Articles

Balance

A land made whole by caribou and musk ox and griz
Photo: Bob Clarke

The current pushes and pulls. My feet shift, incrementally, muscles tensing and then relaxing to the rhythms of the river. My fly line slides off into the depths, unseen, unknown, tenuous — searching for a seam I can’t quite make out. But it’s there. I sense it. I intuit it. I know it. A living seam in a living river, the same slice of equilibrium that might hold a steelhead on the Dean or a rainbow on the Henry’s Fork. Yet I’m not on the Dean, or the Henry's Fork, or the Yellowstone, or anyplace else in the known angling universe.

Review: Sage X fly rod

Sage has its new classic on its hands
Santos Madero fishes the Sage X on Kamchatka's Savan River (photo: Chad Shmukler).

What makes a new rod a company’s biggest release ever? Or most important? Or even most noteworthy? It’s hard to imagine any objective measure. That said, it may be equally hard to imagine that when Sage introduced the X back in June, the Bainbridge Island rod maker hadn’t reached its biggest milestone to date.

Review: Redington VICE fly rod

Chasing reds with Redington's new fast-action value
Photo: Johnny Carrol Sain

Redington’s 9-weight VICE rod arrived on my porch in all its dapper glory about three weeks before my trip to the Louisiana marshes. Not really sure about which weight to choose, I settled on the middle option given by most experts. With the probability of high winds, the extra oomph of a nine would help in tossing a chunky offering to the red drum I’d been obsessing over for nearly two months.

Prison fishing

Life without privilege
Kitchen knives were outlined on the prison wall so staff knew if one was missing (photo: Kris Millgate).

I’m going to prison. With flies in my pocket. The prison is in California’s coastal waters. The flies are for Idaho rivers. The pairing is unintentional, but there it is all the same.

I coach youth hockey in Idaho Falls. One of the kids had his big brother tie eight flies for me. I received them at practice the night before I left town. The rink is cold so I had my coat on. I slipped the fly box into my coat pocket and that coat ended up on a plane with me on my way to prison. An old prison. Alcatraz.

Vanishing Paradise I: Pure life

Coastal Louisiana is disappearing right before our eyes
Photo: Johnny Carrol Sain

“Pura vida,” said Erin Brown as the boat hummed across brackish waters. Erin is the sportsmen outreach coordinator for the National Wildlife Federation’s Vanishing Paradise program. More importantly, Erin is a coastal Louisiana native in love with her home. “Pura vida means pure life,” she said. “They say it everywhere in Costa Rica.

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