by Tom Davis - Wednesday, May 29th, 2019
The letter came out of the clear blue sky.
It was a long time ago, and I’m not going to claim it was one of those the-day-JFK-was-shot events that you retain in perfect memory. But for more than 40 years I’ve been trying to make sense of what lay behind that letter—the needs, the hopes, the desires—and I can’t swear I’m any closer to understanding it now than I ever was.
by Shane Townsend - Tuesday, May 28th, 2019
Americans travel for work. Many of us do anyway. Last year alone, we took some 460 million business trips. Most involved air travel. And, nearly half allowed for what the U.S. Travel Association calls “a leisure component.” That last bit is fodder for hope for my fellow anglers with the fly. It means sometimes we get to fish new water.
Even when my odds of getting out are only one in a million, I now elect the Lloyd Christmas model of optimism:
“So, you’re telling me there’s a chance?”
by Chris Hunt - Friday, May 24th, 2019
I was in a bad mood, and for a gringo who’d rented a small house just across the street from the beach in a tiny Mexican fishing village just north of the border with Belize, that’s hard to fathom.
The day before, we’d dealt with a rental car company in Cancun that refused to honor the online bargain I’d found, and we got stuck with a bill that was, to put it kindly, exorbitant. With my rum budget in peril, I figured I’d return the car a week later after leaving as much of the undercarriage as I could on the speed bumps and in the potholes that pocked the road south.
by Chris Hunt - Tuesday, May 21st, 2019
There were legends in the swamp, and Billy Guidry knew it. Some of them crawled and swam, like Gus, the infamous 14-foot gator that hung out near the put-in and dined on ham sandwiches and lunch scraps the tourists fed him. Gus was beloved. A gentle giant, they all said.
The locals just shook their heads and whistled low under their breath.
by Chad Shmukler - Thursday, May 16th, 2019
Joining the chorus of voices condemning the Trump administration's ongoing trade war with China, the American Fly Fishing Trade Association (AFFTA) recently released a statement denouncing the administration's decisions as "unfair" and "harmful" to the $1 billion fly fishing industry, an industry whose backbone, AFTTA says, is small and medium-sized businesses.
In much of rural America, the town dump remains the great equalizer. Sometimes known as the more sanitary sounding “transfer station,” it’s the place that virtually...
It felt like a slower-than-usual day. But then, on the morning after, I noticed a tender area a few inches to the right of my belly-button—not coincidentally, the place...
Killing native wildlife, defined by the ecologically challenged as “varmints,” is a popular American tradition, especially when organized into social events in which...
Korkers new Stealth Sneaker is a hybrid of the wading shoes we’ve seen grow in popularity lately and the tried-and-true wading boots...
There’s a creek freak in every fly fisher, even if it's compartmentalized away, deep in the emotional recesses of our psyches. Most of us who have fly fished for years —...
Fall is officially upon us, and fly-fishing gear manufacturers are pushing new rods, reels and other goods out to consumers this month. From a handful of new reels — both...
