Christmas is not my favorite holiday. It’s like the best part of all the other fun holidays, but with a whole lot of other stuff crammed into it. It’s busy. It’s expensive. It’s almost always cold. Consequently, I’ve been known to be a little Grinchy in the Yuletide lead-up. But then Christmas Eve hits. All …
I’m not going to brag and say that I’m some kind of fallfish catching phenom. I’ll simply let the evidence speak for itself. At a purely quantitative level, I’m super good at catching fallfish. Want proof? I hauled in some real fine specimens the last time I went out. Which, it just so happened, was …
How far do you have to drive to get to trout? How far do you have to drive to get to native trout? The second question is one that has been on my mind for as long as I have been fly fishing. There is something about wild fish, even if they’re teeny-tiny, that encapsulates …
ATTENTION FLY FISHERS: PASS THIS ARTICLE TO YOUR SPOUSE, CHILDREN, OR NOT-SO-SECRET SANTA Need a last minute fly fishing gift? Even if you don’t know the first thing about fly fishing, getting a great gift can be pretty easy. That’s because there are people spread across this country who are literally sitting and waiting to …
Cold cut through every exposed inch of skin like a knife. Wool and fleece and neoprene worked in unison but were unable to achieve success. Numbed fingers struggled with the most basic knots; hope was used as much as monofilament. The stream was the only moving thing in the stark winter landscape. Patches of snow …
Reading maps is a lost art. Yes – art. Creating maps might be all about precise science, but interpreting maps is much more nuanced. Especially when it comes to finding fish. Even if you don’t think about maps, most fly fishers rely on maps in some way, shape, or form. You need to find the …
There is plenty of cynicism in the world. I’d say that a disproportionate amount of it rests among certain segments of the fly fishing community. Perhaps it is the outlet for all the frustration that comes from being outsmarted by fish. It is very irrational to be irritated by a trout. It’s only slightly less …
Even if I hadn’t been out in a week, the first cast felt like it was simply the next cast in a succession of fly fishing moments. It was like picking up where I had left off. Like I had never left. Never stopped fishing. It is a great feeling. I’ve had two such seasons …
Casting Across isn’t an interview- or discussion-based podcast. There are plenty of those out there, and I encourage you to listen and subscribe. There are some great ones. But as this is the one-year mark of the podcast, I thought I’d break out of the mold and into an interview for an episode. Two interviews, …
Earlier in the week I put out another fly fishing gift guide. Such posts are seasonally relevant and hopefully helpful. But lists can only be so long and still stay readable. Furthermore, including something necessitates excluding something else. So what if none of those gifts tinseled your tree? Today I’ve gathered up a number of …
