Articles

Windshield

Earning your damage

by Chris Hunt - Wednesday, Sep 14th, 2016

Photo: Chris Hunt

I debated the merits of springing for a new windshield last spring. I’d managed to accrue a handful of small-ish chips and cracks over the winter, and I’d even had a couple of the more egregious faults sealed and repaired. But it got cold during a road trip to Missoula last January, and I actually watched as a crack visibly wandered from one rock chip on the passenger side all the way across the bottom of the windshield to the rock chip on the driver’s side. There’s no patching that crap.

The Devil

The Devil lives out in our woods

by Todd Tanner - Tuesday, Sep 13th, 2016

Photo: Todd Tanner

The devil lives out in our woods. I don’t know if he’s the devil, but he’s sure as hell a devil. You’d think that being a devil, he’d be crouched down low in the scrub and the water hemlock. You’d think he’d slide right down into that black ooze around the spring, where the birch trees are dying and the tops have all broken off. They come straight down, those tops do — devil spears sticking into the mud with their ends all rotted and woodpecker-drilled.

Rum and a dead man

Smallmouth fishing on the Bay of Pigs

by Tom Davis - Thursday, Sep 8th, 2016

Photo: Door County Brewing Co.

I had rum and a dead man to thank for my treasure map. Maybe 20 years my senior, Dave was a summer neighbor. One balmy July evening he hailed me across our yards.

“Come on over,” he called. “I’m making daiquiris.”

Dave knew his way around the construction of a proper cocktail. His daiquiris were paradigms of tart-sweet simplicity—white rum, lime juice, superfine sugar, ice—and they went down as silkily as hookers in Havana. Pretty soon our tongues were wagging, and I started blathering about an upcoming trip to Ontario’s Lake of the Woods.

Fish packers

Backpacking trout to high mountain lakes

by Kris Millgate - Wednesday, Sep 7th, 2016

Cutthroat trout are backpacked in bags of water to high mountain lakes in Idaho (photo: Kris Millgate).

I threw up this morning and I have a fever. I feel like hell on this hike, but I’m not confessing my condition. We are backpacking fish to a high mountain lake in Idaho and I don’t want to miss out on what’s at the top.
“These high elevation lakes are pretty spectacular. Lots of rocky bluffs and real pretty water,” says Dan Garren, Idaho Department of Fish and Game regional fisheries manager. “Most of these are hard to get to so when you finally see one, it’s really nice. You change from hustle, hustle, get there to yes, we made it.”

Are you getting the drift?

How to know if you're drifting your nymphs in the right place at the right time

by George Daniel - Tuesday, Sep 6th, 2016

Photo: Yann Abdallah

One of the most common questions I get regarding nymphing is how to know if you’re fishing your nymphs in the strike zone? Since we can’t always see at what level fish are feeding below the surface, we have to work with is our knowledge and powers of observation to formulate an educated guess.

There’s a well-heeled saying which proclaims that you’re not nymphing correctly if you aren’t constantly snagging bottom. As a result, many anglers believe they need to bounce their nymphs along the stream bottom at all times. This is most certainly an overstatement.