Summer Reading for Fly Fishermen

Catch Magazine

It’s a bonanza for lovers of online fly-fishing magazines, with new issues of three great online publications. As someone who has edited a fly-fishing magazine, I can tell you that it takes a lot of work to put something like this together, and the quality of online offerings continues to improve. Click “Read More” to check them out.

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“The Blitz: A Year on the Road” Trailer

If you love fly-fishing for stripers, bluefish, false albacore, and other denizens of the sea off the Eastern Coast, you’re gonna love this. Photographer Tosh Brown and angler Pete McDonald (who writes the Fishing Jones blog) spent a year chasing fish from Casco Bay, Maine, to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The result is the book The Blitz: Fly Fishing the Atlantic Migration.

In the disclaimer for the video, Brown writes, “This entire production was shot on a cheap-ass camcorder that fits in a shirt pocket. It ate about 50 pounds of AA batteries during this odyssey and died of saltwater sickness about two weeks after their last shoot.” But I think you’ll agree that it’s still plenty fun to watch, especially because it features cameos from some of the sport’s biggest names.

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Quality Chicks, Fishing Together for 19 Years

chick with big brown 

Quality Chick Linda Windels with a quality brown trout

It has been one year since twelve women, armed to the teeth with fly rods and fly boxes, took the Big Hole Lodge by storm. For one week, we were lucky enough to host The Quality Chicks’ annual retreat, an event filled with laughter and motivated by a ferocious passion for the sport. This week, their hand-tied patterns, precise casts, and “fish-on” cries return to the Big Hole Valley and it is sure to be an experience not soon forgotten.

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What A Catch Show, Directed and Hosted by Kathryn Maroun

 

Kathryn Maroun is the director, producer, and host of What A Catch TV show

Kathryn Maroun is an angling woman on a mission. Director, producer, and host of the TV show What A Catch, Kathryn seeks to fish the world’s most exotic locales. As the site for the show states:

“From Mongolia to the Bahamas, Kathryn doesn’t fish everyman’s water; she thrives on experiencing the thrill of fishing in the most remote and exotic locales around the world. In her pursuit of the top game fish and her need for adventure, she has fished in the four corners of the globe and has caught and released some of the most prized species of game fish on earth. Kathryn found that woman that fish were lacking good outdoor clothing that fits properly. Kathryn decided to design and sell a line of clothing that is “for women at work in the outdoors”.

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2011 Orvis-Endorsed Operations Awards

For twenty years the Orvis Company has been recognizing excellence in sporting experiences through its Endorsed Lodges, Outfitters, and Guides program. Each endorsed operation has its own character, but all share the same high standards: great service, great fishing or wingshooting, and an experienced, professional staff. These standards of excellence are continually reviewed by the Orvis staff and evaluated by visiting guests in post-visit critiques sent directly to The Orvis Company. Orvis-Endorsed operations cater to every ability from beginners to experts.

At their annual Endorsed Operations Rendezvous in Key Largo, Florida and Endorsed Guide Rendezvous in Casper, Wyoming the Orvis Company announced the winners of their 2011 Endorsed Lodges, Outfitters, and Guide Awards. There are seven categories, three for lodge operations and four for guiding operations. The awards are chosen based on customer survey feedback that Orvis solicits from their customers who patronize these operations.

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Friday Film Festival 07.08.11

Welcome to another edition of the OrvisNews.com Friday Film Festival, in which we scour “teh Interweb” for the best fly-fishing footage available. This week, we’re pretty much concentrated on Argentina and Scandinavia, with just a couple exceptions. Where were all the U.S. filmmakers this week? Perhaps the high water caused by massive runoff out West has resulted in a brief halt to the fishing-video-industrial complex in North America. Never fear, though, . . .

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How to Match the Hatch

Choosing the correct fly at the height of an insect hatch, when the trout are selective, is the most complicated, exasperating, and, when you find the right fly, satisfying experience in fly-fishing. The challenge involves not only what species of insect the fish are feeding on, but also the stage—is it an emerging adult, a drifting nymph, or a spent egg-laying adult?

The classic case of dry-fly fishing is when you arrive at a stream or lake to find the trout rising and the water covered with hatching mayflies. You pluck a fly from the air or the surface of the water, lay it on the lid of your fly box, and choose the fly in your box that matches it in size, shape, and color. Then you proceed to catch lots of fish.

It’s seldom that easy. . . .

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Repost: Deep Thoughts

[Editor’s Note: A buddy of mine just returned from Montana, where the water was pretty high everywhere he fished. He stressed that the key to success was getting flies deep, so it seemed a good time to repost this from last September.] 

Many years ago on Maine’s Rapid River, when I was still a relative newcomer to the sport, I learned a valuable lesson about getting my flies deep enough. It was the middle of a hot June day, . . .

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Fly-Fishing History, Part I

Gordon M. Wickstrom

Gordon M. Wickstrom at the London Fly Fisher’s Club.

photo by Linnea Wickstrom

Editor’s note: For the next few months, we will be featuring entries from Gordon M. Wickstrom’s The History of Fishing for Trout with Artificial Flies in Britain and America: A Chronology of Five Hundred Years, 1496 to 2000. In this chronology, Gordon marks significant events—the publication of seminal books, tackle developments, important social changes, the dissemination of trout species beyond their native ranges, etc.—on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Wickstrom is the author of Notes from an Old Fly Book (2001) and Late in an Angler’s Life (2004), editor of The Boulder Creek Angler newsletter, and writer and director of The Great Debate—A Fantasia for Anglers, an imagined debate between Frederic M. Halford and G. E. M. Skues.

Click “Read More” for Part I.

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Podcast- 12 Steps to Better Summer Dry Fly Fishing

This week in the Fly Box section, we talk about rod actions, line sizes, sunscreen, and dry flies in high water. In the main event, we’ll give you some tips on summer dry flies, as summer is prime time for fishing on the surface.

We also have a great, new way to participate with The Orvis Fly Fishing Guide Podcast. Go to orvisnews.com/podcast.aspx to participate in our online forum to suggest podcast ideas or discuss episodes.

Click the READ MORE button to listen to this week’s episode.

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