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Picked up my first copy of The Drake yesterday and have to say it was bright, funny, erudite in a "damn we have a good time" sort of way. I dare say it reminded me of the guys I hung around with while learning how to guide in the 80s. I highly recommend it, if only to help you mark your place on the continuum of fly fishing culture. And great photos, too, by the way.
Richard Pough passed away Tuesday. In many ways he was a model for the modern conservationist, encouraging, for example, people to buy endangered lands if they truly cared about them, and writing about the dangers of DDT long before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.
The Fly Fishing World Championships were just finished in Jaca, Spain. Apprently Jeff Currier of Jackson Wyoming (manager of Jack Dennis Fly Shop) won the Individual Bronze. The US team tied with Poland for 7th place.
Being seen on Friday at Livingston, Montana's "Leaf and Bean" coffee shopt were a bunch of folks reminiscing about life before "A River Runs Through It."
A couple of weeks ago I had a chance to land a big tarpon on my 16-year-old Sage RPLx 1190. Sticking to the 15-minute rule (fish to the boat) was challenging, and I had to seek endorsement for various special time extensions from my poling partner. It made me wonder: were 11-weights ever suited for big fish? Do rods get softer over time, as some of my anglers once suggested?
The fight ended when a the 6-year-old nail-knot attaching my butt section to the flyline pulled--last thing I would have predicted, and a good lesson about knots and age, since that knot had held for many, many fish.
One day, after the kids are grown, I plan to re-tie the knot with my wife. I don't expect it ever to break, but there will be exhilaration and exultation in snipping the old one, perhaps tossing it into a box with the long-suffering first shoes of our son, and testing out the new one (I always stand on my butt section knots and pull as hard as I can).
Here's to good knots and the pleasure of tying them.
"...The boy was using the carcass of the creature like a knight uses a lance. I didn?t give him much hope. His competitor was brandishing a barracuda...." An interesting current picture of Los Roques from the Times of London. Not much fish talk, but good travel commentary. If you haven't seen Los Roques, you're missing something.
From June 6, 2002, a detailed New Yorker magazine piece on the life and style of Howell Raines, author of Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis and the recently resigned executive editor of The New York Times.
The San Francisco Chronicle's obituary. It mentions Del's 127-pound tarpon on 8-pound test, which tends to be overshadowed by his permit exploits. "Mr. Brown practically invented the sport of fly-fishing for permit fish. He caught more permit -- by a factor of five -- than any other angler in history, caught the biggest fish using the lightest test line and designed the most popular fly to lure the elusive critters."
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