Articles

In search of low line speed

Is high line speed an advantage or a disadvantage?

by John Juracek - Monday, Apr 25th, 2016

Photo: John Juracek

Recently I spent a day testing new rods for one of the domestic rod companies. As I was casting in my local park, a fishing friend stopped by to see what I was up to. Naturally, I invited him to give the rods a try, curious as to what he would think. After casting one rod in particular he got pretty excited, gushing to me about the high line speed he had achieved with it. I replied that, unfortunately, high line speed was all that that particular rod could achieve. He shot me back a quizzical look, one that I knew required further explanation.

Night stalking

You forget how big, how truly enormous, this bug is

by Tom Davis - Friday, Apr 22nd, 2016

County highway departments have been known to pull the snowplows out of storage to clear masses of pulped Hexes off of bridges (photo: (Blaine Shahan/LNP via AP).

You forget how big, how truly enormous, this bug is. Part of it’s the contrast: After a spring spent matching caddisflies, Hendricksons, and sulphurs—and pulling nothing out of your fly box larger than a dainty size 14—the first Hex of the season, battering heavily into the dusk like an overloaded Sikorsky, blows your mind.

This isn’t a mayfly. It’s Godzilla.

Serendipity

The quest for wild places

by Matthew Reilly - Thursday, Apr 21st, 2016

Photo: Matthew Reilly

Early in my life, my father instilled in me the habit of exploration, of wandering hand-in-hand with chance, and reveling in the results. So it comes as no surprise that we are both habitual fly fishermen infatuated with wild places.

Being there

Fun in the midst of failure

by Tom Davis - Thursday, Apr 14th, 2016

Photo: Joseph Rossi

John Voelker, poet laureate of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, once observed that fly fishing is the most fun a person can have while standing upright. Well, although it’s not a smart career move to disagree with the revered author of Trout Magic and Trout Madness, I think his remark betrays a certain lack of imagination. Good taste forbids me from citing specific examples to support my position.

Of Brook Trout and Bobcats

Before the US had a Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, Wisconsin had one

by Tom Davis - Thursday, Apr 7th, 2016

Photo: Rueben Browning

Before the United States of America had a Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the state of Wisconsin had one. The Wisconsin act took effect in 1965, three years before the Feds followed suit, and one of the original rivers designated for protection—one of the rivers that inspired the act’s creation, in fact—was the Popple.