Articles

The Tacky Tube aims to reinvent the fly patch

Another new idea from the team that reimagined the fly box

by Todd Tanner - Monday, Jun 27th, 2016

Folks who’ve been fly fishing for a while remember when pretty much every fresh-water angler wore a many-pocketed fly fishing vest. You can still buy them, of course — Patagonia, Orvis and Simms continue to market really nice vests for the retro crowd — but they’ve more or less gone out of fashion, replaced by an ever-growing number of chest packs and hip packs and back packs and sling packs.

Cooking trout

Sad sound, frowny face, blah, blah, blah. Trout are delicious.

by Spencer Durrant - Thursday, Jun 23rd, 2016

Photo: Jan Sokoly

I eat trout. I catch them on a fly, grab ‘em in my dry hands, hit ‘em over the head with a rock, and stick the things on a stringer until I leave the water.

Such behavior is heresy in today’s catch-and-release culture, especially coming from a fly fisherman. Just a few weeks ago, I left a lake with my full limit of trout slung over my shoulder, only to be greeted by sneers and a few choice words from fellow fly flingers. I shrugged it off, knowing they wouldn’t be eating as well that night as I would be.

Making gains for Cutts

Bonneville cutthroat trout make a comeback

by Kris Millgate - Thursday, Jun 23rd, 2016

Up to 1,000 trout a week are sorted in this shed centered over Swan Creek, a Bear Lake tributary in Utah (photo: Kris MIllgate).

This is ridiculous. There’s no way 30-inch fish are in three feet of water. No way. I drop my underwater camera in the current and I am so wrong. There they are. Fat and as rambunctious as ever. Big, beautiful spawning Bonneville cutthroat trout. Bear Lake, Utah’s beefiest native fish in the smallest of streams.

The salters of Red Brook

In search of the sea-run brook trout of yesteryear on Cape Cod

by Matthew Reilly - Monday, Jun 20th, 2016

A "salter" from Red Brook (photo: Matthew Reilly).

With an eye on my backcast and my mind on a starwort seam, I threaded a careful loop through the reaching limbs of a Massachusetts pine barren, over a jungle of grass, and delivered a hairwing streamer to its intended slot. A gentle current pulled the fly subsurface, and dream became reality when a golden flash erupted from a tannic shadow to consume the end of my tippet and my rod tip shot skyward.

Sage introduces the X

The new rod series marks the culmination of 10 generations of rod making innovation

by Chad Shmukler - Thursday, Jun 16th, 2016

Testing the new Sage X fly rod on Washington's Yakima River (photo: Chad Shmukler).

There's a reason that Sage is one of the industry's biggest and most heralded rod makers. Since it's founding in 1980 by rod designer Don Green, Sage has been producing some of the best and most innovative rods on the market. Rod series like Sage's RPL have achieved near mythical status in the memories of anglers, and the pedigree of Sage's flagship rods breeds an anticipation regarding what's next that is perhaps unmatched elsewhere in the industry. Today, Sage answered that question of what's next by introducing the Sage X, it's latest flagship offering.