Articles

4 tips for topwater smallmouth bass fishing

Fly fishing the summertime smallmouth surface bite

by George Daniel - Monday, Jul 3rd, 2023

Photo: George Daniel

Every July, I take a multi-week western road trip to visit my brother in West Yellowstone, work a few clinics in ID and MT, and chase trout amongst some of our nation’s most beautiful landscapes. While many making the same trip would be anticipating the highlight reels of themselves fooling large trout with an amazing, mountainous backdrop, I often find myself asking “why am I leaving the topwater bass bite back home?” I’ve become torn between spending my time chasing trout out west or staying close to home to pursue large smallmouth bass that love to take surface flies.

Major lakes have suffered major water losses over the past few decades

A new study shows that losses are global in both arid and humid regions and could have significant impacts on a quarter of Earth’s population

by Damond Benningfield - Wednesday, Jun 28th, 2023

NASA’s Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission, illustrated here in orbit, will scan lakes and reservoirs, providing new data for global lake water storage estimates (image credit: CNES).

Earth’s lakes are drying up.

Review: Redington Wrangler fly rod combo kit

Redington's purpose-built fly rod combo kits stand out from the pack

by Spencer Durrant - Tuesday, Jun 27th, 2023

Photo: Spencer Durrant

Redington has released a bevy of rod-and-reel combo kits lately, hitting many of the price points that appeal to beginner anglers. It’s a market that’s increasingly saturated, and it’s tough to make something that stands out from the pack.

Fishing tips from the birds

What we learned from the fry guys

by Chris Hunt - Sunday, Jun 25th, 2023

Photo: Peter Pearsall/USFWS / cc2.0.

Earl posted up on the shallow lip of a drop-off, his rod armed with a long, skinny streamer that Alaskan rainbows can't seem to ignore. Stretched out below him was an epic tailout that any die-hard fly angler would kill to fish — long and deep and two beats slower than the shallow riffle above it.

Bratwurst as a metaphor for life

The finer points of Bratwurst cooking and culture

by Tom Davis - Thursday, Jun 22nd, 2023

Photo: Tom Davis

My wife was pulling overnight Grandma-duty and, left to my own devices for dinner, my thoughts turned toward bratwurst. I’d found a five-pack of the Johnsonville brand in the freezer a couple days earlier and they’d been calling my name in an oom-pah German accent ever since. I usually buy the brats made in-house at Sal’s, my neighborhood grocery store, where the sign out front frequently advertises “OUR BRATS—$2.99.” So how or why I’d come to purchase the pre-packaged Johnsonville variety was, like so much in life, a bit of a mystery.