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WELCOME TO VOL 3/ISSUE 1 (Winter 2023)

There are a few things I distinctly remember from a trip to Washington State’s Grande Ronde River, foremost a fellow fly-fishing writer accidentally slinging a nasty string of split-shot right into my face. I covered my forehead with a hand, then took it away. Hand covered in blood with big drips painting the bottom of the driftboat…

Being a Bristol Bay noob, I thought my guide was referring to a spot on the water, some riverbend where a sled had met a moose, or a pilot had suffered a terminal sneeze. I clambered into the boat with my nymph rod in hand and took my seat—slowly…

INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL

There’s a small lake in southern Argentina that should sit high on the bucket list for anyone who’s ever fished rainbow trout. It’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere, way out in an inhospitable desert only accessible by two-track roads. The closest point of civilization is Calafate, about six hours away…

Have you experienced bonefishing at its finest? No, not plucking two- to four-pounders nonstop from massive schools you can spot from a mile away. I mean stalking hogs, cruise missiles of eight, 10 pounds or better…

Any time you travel to fish, you’re rolling the dice. Not only is it a crapshoot that the quarry will be there and be chewing, but also that the will weather cooperate. What do you do, for instance, when your day on the flats follows a blast of cold down the Jet Stream, and the intended glamor targets are digging deep? Think barracuda, a species grossly underestimated as a gamefish…

The rain came in hammering waves the way it can when being outside is not where you want to be. The highway tried hard to drain but we had moments when the SUV hydroplaned until the tires grabbed again. There were tornado reports. I tried but failed to kill the Dylan tune lyrics, now a brain worm insisting that “If it Keeps on Rainin’ the Levee’s Gonna Break.”…

SPECIES PROFILE

FISHY TALES

In June of 1989 I fished the fabled Katmai region of my home state for the first time. Given the reputation of wild Alaskan rainbows, I’d tied up a box of big streamers: sculpins, muddlers, Wooly Buggers, and of course the famous Egg-Sucking Leech…

TECHNICAL

“Fish on, yeehaw!” one of the anglers in the Clacka bellowed as they passed through the first bucket. I compulsively turned to look. He didn’t have a fish on. They did have a Bluetooth speaker pumping Nashville country for the rest of the river to “enjoy.” All three young men continued shouting over the music …

BOOK REVIEW

In 2014, writer Jerry Hamza won Fly Rod & Reel magazine’s Robert Traver Award. This award, which today is administered by the American Museum of Fly Fishing, recognizes “distinguished original stories or essays that embody the implicit love of fly fishing, respect for the sport, and the natural world in which it takes place” (from the AMFF website)…

ART

Fortress Lake is nestled between two mountain ranges in the Canadian Rockies north of Banff. Its brookies are descendants of Ontario’s Nipigon Lake strain, introduced by park rangers into Fortress in 1928. This is the same strain that produced the longstanding world-record brookie. I saw images of a Fortress brook trout caught a couple weeks prior to my arrival that might have challenged that 34-inch-long fish…

GEAR

In the August 2022 edition of FFI Magazine, I reviewed a Big Agnes Tensleep Station 6 tent. If you read that, you’ll already know that to prepare the story I toughed it out in some nasty spring weather at a high mountain lake in British Columbia. In that story I mentioned we were huddled under my friend Scott’s tarp…

I’ve been fishing since the age of four, and wearing glasses since the age of 11. Even though this writer is pretty bad at math, those numbers shake out to a solid three decades of staring at the water through corrective lenses. Like a lot of anglers in the same situation, I spent a lot of years performing two sets of treatment to my eyes. First, my contact lenses went in. Then, my polarized sunglasses went on…

WHAT WE'RE WATCHING: Mixed Playlist

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TYER'S BENCH

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