Articles

Among brook trout and lake monsters

Mining wonder in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom

by Matthew Reilly - Friday, Oct 21st, 2016

Photo: Matthew Reilly

As devoted to the science of angling as I’ve become, I sometimes lament its sobering effects on the endeavor. It seems to me that installing physical definitions upon such fascinating muses as underwater ecosystems takes the romance out of spending time with a wandering mind in the company of water. Luckily, the beauty of wild things features an enigmatic mechanism for anomaly which, humans and fishermen both, have learned to mine, religiously. I’ve found New England to be thick with such a culture.

Review: Hardy Sirrus Glass fly rod

Hardy's unique, new fiberglass-graphite hybrid rod has a lot going for it

by Spencer Durrant - Wednesday, Oct 19th, 2016

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect when my local Hardy rep loaned me Hardy’s new glass-graphite hybrid. I’ve thrown my fair share of Hardy rods — the Zenith was incredible — but have typically found them to be a bit too fast to serve as a go-to rod for the type of Rocky Mountain small-stream fishing I spend most of my time doing.

Slam dunk

Utah's new cutthroat slam program has netted $10k for stream restoration

by Kris Millgate - Tuesday, Oct 18th, 2016

Photo: Kris Millgate

My time on earth is split evenly between two states. Utah and Idaho. Two decades in each. I was born in one and I’ll die in the other. Based on the stellar home water I have now, I’m content staying in Idaho. That is until I have lunch with Brett Prettyman. He’s Trout Unlimited’s Intermountain communications director. We both have roots in Utah media and remained friends as our careers evolved. We meet for lunch on the six-month anniversary of his pet project: Utah Cutthroat Slam.

Public lands takeover: How is this still a thing?

If you care about public land, get ready to fight for it

by Chad Love - Thursday, Oct 13th, 2016

Rocky Mountain National Park (photo: Andrew E. Russel).

One day this past summer during a family trip to the mountains of Colorado, my son and I parked at a trailhead, slipped into our backpacks, grabbed our fly rod cases, and began a seven-mile hike to a small, isolated subalpine stream high in the Rocky Mountain backcountry, into a land that seemed worlds away from our home landscape on the Oklahoma prairie. The goal - ambitious by our non-resident, flatlander standards - was to catch (and immediately release) native cutthroat trout.

Fishing the fall

In a perfect world, it would last a whole lot longer

by Todd Tanner - Wednesday, Oct 12th, 2016

Photo: Todd Tanner

Last summer, a buddy and I spent hours on the phone making plans for an autumn fly fishing trip. He was in Connecticut, which was dry as a bone and hotter than a bowl of Texas chili, and I was in Montana, which, if anything, was even worse. Our rivers were low and warm, the sun was an intimidating fixture in an endless blue sky, and the westerly breeze carried the constant acrid tang of distant forest fires burning in Washington and Oregon.