Classic Fish Story: The Hot Dog Trout

Written by: Bryan Eldredge


Guide Bryan Eldredge with his improvised hot-dog-fork
Photo courtesy Bryan Eldredge

My teenage daughter’s text message said, “You’re stupid for running out of gas!” I knew she was kidding, but I was stupid. And the real stupidity was that I had run out of gas along Utah’s Provo River with a truckload of fishing gear, . . .

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Essay and Photos: Fishing For Change in Honduras

There have been just a few experiences in my life that have rearranged my list of priorities and changed the course of my decisions. If you asked me to describe them and their impact on me, you would probably get a poorly articulated but . . .

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Photos: No Pain, No Gain for High-Country Colorado Trout

This year has been a slow one for me when it comes to getting out and fly fishing. I’ll admit challenge to myself to catch a fish in every month of the year has been going slowly, but it’s still going. At the beginning of June, I caught a small bass out of the . . .

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“(Dis)comfort” by William G. Tapply

Written by: William G. Tapply


Bill Tapply fishes a Vermont brook-trout stream in the summer of 2008.
Photo by Phil Monahan

[Editor’s note: When I was the editor of American Angler, I had the pleasure of working with William G. Tapply for ten years before his death in the summer of 2009. He was far and away the best writer I have edited, and we developed a friendship around our shared angling and literary interests. He wrote books and articles on fishing and hunting, as well as great mystery novels that often featured fly-fishing. Bill’s wife, the author Vicki Stiefel, has graciously allowed me to reprint some of his columns and articles here. If you are not familiar with Bill’s work, I encourage you to check out his website and the links below. Many of the books in Bill’s list here are out of print, but it is well worth your time to run down copies, which can usually be found online. I’ve included links to the Amazon pages for each book. ]

Phil and I were sitting on the back bumpers of our cars, breaking down our rods after an afternoon of so-so fishing on the Deerfield River in western Massachusetts. He held up a bottle of. . .

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Photos and Story: Into the Himalaya for Fly Fishing and More

One of my great joys in fly fishing is not really catching the fish (okay, that’s always a pleasure), but savoring the places the sport takes me. This spring, I had one such very special experience: I was fortunate to be able to visit Bhutan, a mountain nation . . .

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Hawk Lake Lodge, Day Three: Teeth and Mouths

After two days of fantastic smallmouth fishing at Hawk Lake Lodge, we decided to head for a smaller lake known for its great pike population. Sandy and I once again teamed up with guide Jeff Blum for a very short boat ride, followed by a hike to . . .

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Story: “Getting The Big Picture” on an Alaskan Stream

Written by: Bob Triggs, Washington Fly Fishing


The author (left) shows of a Lower Talarik Creek rainbow landed by angler Bob Kuhn.
Photo courtesy Bob Kuhn

The DeHavilland Beaver lifted off of the quiet lake surface at dawn, leaving a trail of water sluicing off of the trailing edges of the floats. I was being sent out, with the float plane and pilot, and . . .

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Glo Bugs, Tunafish Sandwiches, and Other Inert Materials

High noon on the Bighorn. The August sun was blazing down from a cloudless Montana sky. By midday, the pale-morning-dun hatch had petered out, so Andy and I pulled our drift boat against the bank and tossed the anchor up into the grass. I sat in . . .

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