Let’s face it. Most fly fishers won’t have visions of sugar-plums dancing through their heads during the wee hours of Christmas Eve. Truth be told, most of the anglers I know will be dreaming of new rods, reels, and other gear. Gear is almost always our focus as we prepare to celebrate the arrival of jolly old Saint Nicholas.

And yet gear may well be the last thing we need right now.

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?

It’s 2024 and far too many of our fisheries here in the U.S. are in serious trouble. Fortunately, there are some positive steps each of us can take going forward. While not every suggestion below will be a good fit for every single angler, be sure to check as many as possible off the list this year.

Most of us live in cities. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 80% of Americans currently reside in urban areas. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, I suppose, other than that cities are so … limiting. Sure, you can shop to your heart’s content or visit any number of restaurants, bars and clubs. You have your choice of gyms and coffee shops and schools for your kids. And yet the very essence of city life is defined by concrete, steel and asphalt.

And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me, he'd grown up just like me. My boy was just like me ...

My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be, especially up close. So when the new magnifiers showed up here at the house, I just had to try them out.

Let’s start off with two vital questions. What happened on August 16th, 2022? And will that date go down as the single most important day in the history of fly fishing?

8/16/2022.

Think back. Did someone land the world record brown trout last August? Invent the perfect fly rod? Design the ideal knot? Create the first unbreakable leader? Publish the ultimate book of fly fishing secrets?

When I was considerably younger and living approximately 2,000 miles east of my current Montana address, I had an experience that helped shape my ongoing fly fishing journey in ways I couldn’t really appreciate at the time.

My fly fishing is starting to rust. That’s never a good thing when you’re in love with your angling.

I’ll get back to the rust in a minute. First, though, I wanted to share a few things I’ve noticed over the years.

While I’ve been sticking close to home for the last year or so, I keep hearing that I’m pretty much the only one. Reports from rivers across the West, ranging from the Frying Pan in Colorado, to Idaho’s South Fork of the Snake, to the Madison right here in Montana, are all in agreement. There are more fly fishers on the water than ever before.

Portland and Seattle are in the Pacific Northwest, a region known for its rain and cool temperatures. Until recently, the all-time high temperature in Portland was 107 degrees, a record set back in 1965. On Saturday, June 26th, 2021 — a little over a month ago — the city set a new record of 108 degrees. The next day — a Sunday — Portland broke its all-time record yet again with an astounding 112 degrees. On Monday, June 28th, the city literally blew that number away when it reached a hard-to-fathom 116 degrees. The average high temperature in Portland, Oregon at the end of June is around 76 degrees.

The fact that Portland set a new record high temperature on three consecutive days is certainly newsworthy. The fact that this happened at the end of June — a month not normally associated with high temperatures in Oregon — is more so. The fact that the new record exceeded the old 1965 record by 9 degrees and topped the date’s average temperature by 40 degrees is astounding. And when we consider that Seattle also set a new high temperature record of 108 degrees, and that Salem, which is 45 miles south of Portland, topped out at 117 degrees … well, it’s probably not all that surprising to learn that a subsequent headline in the Seattle Times proclaimed: “Crushing heat wave in Pacific Northwest and Canada cooked shellfish alive by the millions.”