Articles

Gear we love right now: August 2020

What's working on (and off) the water

by Chad Shmukler - Thursday, Aug 13th, 2020

YETI's Hondo Base Camp Chairs (photo: Chad Shmukler).

Fly anglers are inundated with gear choices—rods, reels, boots, waders, lines, packs, bags, boxes, vests, apparel and more. Each year, it seems harder and harder to know what's worth coveting and what's worth ignoring. Sure, gear reviews are a great way to get a feel for what might be right for you, but not every piece of gear is suited to a full-length review and, even if it were, there's simply too much of it to get to.

Fishing the dry-dropper-dropper rig

Because 3 flies is better than one

by Spencer Durrant - Wednesday, Aug 12th, 2020

Photo: Spencer Durrant

A few years back I joined a fishing club here in Utah. We did club tying nights, and a group of three or four of us usually fished together every weekend. On one Sunday, we decided to fish a stream that’s almost entirely pocket water for its 20-some-odd mile length. A few of the guys tied on indicator rigs and one went with a lone dry fly.

I tied on a Chubby Chernobyl, a Frenchie, and a zebra midge. One of the guys looked at my rig and jokingly said, “Hey look! It’s Triple-Threat over here!”

The nickname stuck for years.

Waiting out the storm

Local experience translates into clout

by Chris Hunt - Monday, Aug 10th, 2020

Photo: Chris Hunt

It was one of those hopeful moments, laced with a touch of experience from years of watching Rocky Mountain skies and trying to decide whether it would be wise to wave a 9-foot lightning rod around with a potential thunderstorm building on the horizon.

“I, uh, think it’s going to go north of us,” I said, waving my arms off to the west and pushing them to the right like a local TV meteorologist. Only my greenscreen was the Beaverheads and Centennials as they poked into stormy skies off in the distance “We might get a little spray, but I think we’re gonna to be OK.”

An array of blades

The basics of cutting tools: Pocket knives, fixed blades, hatchets, axes, machetes, saws and more

by Johnny Carrol Sain - Thursday, Aug 6th, 2020

Photo: Johnny Carrol Sain

With my truck unloaded after a weekend camping trip, I decided to pilfer through storage spaces in the Tacoma and maybe pare down my daily supplies.

Taking inventory led to a couple of determinations. First, that I felt comfortable with the assortment of “might need it” items I had stowed away. Second, that among that assortment was a lot of sharp, pointy things. Tucked away throughout the Toyota were various knives and cutting tools — eight in total.

Bled dry

An iconic western river bears witness to climate change

by Chris Madson - Tuesday, Aug 4th, 2020

The North Platte River (photo: Chris Madson).

I guess you could say the upper North Platte River in southern Wyoming is my home stream. It’s an easy couple of hours from the house, a river my family has long embraced as a refuge from the heat of the high plains in July and August, a place we fish in the summer and I hunt in the fall, a thread of emerald and sapphire in a landscape of gray and tan.