Articles

Review: Orvis Safe Passage Guide sling pack

A close look at Orvis' significant redesign of its flagship sling pack.

by Steve Zakur - Friday, May 8th, 2015

Photo: Steve Zakur

When I fish a small stream I'm content to go minimal; a fly box in my pocket, a lanyard full of tools, and a trusty small stream rod. But on bigger water I tend to go big. A fly box for every condition, clothing for changeable weather, snacks, lunch and a water bottle. I sometimes carry two rods and a spare spool as well. I need storage, lots of storage.

Tanner's extra special #1 best ever nymphing tip

You can catch what you can't see.

by Todd Tanner - Thursday, May 7th, 2015

Photo: Chad Shmukler

She couldn’t do it.

I don’t remember her name, or where she was from, or why she wanted to fish the Madison with a guide. All I can tell you for sure is that she couldn’t catch a trout on a nymph. Not on a bet. Not to save her life. To paraphrase one of my favorite authors:

Drifter intros new, 'ideal' fly rod for technical trout fisherman

New rod from boutique Colorado rod maker targets technical anglers.

by Ben Kryzinski - Tuesday, May 5th, 2015

The Drifter Covert fly rod.

Drifter is a rod company that many anglers likely haven't heard of. A small, boutique rod building company out of Denver, Drifter likes to make it known that they build hundreds of fly rods per year, not thousands. Their latest offering, the Drifter Covert, is described as a rod that is "ideally tuned to the needs of trout fishermen."

A boy again, in Patagonia

In late summer and autumn, the minnows run in the Collón Curá.

by Chad Shmukler - Monday, May 4th, 2015

Patagonia River Guides' Alex Knull holds a silvery Collon Cura rainbow (photo: Chad Shmukler).

Alex oars us through a relatively shallow but wide and burly riffle on the lower reaches of Argentina's famed Collón Curá river, working hard to bring the boat across to a back eddy on the far bank before the current sweeps us farther downstream. It’s a fine looking stretch of water, to say the absolute least. As it turns, from one side of the river to the next, a streambed of terraced shelves is plainly visible to the eye, each shelf creating a spillover beneath the riffle’s surface currents, most of which are sure to be rife with trout.

Making steelhead 'the fish of a hundred casts'

Forget "the fish of 1000 casts", let's improve our odds.

by Kurt Beardslee - Friday, May 1st, 2015

Photo: Brian Bennett.

In Washington, anglers do not count steelhead by the number of fish caught per day, but by fish caught per season. This grueling reality has earned steelhead the moniker “the fish of a thousand casts.” But this epithet is not a tribute to steelhead. Rather it is a dubious distinction because steelhead are not particularly hard to catch. They are just very hard to find.