Latest Blog Posts

A fish named Dave

Some very nice fish live in this section, but I keep catching the same one

by Tim Schulz - Monday, Nov 18th, 2024

Photos: Tim Schulz.

“Have you named it yet? I'd be honored if you'd name it Dave because I feel like I know it now, too.”

Dave Delisi—who at the time served as my dealer, green grocer, andcandy manat Sweetgrass Rods—alluded to a brown trout whose allure had eroded my already meager capacity for self-control. What makes one fish stubbornly reject a fly another will eagerly take, I’d ask at 3 a.m., hoping ten more revolutions of the ceiling fan would release insomnia’s grip on my consciousness. This quest to answer a patently unanswerable question had transformed me—an otherwise capable man—into a neurotic ninny.

“I’m concerned the Siren song of Dave may be too much for me,'' I responded. “Tonight, I'm putting beeswax in my ears, tying myself to the deck, and forbidding my family from untying me no matter how loudly I might beg.'' My Siren was a brown trout I now called Dave, and my Tyrrhenian Sea was a remote river in the Ontonagon watershed.

Danger, Will Robinson!

There are many threats facing hunting and fishing, but what's the biggest one?

by Todd Tanner - Friday, Nov 1st, 2024

Photo: Todd Tanner.

Have you ever wondered about our future as anglers and hunters, or about the legacy we’ll leave behind for our kids and grandkids? If you care about the great outdoors, or about our sporting heritage and traditions, there are a few simple questions you might want to ask yourself right now.

First, is poor management of our public lands, coupled with lack of access to those same public lands, the largest threat to our hunting and fishing?

Trash-talking trout

The town dump is the great equalizer

by Stephen Sautner - Monday, Sep 23rd, 2024

The West Branch of the Delaware River (photo: DRBC / cc2.0).

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 everyone has to visit, whether poor, well-off, or otherwise. It’s where the lawyer, plumber, and grandmother co-mingle like aluminum, glass, and plastic. They stand side by side and heave bags of trash while catching up on high school sports, the weather, or maybe some local gossip.

What if you could no longer do the thing you loved most?

If you couldn't fish anymore, what would you do?

by Gordon Churchill - Tuesday, Aug 6th, 2024

The author with a North Carolina redfish (photo: Gordon Churchill).

How much do you really like fishing? What’s the longest you think could go without?

Do you think that if you quit fishing, you would just live your life like nothing happened? Is it really that important to you, or do you just do it for fun? If somebody told you that you could not go fishing anymore, what would you do?

Now for most of you this is conjecture, it is not a situation you have been faced with, and you possibly never will. But on Aug. 10, 2023, I suffered a stroke.

This old creek

There's magic in this dark water

by Chris Hunt - Friday, Jul 19th, 2024

Photo: Chris Hunt

This creek and I go way back. When I first moved to Idaho 25 years ago, it was one of the first blue lines on the map that I searched out. I found its subtle course through a lodgepole forest in what was then a crisp new copy of DeLorme's Atlas and Gazetteer for the Gem State. That same collection of maps is now a dog-eared, faded compilation of a quarter century’s worth of adventure. The adventure started here. On this modest little willow-shrouded, beaver-dammed trickle through the Targhee National Forest, just outside of Yellowstone National Park.