Fly Fishing

Welcome to our first “Trout Bum of the Week” post, in which we’ll highlight one of the guys living the good life…of a sort. Most of them are guides who have turned their passion into a vocation, spending their time in an outdoor “office” that may include a drift boat, gorgeous mountain scenery, and crystal clear water. Others do have day jobs but manage to spend every other available minute on the water with a fly rod in hand. Whether you aspire to one lifestyle of the other, it’s illuminating to explore the different paths these men and women have taken on their way to achieving “trout bum” status.

Read More

Thinking of Alaskan fishing brings to mind images of sockeye salmon jumping up Brooks Falls, the powerful brown bear, bald eagles, and snowcapped mountain ranges seemingly touching the skies. What I found on my adventure to Western Alaska near the Yukon River and the Bering Sea was quite different: the land was flat, water was muddy, and no bears were in sight. We landed at. . .

Read More

The finished fly has just the right combination of contrast, bugginess, and flash.

Woven-body fly patterns often look intimidating, as if creating the body involves some kind of arcane knitting skill. But Georgia-based tier Kevin Griffin’s caddisfly-nymph pattern reveals that you can achieve that neat woven look simply by tying repeated overhand knots in contrasting materials. Once you’ve mastered the technique, you can mix and match colors and materials to create new. . .

Read More

Things are starting to heat up on the Delaware River, and it won’t be long before hatches like this one start coming off. photo Courtesy West Branch Angler

Just a couple of hours north of New York City, the Delaware River system offers some of the finest big-river fishing east of the Mississippi and ranks right up there with the best rivers in the country. It’s a wide, western-style river with legendary hatches and some very big wild trout. The beauty of it is that the Delaware can be a fickle mistress, offering epic days and incredibly challenging days, and you never know which one you’ll have until you step in the river.

Read More

Wake from Bay Street on Vimeo.

Most promotional videos are pretty much the same, showing guys catching fish over a heart-thumping soundtrack. There’s plenty of that in the short film Bay Street Outfitters put together about fishing for redfish off Beaufort, South Carolina, but they decided to go the extra mile by creating a fun narrative plot. It makes it easy to imagine yourself in the role of an angler checking into his hotel the night before his big trip, dreaming of the next day. I hope more lodges and outfitters try this narrative method. It would eliminate a lot of the “same old, same old” feeling you get from watching these kinds of videos.

Read More

Tarpon on a fly Photo by Dan Michels, Crystal Creek Lodge

A bunch of folks from the Orvis Home Offices in Vermont are down here in the Florida Keys for an annual meeting with the owners of Orvis-Endorsed lodges. A few of us got in some fishing, including Vice Chairman of Orvis, Dave Perkins, who got into a nice tarpon straight away when he went out with Dan Michels, owner of Crystal Creek Lodge in Bristol Bay, Alaska; both of them guided and hosted by Gordon Baggett, at Bahia Honda Sporting Club and Lodge.

Read More

Anglers heading to fish the Madison River south of Ennis, Montana have a new way to check on water conditions before hitting the road. The U. S. Geological Service has installed a real-time water-data gauge at Varney Bridge, which will provide information on water flow and temperature. There had not been such a monitoring station on that stretch since. . .

Read More