Articles

The legend of Ol' Hickory

A combination of cunning and brawn make the perfect creek predator

by Johnny Carrol Sain - Thursday, Aug 11th, 2016

Photo: Johnny Carrol Sain

I don’t recall the year, but it’s been several since that day. A steamy, late summer afternoon found me waist deep in the cool waters of the Illinois Bayou somewhere north of Hector, Arkansas. Cicadas buzzed in the hardwoods and the barbaric cackle of a pileated woodpecker occasionally echoed through the hollow. Sol was still an hour away from sinking below the hills, and the theory of an inverse relationship between sunlight and bass fishing was again proving true. As light waned fishing success waxed.

Boy scout

Where preparation lacks, adaptation thrives

by Chris Hunt - Wednesday, Aug 10th, 2016

Photo: Chad Shmukler

Preparedness was never my thing. There’s a reason I made it to Webelo, but didn’t matriculate farther through the Boy Scout system. You can only show up at the den meeting without your little scarf slider so many times before it sinks in.

This just isn’t for me.

Choosing your fly

How to pick the right fly at the right time

by Todd Tanner - Tuesday, Aug 9th, 2016

Guide Santos Madero pores over his fly selection on Patagonia's Limay River (photo: Earl Harper).

I was talking to the editor of a fly fishing magazine the other day, and he mentioned that he was going to do a story on a fellow who had an awfully large fly collection. The exact number didn’t stick in my head, but it seems to me that it was somewhere along the lines of 73,000 flies. Good Lord, assuming that you could only fish a couple at a time, where would you ever start?

Striking gold in the Beartooths

Hiking Montana's Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness in search of golden trout

by Matthew Reilly - Monday, Aug 8th, 2016

Photo: Matt Reilly

“That’s a bitch.”

Ken Keffer, a Wyoming native fresh from a month of hiking the Bighorn Mountains, tossed a respectful gaze up a steep pitch into a crease where our trail disappeared into the raveling slopes of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. Admitted point-of-factly, the words didn’t bode well for my never-West, oxygen-guzzling lungs. In fact, most trails in Montana start higher than the ground-bound can geographically get in my native Virginia, and we were headed near to the top.

New 2016-17 fly fishing gear: Standout fly rods, reels and lines

Standout products from Orlando

by Chad Shmukler - Wednesday, Aug 3rd, 2016

As it does every year, the industry toted its biggest and best new products at this year's IFTD/ICAST show in Orlando, Florida. The breadth of new products this year came as a surprise to many, given how prolific and innovative manufacturers across the industry have been over the last few years.

Even with three days spent walking the floor of this year's show, there was scarcely enough time to take in all the new offerings. What follows are just some of this year's standouts in new rods, reels and lines.