Fly Fishing

The cottonwoods in the Big Hole Valley are on fire, the brown trout are copper colored and spawning; it must be fall. We ended our season at Craig Fellin Outfitters & Big Hole Lodge fishing hoppers, small mayflies, and streamers. The mornings have been frosty and the fishing gets better as the day progresses. For the past few weeks we have been fishing at mid-morning and staying out late. On the great days the tricos were thick in the sun and the blue winged olives came off when the clouds rolled in. On the marginal days…

The storms that raged across the Northeast late last week caused many Catskills trout rivers to jump their banks. According to the National Weather Service, the Beaver Kill at Cooks Falls was expected to hit 16 feet on Friday. Flood stage is ten feet. A few hours north, flooding on the Salmon River in Pulaski washed out a concrete retaining wall and threatened a sewage-treatment plant that sits along the river.

Orvis receives a lot of letters and emails from customers who have a story to tell, but few of these writers capture the excitement of discovering fly fishing and the wonders of a journey to Alaska the way Emily Williams does. Just 14 years old, this high-school freshman from Princeton, Massachusetts, displays language and observational skills well beyond her years. And it seems she’s pretty good with that fly rod, too. Click “Read More” to enjoy Emily’s story.

Fished out of Hubbard’s Yellowstone Lodge today. Up before light, even though out West the norm is to start about 9 or 10 AM. It’s hard to get out of Eastern habits that go back thirty years, so Gary and I are sipping coffee by the stone fireplace at 6:30 AM. Hubbard’s Lodge is perched up on a ridge in the Tom Miner Basin of Montana’s Paradise Valley, and at first light the Yellowstone River down below wends its way north out of the Park, lit up by the early sun…

Matt Skoglund of the Natural Resources Defense Council describes the pleasures of finding and fishing for golden trout on a three-day trip with his brother into the wild Beartooth Mountains of Montana. These small, beautiful fish have been an obsession since Skoglund was a child: That you can’t find goldens in roadside rivers also titillated me. To catch a golden,…

Few fish are more beautiful than a native, male brook trout in its fall glory. Photo by Phil Monahan, 2010

Last winter, Casting for Recovery held an online auction to raise money for their programs, which combine fly fishing, counseling, and medical information to help breast-cancer patients and survivors focus on wellness instead of illness. One of the auction items was a day of fishing in southwestern Vermont,…