at all, which is something you should consider going forward.
With that in mind, I want to share some relatively detailed thoughts about fly rods for trout.
by Chad Shmukler - Wednesday, Mar 19th, 2025
I’ve had the good fortune — or the extreme displeasure, depending on either your perspective or your fondness for self-immolation — to spend many days and evenings fishing some of America’s most difficult trout water. Fabled rivers like the Henry’s Fork, Missouri, and Delaware, where mayfly hatches can be dizzyingly complex and the fish are so conditioned from almost non-stop interactions with humans that tricking them with one of your fur-and-feather imitations requires delicacy, skill, and a tremendous amount of both practice and patience.
by Jon Tobey - Wednesday, Mar 12th, 2025
The next morning I got up early and headed to Mikey’s. He didn’t answer when I called so I banged on the door some.
“Jesus, Jarl. It’s date morning don’t you know, just me and the missus…”
“Uh, huh.”
He looked closely at me. “You look like hell.”“The Devils’ pawn anyway. Suit up.”
It took him about five minutes, so I figured date morning wasn’t a total wash. On the way up, I explained it to him.
“Case D, Case C was a screw job and you are still stuck in the cross hairs. But now you got two devils.”
“Ayuh.”“What do you figure?”
“I figure the screwballs ain’t got it, we ain’t got it, and my well-dressed new best friends ain’t got it.” I patted the dog sitting between us for emphasis.
“It’s still on the mountain.”
“Now you got it,” I said.
by Ted Williams - Saturday, Mar 8th, 2025
“Wild trout, unlike men, will not — indeed cannot — live except where beauty dwells.” — John Voelker
Having one’s rivers is important, like having family or a country. With rivers, though, you get to choose. I prefer mine rippling with wild brook trout, which is to say clean and secluded. And because my time and place coincide with an irruption of my species, this means my rivers must be small — headwaters really, the tops of systems known even in Boston.
by Jon Tobey - Wednesday, Mar 5th, 2025
I probably wasn’t out long. A hundred-pound Rottweiler has a lot of poking power in his nose and doesn’t take no for an answer. Goblin poked and prodded me around. My head hurt from the hangover, my jaw was the size of a large arbor reel, and my thigh was a bloody mess.
First thing’s first. I took my shirt off and bound my thigh. Then I got in the truck and maneuvered it to hook the winch onto the trailer and dragged it roughly back to my stoop. I had a new bay window thanks to the assholes, but I would worry about that later. At least it would keep me dry for the night.
After that I got into my shed and took a pair of forceps from my waders and went inside to my fly-tying bench. Lesson 101. Leave some damn Bourbon in the bottle. I was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way – with beer. I got a Dead Guy and slammed it for the pain. Then I probed around with the forceps until I was sure the wound was mostly empty, and sopped up the prodigious blood using both of my good towels. Time to get re-married and register for new linen, I thought. I took a curved needle and some nylon gut I had and tried to pull the wound together while I was still in shock and thought this was a good idea, but it was more of a hole than a cut, so it was going to be one hell of a scar. I let the dog lick it a little to clean it out. I think the dog worries about me some, but I’m not so sure he wouldn’t just eat me if I dropped dead in the trailer. Finally, I poured a bunch of Super Glue into it and went into convulsions until it set up.
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