Okay, so I might miss that self-imposed April 30 E-list deadline by a day or so… I really am working on it, but I have to get used to the layout template before making the thing final. Sorry for the delay with the mailing, but the contest winner will still be drawn as promised. Keep [...]

Big coho—silvers—get some funny looking faces, rivaled only perhaps by male Atlantic salmon. Sure, sockeye and other Pacific salmon get some gnarly curled snouts and wicked teeth, but the coho just looks like it could double as a kitchen implement of some kind. I must admit that coho/silvers are my overall favorite salmon to catch, [...]

The sockeye (Kokanee in landlocked form) is my favorite salmon to illustrate due to its brilliant palette and snaggle-toothed visage (at least once it gets into the fresh). It is such a symbol of wild places to me, and of angling memories that stretch back many years. What would Alaska, or really the whole Pacific [...]

Big kings (Chinook) are a bit like big Taimen in that they tend to look wrong when parked front-and-center in a stream. By wrong, I mean that they look like they are a goldfish in a teacup—too much fish, not enough cup. A 40 or 50-pound slab ‘o salmon is a serious hunk of meat, [...]

Chum salmon sometimes get the short (ugly?) end of the angling stick. But, to me, they have a beauty—primarily a “yank-your-arm-off” type of beauty. My father and I had a morning in Alaska one year when we could do no wrong on a huge pool full of chums. It wasn’t pretty fishing—mostly down and dirty, [...]

The first salmon that I ever caught was a pink, on a Lake Superior tributary many years ago. I strongly remember that brilliant, fish-filled morning, and I also remember the first day that I caught an Alaskan pink half a decade later. It was on the famed Kanektok, a river that is better known for [...]

The first truly big American trout that I ever caught was a brown. The first New Zealand trout that I ever caught was a brown. The first Tasmanian trout that I ever caught was a brown. The first Russian trout that I ever caught was a brown. The first English trout that I ever caught [...]

One of the single greatest weeks of my fly-fishing life was spent on Canada’s Sutton River, pursuing brookies in wilderness conditions. The fishing, with everything from small dries to meaty streamers to chugging mice, was spectacular. Add to it the gliding freedom of a canoe, the crisp air of the late-summer mornings, and a backdrop [...]

I decided to post this image partly because it’s a good match to the other North American trout below, and partly because of laziness too many other projects in the last few days. In my early fly-fishing days (when I was a good deal shorter than I am now), I was obsessed with catching a [...]

Perhaps my favorite trout on a dry fly. Thinking of the dog-days of August—a long, hot hike; dry, pine-scented air; gleaming, pellucid water; and a rise of antici……….pation. My youthful days on the Yellowstone, Slough Creek, and in the Pelican Valley taught me the meaning of patience when it came to dry-fly risers. Whether I was [...]

A fly in-the-hand and a fly on-the-water may be two different things (at least to the fish). Below are a few shots showing a real Hexagenia mayfly dun just outside the edge of the fish’s window (photo taken via a slant tank), and the insect just inside the fish’s window (the brown area outside the window is [...]

Urban. Hip. Stylin’ on the fly. Not your speed? Then don’t click here.