Articles

Review: Orvis Ultralight Waders

Orvis' new, lightweight waders offer a premium in packability and comfort without sacrifice
Photo: Cosmo Genova

I spent the fair part of this past year watching Orvis’ new Ultralight waders endure a full season’s worth of abuse as rentals, while working my summer job at a fly fishing outfitter on the Upper Delaware River system. Despite the innumerable anglers who squeezed into them over the course of the spring and summer months, we had zero problems with any of our rental pairs.

Photo: Tim Sickles

Chances are, watching guide Santos Madero work a streamer is like nothing you've seen before. Instead of the long casts, big mends and extended swings or retrieves most anglers associate with streamer fishing, Madero works short. Really short; with stout, heavy flies intended to get to the bottom fast and move water.

RIO intros new DirectCore Jungle Series fly lines

New line is aimed at anglers that chase golden dorado, peacock bass, tigerfish and more
Photo: Remington Kendall

If you've never tried to fish a coldwater line in tropical conditions, the idea of needing a line specifically designed for those conditions may seem almost like a gimmick; a ruse to trick you into buying superfluous gear. At least that's how I took it, some 20 years ago, when I headed south for my first tropical fishing trip of any kind. In truth, it wasn't even tropical. I was headed to South Carolina to chase tailing redfish in sweltering, early September heat.

Instinct

She had not tasted steel nor plastic since her fourth year
Photo: Chad Shmukler

The old bass turned toward deep water on this late spring day. The familiar droning sound was the only thing that made her anxious at this stage in life, and it put her on the move. Without hesitation or thought, she slowly sank and casually finned along the point toward deeper water in the creek channel. She swam directly underneath the metal-flaked bass boat, mere feet from the angler aboard it. Eluding this pursuer required stealth as opposed to speed.

What we once thought timeless

Will the familiar rhythms of nature still be here tomorrow?
Photo: Johnny Sain

The blackjack oak stands like a skeletal sentinel on the northeast corner of my yard, partnered with a 70-foot white pine. The pair overlook young elms and redbuds fighting for survival against an ever-encroaching horde of invasive privet. Two branches fork from the hollowing corpse of the tree’s trunk as if in plaintive supplication. The scene calls to mind the parable of the rich man in hell begging for but one drop of water from the finger of Lazarus to quench the fires on his tongue.

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