The Countryman Press has just released a new book by David Klausmeyer -- the editor of Fly Tyer Magazine -- called Tying Classic Freshwater Streamers: An Illustrated Step-by-Step Guide (hardcover, 136 pages). The Lexington Herald-Leader describes the book's contents: "Learn the anatomy of a streamer and what material the various parts are commonly made from, and how to choose the right hook, feathers and synthetic materials. There's a chapter devoted to tandem hook streamers for muskies and striped bass, marabou streamers, bucktails and epoxy-headed flies, like the Thunder Creek, which imitates a minnow. Learn how to tie the Muddler Minnow, which is made of squirrel tail hair, wild turkey feathers and deer hair, view a gallery of streamers, and the names, addresses and e-mails of anglers featured in the book." Looks like a good one, and by a guy who really knows his stuff.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 7:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chris Hunt breaks an eight-weight in a fight with a pink salmon and takes the opportunity to describe all the great fall fishing that can be had on Alaska's Prince of Wales Island. "After a short walk among towering fir and spruce trees and through patches of tall dense grasses and ferns, and after donning my polarized sunglasses on that soggy afternoon, I was able to spot several dollies finning below a pod of migrating pinks. Each pink was probably about 22 inches long and weighed close to three pounds. The dollies were a bit smaller, but a few of the olive-colored fish rivaled the spawning salmon in size."
In the Idaho State Journal.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 5:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bob Krumm describes fishing deep for large lake trout as one of the great opportunities presented by cooler weather. "During the fall spawning season, lake trout move onto the submerged gravel bars that are from 3 to 15 feet deep. In other words, any angler with a decent boat and sonar outfit can locate the lake trout and be able to cast to them without special equipment. This is the time of year when a fly fisher using a sinking line stands a very good chance of catching a big lake trout. All the angler has to do is to make sure to have a fairly large streamer and a little perseverance." In the Billings Gazette.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 5:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There has been plenty written over the years about gearing up for, finding, and casting to bonefish. One thing that is almost impossible to learn without on the water experience with bonefish behavior is what to do after the fly hits the water. We'll be publishing a full review of Chico's excellent new book in another week or two, but meanwhile we can let you read a chapter from Fly-Fishing for Bonefish entitled "The Retrieve, Hookup, and Fight."

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 7:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hatch Guide for New England Streams gets the nod from Bill Connors, who compares it to the Art Flick classic Art Flick's New Streamside Guide, which first established the role of an angler's vade mecum. In the Poughkeepsie (New York) Journal.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 6:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We've all lost good fishing buddies to other sports. But I like to think that Tom Bie, editor and publisher of The Drake, is just biding his time at Powder Magazine before breaking free of all his bad habits and returning to fishing full-time. Does sound like he's having fun, though. If you haven't read Mr. Bie's profile of Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 7:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in August we reported that Betsy Gaines Quammen, the wife of nature writer David Quammen, was raising money to repair a buddhist monestary in Mongolia. This article by Mary Pickens in the Billings Gazette traces a broader connection to taimen conservation efforts in Mongolia by the Vermillion brothers -- Dan, Jeff and Pat -- and The Taimen Conservation Fund. The Vermillions, who introduced Mrs. Quammen to Mongolia, own Sweetwater Travel, a Livingston, Montana-based fly fishing travel company that has taken a very responsible and forward-thinking attitude toward encouraging destination travel to Mongolia.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 7:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In this new primer on using wire on MidCurrent, Chico reports in his usual comprehensive way on the why's and how-to's of building shock tippets from single-strand wire. Essential reading if you're pursuing barracuda, mackerel, sharks and other toothy critters. Read "All Wired Up."

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 7:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Environmental news magazine The Grist interviews Yvon Chouinard, who is predictably opinionated and usually right, in our opinion, though we wonder about the direct connection with Jesus. "I find that people concerned about the environment tend to be a lot more honest than people who aren't. I think you can trust them. If you are voting for a congressman who has a really good voting record on the environment and the other guy who's got a 10 percent [voting record], let me tell you I think that 10 percent guy is probably going to get indicted for something pretty soon." By Amanda Griscom Little.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 7:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I learned to fly fish on smallmouth (I don't think my first efforts with tarpon and a 12-weight really count), so they hold a special place in my memories of discovery. As a counterpoint to yesterday's piece about Lake Taneycomo, Jim Darnell reminds us that southern Missouri holds plenty of underfished water. He and a buddy float the Elk River in the Ozarks and catch plenty of bass on topwater stuff. "This had to be the essence of fishing. Wilderness and solitude. I still enjoy bass fishing on a big reservoir in a powerful bass boat but now, to me, it's a distant second place from fly fishing a clear-water, wilderness river in a canoe or kayak." In the San Marcos (Texas) Daily Record.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 5:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Few anglers know it, but Tom McGuane is a top-tier cutting horse rider. His Some Horses is acclaimed as one of the best books about cutting and horses ever written. In this article in the San Diego Union-Tribune, Elizabeth White quotes Bill Barnes of the Best R None Ranch in Forsyth, Georgia: "It's like fly-fishing on horseback." Perhaps Tom would agree.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 7:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a quick review, Todd Vinyard on CommercialAppeal.com gives Rich Toshches's 2002 book the thumbs up. "From chapters called 'The Drivel Runs Through It' to 'Dances With Morons,' Tosches, a humor columnist for the Colorado Springs Gazette, spins plenty of interesting fly-fishing tales."

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 6:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Among metaphors about bad fishing weather, this one ranks, though I'm not sure whether a Norseman's idea of purgatory involves more cold or more hot. Ken Allen writes about Bob Mallard, proprietor of Kennebec River Outfitters in Madison, Maine, fishing for fall browns in shallow water. In the Kennebec Journal Online.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A signed copy of The Natural Trout Fly and Its Imitation, a book written and self-published by Leonard West 1912 and released in an expanded edition in 1921, got this record price at auction in Scotland recently. In The Scotsman.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"'There's not a lot of humor in fly fishing,' said Paul Johnson, marketing manager for Redington, Bainbridge Island, WA, while discussing the choice to include the well-known faces." On DMNews.com.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 7:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May and June, October and November are the best months to fish Scotland's Tweed for large salmon. Finlay Wilson writes about fishing the Boleside beat near the former home of Sir Walter Scott on TheScotsman.com.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 6:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In this fine article by Gordon Burn in the U.K. Guardian, the author explores how the subject of sports exposed the much of the raw talent of American writers during the past century. He starts with Ernest Hemingway and moves across the works of John Updike, Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Richard Ford, and David Foster Wallace, to name some of the better writers who chose sports as literary centerpieces. A long article but worth the read.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 7:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

James R. Babb refers to himself as a 'peahead nostalgist' in this humorous recommendation of the "Peapod" skiff, a boat that first appeared in Maine's Penobscot Bay in the 1870s. In Gray's Sporting Journal.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Somewhere in the list of reasons for why most of us fish lies the thought that at some point we'll be connected by a fly line to the Leviathan and be judged on the skill and artistry of our performance by an audience of our peers. Ok, that may be an exaggeration. But it is true that one can learn how to fight big fish effectively with a fly rod. If you've never tangled with a fish over 100 pounds, or if you just want a refresher, check out "Fighting Big Fish - A Primer," new on MidCurrent.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 7:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In this audio piece on NPR.org, writer Scott Huler -- author of the newly released Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale, and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry -- talks about the poetry and specificity of hurricane warnings, the iambic tetrameter of the 19th-century Beaufort Scale: "wind felt on face, leaves rustle, ordinary vane moved by wind" (Level 2). (Thanks to reader David Dalu for this link.)

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mr. Rangeley-Wilson, who writes about fishing for the U.K.'s The Field and other magazines and newspapers, lists his favorite angling books. He mentions one of my all-time favorites, first given to me by Leonard Wright: Going Fishing by Negley Farson (1942). In The Guardian.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 6:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"We stood with legs braced as our small craft pitched and rolled on the shoulders of a dour sea, awestruck by the spectacle of a savage striped bass blitz." Pete Bodo sets out with David Blinken and Richard Franklin to engage false albacore but finds himself in the middle of busting stripers. In the New York Times.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"The headwaters of the Neversink are cached upstream in a 35-billion-gallon reservoir and then channeled through the world's longest continuous underground tunnel to become the purest source of water for the city's 8 million residents. Even so, the waters below the reservoir retain a reputation as one of the finest wild trout fisheries in the world. There, anglers in the 1840s first developed the techniques that set fly-fishing in the New World apart from the more placid practices of Europe." Yet another good article on the Cuddebackville Dam project that also mentions that there are 77,000 dams similar to this one. Robert Lee Hotz in the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Toney Sisk applies his perceptive style to the topic of naming flies and tying streamside on his Wayward Fly Fishing site. "I sometimes tie along the streamside, where all human vanity must be arrested if you are to respond to what is happening in the water. There, you must focus on the basics. This is not the place for fussing over the color of the mayfly's tail."

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 7:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apparently someone was injured by a trout falling from the sky in Whitefish, Montana, recently. These observations by George Ostrom in the Whitefish Pilot suggest that even ospreys sometimes make mistakes.

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 6:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Corrigan delivers another excellent book review, this time of Gierach's At the Grave of the Unknown Fisherman, in the Concord (New Hampshire) Monitor. "Gierach's collections of essays usually include a chapter on a species generally not seen as a popular quarry for fly casters. In Unknown Fisherman he plays out his anti-snobbery inclinations with a description of carp. He writes that purists are offended by either the species or those with the audacity to fish for them."

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 6:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)