July 2008 Archives

If you weren't aware of it already, the non-profit American Museum of Fly Fishing, located in Manchester, Vermont, has amassed an incredible collection of fly fishing art, artifacts and literature. They also highlight their offerings with regular exhibits of gear, personal histories and media and until October 31, 2008 will be exhibiting the art of Ogden Pleissner (1928-1976). Pleissner was very influential in mid-20th century sporting art, and his works represent some of the very best depictions of fly fishing to come out of North America (though he also traveled and painted extensively in Europe).

You can read more about the exhibit on the Museum Web site, and even purchase an exhibit catalog. Better yet, take a trip to Manchester and see the exhibit and the Museum in person.

Yesterday reader Steve Piper sent us this link to a long thread exploring the history of fly fishing for corbina in the California surf. We don't normally spend time perusing fly fishing boards, but this discussion caught our eye, if only for the detailed contributions. As always, the question of who "first" caught a corbina on fly -- like the question of who "created" a fly pattern -- has a lot to do with who kept the first records, but there is plenty to chew on here, including this quote from author and saltwater expert Nick Curcione:

"I'm always hesitant to use the word 'first' because even the most thorough research (I was a sociology prof in my other life) may not uncover all the facts. I caught my first corbina on the fly sight casting in the surf about 100 yards south of Hermosa Beach pier back in the fall of 1973. There were fish cruising back and forth on a sand bar and I finally got one to take an early version of my beach Bug. I remember I was using a fiberglass Fenwick 8-weight and an a Medalist reel with a lead core shooting head."

If anyone else has information that would help these folks answer the question of where fly fishing for corbina originated, they can contact Steve Piper via email at scpiper2@gmail.com.

As Gary LaFontaine says, "most of the problem in fishing high mountain lakes is finding the fish. Once you've found the fish, then you've got a few basic food forms." LaFontaine's video on how to fish a "Small Mountain Lake" shows where to find trout in high mountain lakes and how to feed them.

Excerpt: "A fairly steep shoreline is always good. Shorelines naturally gather food blown by the wind. You can fish lakes from the shoreline alone, but a float-tube or boat is more versatile. Bays too are a great place to find fish, as are the shelves and drop-offs associated with bays. Other good places are submerged trees, large rocks, or weed beds in deep water."

Steelhead bum Rob Brown gets an unpleasant visitor who leaves behind a fly with seemingly magical abilities to get trout to bite. "As the house filled up with smoke, Hans told us of his numerous angling achievements and of the laudatory reviews they had received in the European angling press. It was obvious he'd read these reviews more than once and that he took them very seriously." On British Columbia's TeranceStandard.com.

How to tie a Klinkhammer Special.

This week on MidCurrent Joan Wulff demonstrates the "Reach Cast." It's one of a trout angler's most useful techniques, providing longer drag-free drifts. A few key pointers on timing and technique also make it one of the easiest casts to perfect.

Excerpt: "A dry fly fisherman has to be aware of what we call 'drag.' Drag is that motion that makes the fly look as if it is a water-skier instead of a free-floating insect, and it's caused by the currents that work on the line and leader. So we need affect that by doing what we call a 'Reach Cast,' which will put the arm and the upper part of the rod upstream of the fly, so that the fly drifts down first."

If dropping your 16-foot dory down a 120-foot drop off isn't enough to make you wince, there's the churning, narrow gorge on Blue River that may swallow you before you ever reach "frog water." Scott Willoughby describes a river-boat test in The Denver Post.

Patagonia is sometimes not as loud about their conservation efforts as other companies, perhaps because wildlife and resource protection is a part of almost everything they do. For example, their World Trout initiative, which is funded purely through T-shirt sales, has generated over $333,000 for wild trout protection since its inception in 2005.

We got word yesterday that Patagonia is extending their commitment to protecting threatened fish populations by opening up their grant application process to all interested groups. Beginning in August, even the smallest groups can go to www.patagonia.com/flyfishing and apply for funding. Cool beans.

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

It looks like New Zealand will be the first country to ban felt soles on wading boots. "The ban, expected to become effective from October 1, would apply to felt-soled waders or footwear with a sole of felted, matted or woven fibrous material when sports fishing. Fish & Game said such boots were a 'high risk' carrier of microscopic aquatic organisms like didymo and banning them would help prevent the spread of didymo." On Stuff.co.nz.

Remember that in most cases you can resole your wading boots with kits like those offered by Five Ten, which include a 5.5mm AquaStealth sole for $24.25.

The plot of John Galligan's forthcoming mystery, after his well-received The Nail Knot and The Blood Knot, revolves around a murdered cow girl and the tortured fly-fishing protagonist Ned Oglivie (aka Dog). Publisher's Weekly says "At the outset of Galligan's stunning third Montana-set fly-fishing mystery (after 2005's The Blood Knot), Ned 'Dog' Oglivie, a self-described 'traveling drunk' and 'trout hound' who lives out of his asthmatic 1984 Cruise Master RV, has befriended a jailed bull rider's daughter, Jesse Ringer, and her black boyfriend, D'Ontario Sneed."

The Clinch Knot on Amazon.

Claiming that Ruby River landowners are unfairly blocking angler access -- a contention with a long history on this closely guarded river -- the Public Lands Access Association recently filed suit against Madison County to try to get them to force landowners to modify their fencing in three key locations. The usual suspects -- including the chairman and chief executive of Cox Enterprises, whose newspapers include The Atlanta Journal Constitution -- lined up to defend the fences, some of which are electrified.

Many forward-thinking states have been successful in turning old rail right-of-ways, logging roads and other formally commercial routes into bike paths that reach far into the backcountry. Among them is Pennsylvania, where some 550 miles of biking and hiking trails extend through the western part of the state alone. Ben Moyer writes about some of the opportunities for peddling anglers in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "'Many state forest and state game land roads that are closed to motorized vehicles provide bicycle access to spots rarely visited by fishermen,' said Gregg Rinkus who lives in Franklin, Venango County, within bike-strike distance of trails along the Allegheny and Clarion rivers and Oil Creek."

Wayne Hooper collected ten astonishing strange-but-true stories about outdoors foolishness, including a man who heard that worms work better when warmed in the mouth, a hunter who mistook his neighbor's St. Bernard for a deer, and a distraught bass angler who tried to end his life by prancing around in a thunderstorm with graphite rod and a customized miner's hat.

As we noted back in June, Jamie Howard's new project involves pitting fly fishers against hardware guys in a challenge to catch big bass somewhere in the western U.S. Well it turns out that that place is the California delta, which, as Howard says, "is one weird and remote place and there are some true monsters that lie in there if you can find your way around." You can watch the new trailer here.

Bill Graves pays tribute to legendary Atlantic salmon guide Richard Adams with a story about how Adams made short work of a 27-pound fish with some deft use of the net. (There's also an interesting note about how "strumming" a line can make a big fish move.) "'Keep leading him right up beside the boat if you can', Richard said, "but all at once he's going to take off like a scalded cat.' I knew he was right; large salmon are seldom netted from a canoe, they are too wily. Then, all at once, the fish was right alongside. There was a quick flash as my old guide swept the net and snared the passing fish. That's when the salmon really got wild, I thought it would beat a hole in the side of the canoe as I held the net overboard while Richard poled to shore." In the Bangor Daily News.

Not a lecture on how to row a drift boat without annoying others, but rather an introduction to how to best take advantage of a day of guided drift boat fishing, Rosenbauer's latest podcast includes such sage advice as: "Don't turn your guide into a marriage counselor."

Excerpt: "A good guide is going to watch your casts for the first dozen or so casts and see where you're comfortable. The guide will then position the boat so that your comfortable casting distance is going to reach the perfect spot. If you watch a good guide carefully they will weave in and out of the current, and back and forth, to make sure that you're able to put your fly easily in the best spot."

Word has it that food stores all along the Texas coast are running out of garlic spray.

The round-trip air fare may cost you $2000, but as the only scheduled flight between the U.S. and the Russian Far East, Vladivostok Air's new service from Anchorage to Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka is the best thing going. The company restarted the service on July 8 after a seven-year absence of any regular non-stop flights between the two cities.

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

You may know her as the slightly witchy Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter film series, but apparently Emma Watson sees as much magic in fly fishing. Back in March, she donated one of her Grey Wulffs to the Wild Trout Trust to help raise money for the U.K.-based conservation group.

Ever since I saw an extensive review in Practical Sailor that proved that bare human feet are as effective as any boat shoe sole in preventing slippage, I've wondered why someone hasn't taken the bit when it comes to replacing felt with something more eco-friendly. (I wouldn't want to wade Montana's Boulder River in bare feet anytime soon.)

Apparently Simms has been working hard behind the scenes to develop a hard-rubber wader sole that performs as well as felt but addresses the problem of aquatic hitchhikers being carried from stream to stream. They've partnered with Vibram to produce the first and only fishing-specific Vibram sole. In field testing, Simms' new sole has shown to have all the performance attributes of felt, only the soles have the environmental benefits (they don't soak and hold water and they dry quickly) of rubber. The new soles will come out in late 2008, as part of their new 2009 line.

Rangeley-Wilson suggests an even mixture of titles by U.S. and U.K. authors in his list of the top ten fishing books. Beyond his inclusion of a couple of excellent non-fly-fishing books -- The Secret Carp by Chris Yates and I Know a Good Place by Clive Gammon -- I'm pleased to see that he mentions fly fishing books by James Babb, Ted Leeson and Negley Farson. "A foreign correspondent between the wars, Farson worked all over the world, accompanied by a typewriter and his fishing rods. Where there was water, he fished, and in spare and vivid prose, he brought to life his adventures in revolutionary Russia, on horseback in the Caucasus, or living hand to mouth in British Columbia." In the U.K.'s Guardian.

GUY DE LA VALDENE is a mystery to most fly fishers. If his name is known widely, it is because he hung out with Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison, Richard Brautigan, Russell Chatham and Jimmy Buffet in Key West in the late sixties and early seventies. He is also, of course, an author of two books on game birds and a novel, and the co-producer of "Tarpon," the cult classic that was finally released on DVD this summer. But de la Valdene is, by almost all accounts, a recluse. In fact, when we finished our four-hour interview with him, he said, "I don't think I've ever talked this much."

Our conversation transported us back to the post-war "boom" in destination fly fishing, the era of the pioneering Florida Keys guides, Parisian film studios, and to the days when de la Valdene and his friends enjoyed a heady mixture of talent, freedom and experimentation that blurred the lines between fishing and life.

On July 18 the Utah state Supreme Court ruled that "the public has the right to touch privately owned beds of state waters in ways incidental to all recreational rights provided for in the easement." That's created a flurry of jabs in both directions as private land owners and access rights advocates argue about the real effects of letting anglers use streambeds to move through private lands. Non-angler Vern Williams states the limited-access perspective about as plainly as you can: "Everybody has to poop and they don't poop in the river," Williams said. "These people aren't able to stay in the river banks and like to get out and stomp your fences. They think they can just go do what they want and throw their garbage wherever they want." Patrick Parkinson in the Park City, Utah Park Record.

Starting above the timberline as a stream that spills into the Taylor Reservoir and then turns into a classic tailwater before rushing toward the upper Gunnison, the Taylor River gets plenty of pressure from anglers who know it for rainbows grown fat on mysis shrimp. That doesn't keep locals from pursuing its big, often finicky fish. "The Taylor has a well-deserved reputation as being hard to fish. In addition to the abundant and summerlong 'rubber hatch,' the river is cold and the bottom mossy with boulders that could double as bowling balls. Also, it's paralleled by a much-traveled paved road, which means the quality of the fishing drops whenever a pull-out allows easy access." Dave Buchanan in the Grand Junction Sentinel.

On October 18, the Catskill Fly Fishing Center Hall of Fame will induct Dave Whitlock, Ed Zern, George Griffith, Art Neuman, Francis Betters,and Ed Van Put, who at age 70 still works full-time as a state fisheries and wildlife manager. "When you fish nearly 55 years of your life in the Catskills, you kind of pick up on the history behind the water you've fished. Along the way, Van Put wrote two important historical books on Catskill fly fishing. In 1996, he penned the critically acclaimed book, 'The Beaverkill,' (The Lyons Press), and more recently, Van Put released his second and broader historical book in 2007, 'Trout Fishing in the Catskills,' (Skyhorse Publishing)."

It doesn't have a very sexy name, but it might bring a little pleasure to doing good things for the environment. Most of us stuff used mono into a pocket of our vest or drop clippings into a boat or cooler for later retrieval; sometimes we remember to dispose of them, sometimes we forget about them. The MonoMaster offers a way to make a habit of proper disposal. The product -- which is now available in Orvis stores or on the Grasshopper Products Web site -- retails for less than the costs of a couple of good leaders ($11.95) and has been endorsed by the Federation of Fly Fishers.

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

A dry hot summer is leading to extreme low water conditions in some classic Catskill streams like the Willowemoc. "'This is bad, really bad,' says [Jim] Krul, the executive director of the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum. 'We need about a week of steady rain.'" The Willowemoc is a fly-fisherman's paradise, but not when there's so little water flowing that you can see every rock on the creek bed." Adam Bosch in the Times Record-Herald.

Long-time Haig-Brown friend Van Gorman Egan has just published Shadows of the Western Angler, about Roderick Haig-Brown and his visionary writing and conservation efforts. From the description by Mark Hume in Canada's Globe and Mail, this book sounds like much more than a simple tribute. "He writes of first meeting Mr. Haig-Brown on the river, of swapping flies and fishing stories - and he touchingly includes, tucked into a pocket inside the back cover - two hand-drawn maps his friend gave him, with X's on the river to mark the spots where the trout lie." There were only 1000 of the books printed, and they can be ordered only direct from the publisher, Campbell River Courier-Islander (email: editor@courierislander.com).

Fly fishing artist and guide Bob White spends a lot of time fishing and painting. But he's also committed to good causes, which is why he and television host Bill Sherck donated a guided fishing trip and personalized oil painting for the fundraiser Hooked on a Cure, which raises money for the internationally known St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Tennessee. The trip raised several thousand dollars for the Hospital. As for the bugs that got stuck in his oils as he captured the three friends who bought the trip, White just painted over them. "It was a steamy morning; a handful of shore anglers gave us curious glances as we drifted lazily down the river. While Sherck rowed another boat and Williams and Warriner began catching bass, throwing fly line and top-water flies to the shore, White dabbed paint to the board and concentrated on capturing the lush green forest and translucent clouds that foretold the afternoon's vicious thunderstorms. " Chris Niskanen on TwinCities.com.

If you are not familiar with White's art, be sure to check out the samples on his Web site. White is also one of MidCurrent's featured fly fishing artists.

Early July can produce good permit fishing in Key West, but as the month drags on toward August, calm winds and high temperatures can make it maddeningly hard to find fish, and especially ones that will eat. Apparently that's what happened during this year's annual Del Brown Tournament. Only three fish were caught in three days, and that's out of eighteen skiffs fishing.

One notable story coming out of the tournament is that the winning team was guided by Scott Collins -- the same guide who partnered with David Dalu to win the first ever one-season hat trick of tarpon tournaments this year. Collins and angler Greg Smith won by only 3/4" of an inch (that's what separated their one fish from the second-place catch), but it does suggest Collins is doing something right.

Below are the final results of the tournament:

1st Place: Angler -- Greg Smith, with Capt. Scott Collins (1 fish on day 2)

2nd Place: Angler -- Jack Knoll, with Capt. Jeffery Cardenas (1 fish on day 3)

3rd Place: Angler -- Chase Wise, with Capt. Bryan Holeman (1 fish on day 2)

This seems to be the year of the Lefty Kreh book, with the arrival of at least three titles by or about the most recognizable name in fly fishing. The first, All the Best (Collector's Cover, July 2008, 215 pages), which just arrived in the mail, is a voluminous tribute in words and photographs written and compiled by Flip Pallot. The images themselves provide a history lesson on the many notable anglers Kreh has fished with, and personal written contributions by Lefty's many friends make up almost a third of the book. In the Washington Times, Gene Mueller mentions one error in the book but readily gives the title two thumbs up: "The many color plates alone are worth the price of the book and Pallot's text is thoughtful, alive, interesting and a well-deserved salute to one of the great names in sport fishing."

All The Best - Celebrating Lefty Kreh ** Signed ** Brand New on Amazon.

"I could see the excitement in the fish's half-dollar-sized eyes as it finally rose, rolled and centered its mouth on a pigeon-sized fly I'd cast. It was the most exciting thing I've seen in 45 years of fishing. The nearly hour-long fight on a fly rod that followed was certainly the most exhausting." A tussle with a Panamanian sailfish causes a Kansas.com writer to pop a cold one at 9AM.

While the crowds flock to Gray Reef, locals know that some of the best fishing around Caspar, Wyoming is inside the city limits. "'You're catching fish that average about 18 to 20 [inches long] at the Gray Reef,' [Cuylar Cercy] said. 'In town, they average around 13 to 15 [inches], but it's got more of the bigger monster fish. There are more fish more than 25 inches long in town than at the Gray Reef.'" Wes Smalling in the Jackson Hole Star-Tribune.

After deciding that LaCrosse, Wisconsin is the epicenter for mayfly activity, National Geographic cinematographers are spending a few weeks shooting footage of the abundant insects for an upcoming film called "Planet In Motion." But they are taking advantage of a remarkable fact: that mayflies in their basement studio will emerge on a schedule identical with their river-bound brethren.

Let's hope the attitude with which Utah undertook the restoration of the Provo River becomes fashionable. After all, what benefits fly fishers usually benefits a large percentage of the population -- and the economy. The $55 million Provo River project, scheduled for completion this fall, guarantees flows and has already returned a large portion of the river to its pre-dredged-and-diked condition. Instead of spending money on biking and hiking paths -- trusting that visitors will create their own -- the Utah Reclamation, Mitigation and Conservation Commission focused on acquiring land that would give them the flexibility to let nature do its work. "'The river is going to do what the river is going to do,' [executive director Mike Weland] said. '[If] we come back in 20 years and the river is where we left it, we haven't done our jobs.' A crucial factor occurs when spring runoff shoves sediment downstream. As waters recede in summer, they leave wet muddy banks where the river bends. These newborn shores offer fertile ground to falling cottonwood seeds and other plants. As older cottonwoods die out, new ones take their place."

Writing in The New York Times, Stephen C. Sautner describes his effort to turn a Bermuda cruise ship holiday into a fly fishing sojourn, complete with casts from the ninth-floor balcony and an encounter with Bermuda's sophisticated bonefish. "All of this leaves the do-it-yourself fisherman -- the guy who happens to slip a rod tube and a box of lures or flies into his suitcase-- feeling a little desperate. Which is why I found myself casting, yet not fully thinking through what might happen if I actually hooked something. Would a thrashing jack need to be hauled in hand over hand, past the disco on Deck 7 and the honeymooning couple on Deck 8?"

The 300 ready-to-fish fly rod, reel and line packages that Sage, RIO and Redington put together for a one-day fundraiser back in April have resulted in a donation of $60,000 to Trout Unlimited - Alaska for research and communication surrounding the effort to protect Bristol Bay. The three companies were already early supporters of Felt Soul Media's "Red Gold" film project, and a follow-up donation based on matching gifts is expected to reach $40,000. You can find out more about the importance of protecting Alaska's Bristol Bay at www.savebristolbay.org.

For more details, read the full press release.

The most odd and interesting thing to arrive with the opening of ICAST in Las Vegas yesterday might be European company Pallatrax's "Stonze" weights. According to Jim Shepherd on NetNewsLedger.com: "The 'stonze' are exactly that, stones in a variety of sizes, all the way up to their 'boulderz' for saltwater fishing. They're being positioned as a 'green' alternative to lead sinkers, and come in both swivel and in-line versions."

Seven years ago in The New York Times, Nick Lyons wrote a short essay in which he asked, in response to be forced into the computer age by his kids, "Is faster better?" "I liked its responsiveness to my touch, even the pain it bred in my shoulders when I typed for too many hours. I liked to correct my words by hand and even retype a slew of pages, whereby I often found more that I wanted to be corrected. Didn't the heart, not the machine -- to paraphrase Quintilian -- make the eloquence? I wanted less speed, not more."

A couple of weeks ago Tom Rosenbauer wrote about why you might impart drag to a fly as an obvious signal to trout that it is time to take a fly. But Rob Brown makes a subtle distinction between intentional drag and the imperceptible drag that he says can also stimulate feeding. Heresy, you might say. But it's an interesting theory. Is it possible that trout are reacting to imperceptible drag more often than not? "The fisher has made a good throw and a fine, long drift. At the physical limit of that journey, the fish is almost convinced, that is, there hasn't been enough stimulus to trigger the fish's finely honed instinctual response. At that precise moment, the time when the fly is about to drag, it begins to speed up, suggesting that liftoff is imminent, and at that critical juncture there is sufficient stimulus to provoke a rise and take from the trout." In BC's Terrance Standard.

Temple Fork Outfitters just announced new 4-piece, 11-foot switch rods as an expansion to their TFO Deer Creek series. The new rods have a suggested retail price of $324.95-$349.95.

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

The roll cast puts all of the basic fly casting principles to use, and so learning it is one of the first steps in becoming a competent fly fisher. It's also one of the most useful casts, giving you options when your back is against high bushes or trees, and helping you quickly lift line off of the water before a new cast.

This week Joan Wulff, in her typically clear teaching style, demonstrates the mechanics of roll casting, breaking it down into steps and showing just where the hand and arm need to be during each stage. She also shows how a small shift in arm position allows fly fishers to deal with wind coming over the casting shoulder.

Touting higher light transmission and the active blocking of yellow light (a feature of all their 580 lenses), Costa Del Mar is introducing a new lens coating at this week's ICAST event in Las Vegas. According to Costa, they wanted to create a lens that was more suited to lower-light conditions but still has all the advantages of their top mirrored lens.

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

Having been born and halfway raised in Charleston, it doesn't surprise me that the Post and Courier, which was founded in 1803, would take a month to come up with a story about resident David Dalu's triple crown win in Florida tarpon tournaments this year. It has to do with the half-century "waiting period" for new arrivals, I think. But columnist Tommy Braswell wrote the most thorough piece yet about Dalu's phenomenal win: "Dalu didn't catch his first tarpon on fly until 2002, but in five years has reached the pinnacle of tarpon fishing. 'Last year was my first year of fishing tarpon tournaments in the Keys,' Dalu said. 'I fished with my friend Scott Collins, and we fished the Golden Fly and had the most releases. We fished in the Hawley last year and won, the first time a new angler had ever won.'"

"Edward R. Hewitt is credited with modifying an existing spider pattern in the 1920s into what he called the 'Neversink Skater Fly' (named after his home river, the Neversink in New York). Essentially all he did was reduce the existing spider pattern, which had a tail and some other extraneous parts, to its fundamental elements, which were two extra-long, stiff rooster spade hackles tied onto a fine wire, short-shank, size 16 hook." Ed Engle gives talks about Edward R. Hewitt's popularization of spider patterns and offers tips on how to tie and fish them correctly. In the Boulder, Colorado Daily Camera.

The state-owned Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery, which supplies fish to much of southern California, was severely damaged by a mudslide that also closed California Highway 395 for several hours Sunday.

"Less than a five-hour drive from Chicago, this relatively undiscovered region of wrinkled valleys and limestone bluffs contains 63 spring-fed creeks running 220-plus miles. Called the Driftless Area because glaciers advancing from the north 10,000 years ago didn't manage to flatten the landscape, it boasts some of the best fly-fishing in the Midwest." Brian E. Clark offers a detailed introduction to the interesting fishing for browns and brookies to be found in southwest Wisconsin. In the Chicago Sun-Times.

Vermonter Drew Price ignores the naysayers and throws big flies at whatever wily, finned critter will eat them, including carp, longnose gar, and even bowfin. "Price's preferred form of fly fishing is more cage match than ballet. He likes casting huge, garish flies to big, brutish fish using heavy, powerful rods that would have Hulk Hogan grunting with approval." Lawrence Pyne in the Burlington Free Press.

In his latest podcast, Tom Rosenbauer offers an excellent introduction to the many considerations involved in choosing and setting up a fly reel.

"There have never been as many great fly reels on the market as there are today. There are many different price points, and there are many different places to buy them. Orvis, of course, makes great reels, but there are great manufacturers like Ross, Abel, and Tibor. The good news is that what you buy today is going to be less expensive with better features and better quality than what you bought ten years ago.

The first thing that you have to decide when you buy a fly reel is capacity. It goes without saying that you have to have a reel that will hold all of your fly line. In a lot of fisheries, in a lot of circumstances, the reel is really just a device for holding the line when you are finished at the end of the day or walking from spot to spot. And in many cases the reel also has to hold a sufficient amount of a material called backing. Backing is insurance."

The semi-recovery of the Wandle has helped inspire imagination among an odd assortment of Londoners, including Design for London, the agency that advises the mayor, and developer James Bowdidge, who started an angling club -- the Tyburn Angling Society -- which has all the reflections of eccentricity one might expect. "John Buchan might easily have invented it as a pastime for a group of Edwardian boy-men with too much time and money on their hands ("Women members are allowed but must always be addressed in the masculine"). There are no records of any fish ever being caught in the Tyburn, but Bowdidge has a picture of himself standing in waders with a rod directed at a drain outside Claridges and later sent me a photograph of a pinkish fillet labelled with the name of a supermarket as 'Tyburn Salmon.'" Ian Jack in the Guardian.

Live Eyewear is out with a new enhanced version of their polarized Cocoons, which are designed to fit over prescription glasses. All the Cocoons styles we've seen lately are a lot more form-fitting than their first models, and the company now offers a wider variety of styles. The new Pro Series upgrades the lens and adds hydrophobic and oleophobic lens coatings, along with a floating neoprene sport cord. For those considering $200-plus-dollar prescription sunglasses, Cocoons' $59.95 price make them an attractive alternative.

If you ever happen to meet Jim Lepage, you'll quickly learn that he is good at a lot of things. Just as an example, the vice president of rods and tackle at Orvis, who came up with the Helios fly rod design, is a mushroom expert and cook. Lepage is the co-author, with Paul Fersen (manager of the company's retail outdoor division), of the new Guide to Great Sporting Lodge Cuisine (Thomas Nelson, April 2008, 232 pages), which contains 140 recipes from 42 sporting lodges around north America. John Waller writes about the book in this morning's Bennington Banner. "Lepage said some of the recipes are more difficult to recreate than others, but even a novice chef can make the lobster thermidor served at the Shoal Grass Lodge and Conference Center in Aransas Pass, Texas, if they follow the directions carefully. 'We tried to edit the recipes in a way that would make it easy to do the cooking,' he said."

The Orvis Guide to Great Sporting Lodge Cuisine on Amazon.

Call me suspicious, but whenever a fish becomes a food craze among chefs in this country, appearing on the pages of Bon Appetit and being trotted out as the perfect health food, I begin wondering what sinister forces are at work in the background. It happened first with redfish in the 1980s -- they were on the verge of being wiped out by profit-crazed netters. Now, it seems, tilapia are good evidence that not all is what it seems. Frankly, when my wife told me she had found a wonderful new tilapia recipe several years ago, I recalled the words of my friend Peter, who had spent two years teaching the Congolese how to farm tilapia as part of his Peace Corps duties. "Why tilapia?" I asked. "Because they will live anywhere and eat anything," he said. "But you wouldn't want to eat them yourself."

Granted, properly fed with nutritious natural food, tilapia are probably as healthy as any other fish, and they have saved the lives of thousands of people at risk of starvation. But every time science looks more closely at what actually happens when fish farmers get hold of a species, the results aren't good. According to Wake Forest researchers, you'd be better off eating steak every day: "Researchers from Wake Forest University Medical Center say you're better of with a big juicy burger than with this mild, low-fat fish, which turns out to be high in an unhealthful form of fat called long-chain omega-6 fatty acids, especially when it's produced by fish farms." Faye Flam in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The takeway is no different than what we knew all along: wild fish -- and wild fish habitat -- need protection, if only to preserve some relatively healthy alternative to mass-market food production. With all the attention given to the cost savings of preventative medicine, and with the increasingly obvious costs of not preserving our watersheds (e.g. hundreds of millions of dollars this year alone from the salmon fishing closure in California), I wish they'd crunch the numbers on that one.

If you are lucky enough to live in Michigan and can afford an extra tank of gas and an Ontario fishing license, extraordinary fishing for Atlantic salmon awaits on the St. Mary's River, which forms the border between Michigan and Canada. "'I think this year we'll be targeting Atlantics right into August, when the Chinooks arrive,' said [guide John] Giuliani, who draws clients from Europe as well as from across North America. 'They're really fat this year. The 2-year-olds are 5-10 pounds, the 3-year olds are 13-20, and we've seen 4- or 5-year-old fish that were just huge.'" Eric Sharp in the Detroit Free Press.

Reminding me of that great Ed Zern quote -- "Fly fishermen are born honest, but they get over it" -- R.J. Mere encounters a pastor on vacation and wonders if his fishing report might be taking the usual liberties.

"'I met this guy who says he's been catching salmon up to 31 inches.'

'Did he show you the fish?'

'No,' I said and then added, 'But he's a man of the cloth.'

Her impish eyes lit up, 'Well, maybe that's why he comes up here on vacation -- so he can tell lies and get it out of his system!'"

On Seacoastonline.com.

If you think that true "fly fishing adventures" are for the young and resilient, your preferred way to explore remote Pacific islands might be to watch a film of hale young fellows hopping a freighter toward a small dot on the charts, and then trying to find bonefish while surviving on too little food and water. To be honest, when I first popped the DVD of "The Search - Tahiti" into my player, I wondered if these guys had all gone around the bend. But I'm sure glad they did this trip, if only to show the possibilities that spring from youthful energy and uneven planning.

"The silt-laden water clears and as water levels fall, temperatures begin to rise. When the water temperature hits a steady 55 degrees, a massive bug known by entomologists as Pteronarcys californica -- the 'Giant Salmonfly' -- crawls out from underneath the rocks it has lived under for several years. It climbs out of the water where it breaks free of its aquatic body, sprouts wings and a brilliant orange torso and flies into the bushes for a massive mating ceremony." Alex Taylor writes about the massive stonefly emergence in Colorado's Black Canyon National Park.

But we particularly like the fly recommendation given by Nam Le in his report on the Cimarron Creek Web site:

"Went to the forks on Friday. It was great. Went into ute on monday. It was great. Went into duncan wednesday. It was great. Everything on top and there was a lot of big fish feeding on top. Just get down there, but load up on flies first. Flies/Methods Used: Chunks of foam. Tattered pieces of hair. Unraveled pieces of hackle. Anything that resembles a stone."

For a truly artful perspective on the annual event, check out Felt Soul Media's trailer from "The Hatch."

That one gets jotted down on the same page as the Florida guide's "the platform over the motor keeps it from getting sunburned." John Holyoke reports on a high-water visit to New Brunswick's Upsalquitch River and on the camp personality, guide Ollie Marshall. "I'll tell you that Mr. Marshall forgot to pack his fly box one night, and told me I'd have to fish the entire pool with a grizzly king. Since our pool was only a couple hundred yards from camp, he eventually decided he was kidding and retrieved his fly box." In the Bangor Daily News.

If you didn't know already, Bill Schaadt was an icon in northwest U.S. steelheading long before fly fishing for steelhead became a cult itself. He was, according to everyone who fished near him (not many fished "with" him, since he fished so hard and so expertly), one of the most talented anglers ever to hold a fly rod. As an example, in a recent interview I conducted with Guy de la Valdene, he described Schaadt fishing in Key West harbor in the early 1970s while Valdene and the "Tarpon" film crew partied away the evening on the Key West waterfront:

"He had some sort of a funny little rowboat and we were all having some drinks at the Chart Room or at the hotel that sticks out on the water there and you'd see him out there, at night, just dredging, and jumping the %@!#& out of tarpon. Like a lot of them. Like every 8 or 10 minutes Kaboom!, you know, something would happen. He was just a magnificent fly caster, and I'm sure there are people nowadays who are as good or better, and probably hundreds of them, but in our days, Bill Schaadt was something."

Some nominal digging turned up this piece from the archives of Sports Illustrated, in which Russell Chatham -- who probably sat there with de la Valdene and watched Schaadt dredging tarpon in Key West -- describes the legendary demeanor: "Transported, he would turn to follow the progress of his line downstream until a salmon took, then he would outline the peculiarities of the struggle as he battled the lunging monster to a standstill near the sink. Once again I was under the spell of the only man I know whose every thought, action and possession is a cohesive, unified extension of himself, like the spokes of a wheel coming into contact with the encompassing rim."

I just finished reading Michael Dahlie's new debut novel about a guileless New York fly fisher who is hamstrung by his inability to see around the corner at the things life is throwing his way. It's a very relaxing read -- perfect beach reading and a nice change of pace for those of us tired of reading how we're doing everything wrong when it comes to fly selection and arm motion.

Janet Maslin reviews A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living (W. W. Norton & Company, 281 pages) in The New York Times this morning, describing it as a fine first first start for an author who seems to have just stepped out of a New Yorker cartoon: "Michael Dahlie's fictitious Maidenhead Grange is a beloved Catskills fly-fishing lodge that is home to the Hanover Street Fly Casters, an exclusive group founded by 12 Manhattan financiers in 1878. The group named the lodge during a fit of boozy Anglophilia. Membership is hereditary. And each man's room is strictly his own, filled with a lifetime's worth of irreplaceable mementos."

A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living: A Novel on Amazon.

As the Hex hatch makes its annual march across the U.S., a spate of articles on how best to match these giant flies made their appearance this past week. First there was Eric Sharp telling folks not to tie their flies too big: Hexagenia limbata are not the size of small airplanes.

Then Ken Allen wrote a characteristically detailed piece in the Kennebec Journal on hex hatches and how they fit into the Maine fly mix, where they are often confused with green drakes: "The sole big deal about misnaming the bug strikes anglers with entomological knowledge as obvious. A true green drake (Ephemera guttlulata) is a different size and color than a Hex, so if you tell a fly fisher - say from Pennsylvania or even Portland - that he or she should bring Green Drake dry flies to a Hex hatch, the chosen pattern will be smaller and much greener than a Hex imitation."

Finally Paul Reynolds queries Eastern Hatches author Tom Fuller, whose answer on differentiation makes it apparent why the mistake is often made. "The differences between the Eastern Green Drake (3 tails on the dun) and the Hex hatch (two tails on the dun) are at best subtle. The Eastern has mottled wings, the Hex doesn't have the mottling, but does have veins. Coloration and size really depend on the waters where they're found and the fertility. The real difference is the double gills found on body segment #1 on the Hex. The Eastern nymph has single gills on body segments 1 through 7."

As if standing in water up to your navel at midnight weren't enough to keep the mind agile.

"Picture this. You've just made a 70 foot cast into a flat peppered with last year's pencil reeds. The water is only two feet deep and you are watching your big feathered streamer dart in one -foot pulls under the surface as you strip it in. Suddenly there is a huge boil and the streamer disappears." Larry Myhre describes a post-ice-out trip to Ontario's North Caribou Lake, detailing the gear required to catch 20-plus-pound northern pike. In the Souix City Herald.

Artist and author James Prosek is enticed to fish for toothy machaca on Costa Rica's Rio Nino with an unusual proposition: they will use flies made to imitate nectar-rich flowers. "Gorinsky's first imitations of the flowers, tied with various dyed materials on hooks, were failures. They became waterlogged quickly and sank, or they did not have a convincing-enough profile on the water to fool the fish. But after much experimentation, he found the perfect material to tie his flower flies -- the bristles of cheap plastic dust brooms he bought from children on the street in San José, the nation's capital." In The New York Times.

Jack Ohman did a fine interview with John Gierach when the author was in Portland, Oregon, recently. In it, Gierach says some suprising -- and not surprising -- things about how and why he writes. "'I wish I could say that I had seen this cultural opening in fly fishing. And I wish I could say I saw the moment for a manifesto and wrote it. I didn't. I just wrote the book I felt like writing. And it slowly, very slowly, but steadily got more popular. To this day, I think I wrote too quickly after "Trout Bum." And for better or worse, it made me. I have great affection for that book. But I don't think it's my best book, by a long shot.'" In the Oregonian.

No, it's a not a fly fishing novel. Rather it's the latest book from the author best known for his Dave Robicheaux mystery series. But Jeff Bredenberg's review, and particularly one passage in which Burke quotes Steinbeck, make me want to go out and buy it:

"In his fiction, Burke uses place - terrain, vegetation, weather, architecture, culture and local history - the way a carpenter uses wood. Place for him is not just a decorative element, it's the underpinning of the story, the supporting structure. Here's a sample, as the author describes the river country where western Montana meets Idaho:

The riparian topography of those particular waterways is probably as good as the earth gets. The cottonwoods and aspens along the banks, the steep orange and pink cliffs that drop straight into eddying pools where the river bends, the pebbled shallows where the current flows as clear as green Jell-O across the tops of your tennis shoes, all seem to be the stuff of idyllic poems, except in this case it's real and, as John Steinbeck suggested, the introduction to a lifetime love affair rather than a geographical experience."

Swan Peak: A Dave Robicheaux Novel on Amazon.

There's no question that the striped bass have come back to the Connecticut River. While local guides and fly fishers are seeing the best fishing they can remember, some scientists are beginning to ask if there are too many. Steve Grant writes about the remarkable recovery and the controversy it has spawned. "Stripers eat shad, stripers eat herring. But whether stripers are the main reason for declines in those species has not been established. Stripers also will eat young salmon migrating to sea, but, again, it is not clear that stripers can be blamed for the minimal progress in restoring Atlantic salmon to the Connecticut River." In the Hartford Courant.

Two recent articles on stream restoration got me thinking about the need for more people who are trained to understand how to bring rivers back to life. The first appeared in The New York Times on June 24. It quotes scientists who decry the thousands of riparian habitat restoration projects going on in the U.S. without an adequate understanding of the challenges and opportunities. "'... an awful lot of stream restoration, if not the vast majority of it, has no empirical basis,' said William E. Dietrich, a geomorphologist at University of California, Berkeley, who studies rivers and streams. 'It is being done intuitively, by looks, without strong evidence. The demand is in front of the knowledge.'" (Be sure to look at the Multimedia graphic which shows how dams create long-term problems for stream recovery.)

The second article, from July 3, describes "riparian restoration guru" Bill Zeedyk, whose new book project "Let the Water Do the Work" is written around the idea of "induced meandering." "In a two-hour conversation about rivers, Bill Zeedyk never once uses the word 'water.' Instead, the stocky, soft-spoken septuagenarian speaks of a river as if it's an animal -- one that migrates in seasonal floods, erodes banks to make room for itself, and struggles to evolve a level of flow that will nurture the surrounding habitat."

Maybe I'm still buoyed by lingering optimism from the U.S. Sugar buyout in south Florida, but both articles leave me encouraged. As the science grows, it is more obvious than ever that rivers and streams are critical components of a well-managed society. Who knows? Maybe our kids will have a chance to get doctorates in stream restoration, if the demand continues to grow.

On July 10, all three authors will come to their alma mater's Wharton Center's Pasant Theatre for an authors' event moderated by Bill Castanier, who writes this very detailed piece on the authors' connections. "For more than 40 years, authors, friends and Michigan State University alumni Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane have exchanged letters, documenting a trove of their trials, tribulations and careers. The letters reside in sealed boxes in university archives; McGuane's at MSU and Harrison's at Grand Valley State University. The letters may be signed and delivered, but as of now remain sealed from public view, and they probably will stay that way for some time." In the Lansing, Michigan City Pulse.

The next fly fishing adventure movie producer who doesn't sign up Greta Gaines to do the sound track has got some explaining to do, in my opinion. Gaines, who many might recognize as a champion snowboarder and ESPN correspondent, will release a "country-rock-inspired" album later this month, according to country music Web site CMT.com. "'I was fly-fishing with my grandfather when I was just a baby girl. Because I was the only girl, it was my way of getting undivided attention from my father and grandfather. I'm primarily a fly fisherwoman, but I'm really a catch-fish-woman -- whatever it takes to do that,' she laughs."

For a taste of Gaines's music, you can hear 10 of her tracks on her Web site.

Angling Trade magazine, a periodical for fly fishing retailers and manufacturers, just expanded and redesigned their Web site. Like almost everything these guys do, the new site is sharp and well-organized. The site itself is built around a blog, but you can also download .pdf files of each published print issue. If you own a fly shop, make fly fishing stuff, or just like to stay current on gear and industry trends, I'd suggest signing up for their email updates and checking out the site every few days.

By the way, if you want to read the primer I wrote on Internet marketing for Angling Trade, you can find it in the December issue, which you can download here.

Wes Smalling says that before realizing he should probably buy most of his flies, he once fit the prototype of the Fly Shop Guy: "He's that guy who's recently become obsessed with fly-fishing and fly tying. He pops into the store at least once a day -- he never buys anything -- he just hangs around complaining about how expensive everything is and asking a million annoying questions: What size lead wrap do you use for a wooly bugger? Who invented the conehead wooly bugger?" In the Jackson Hole Star-Tribune.

RIO is adding two new lines to their MainStream fly line series: a sink-tip line that comes in four weights, and an intermediate line with a sink rate of between 1 1/2 and 2 inches per second. Both lines are designed for cold water, but the sink-tip line has a braided mono core, while the intermediate has a solid mono core and is designed for wary fish, particularly in lakes.

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

A friend of mine, a Montana guide, wrote in an email yesterday: "PMD hatches have been great, and with so many bugs and feeding fish, it becomes something of a spectator sport for me. It should be for my clients, too, but most of them don't see (even with coaching) a lot of what is going on right in front of them. Most of them don't have the chance to spend enough time on the water to train themselves to see the subtle parts of trout fishing -- the idiosyncratic feeding behavior of a particular fish, the little nuances of current, the differences between riseforms, etc., etc. It's an enjoyable time to be a trout guide."

In a state where, as the governor notes, "no matter what the weather is, we're never more than two weeks from a drought," residents are enjoying the wettest year in almost a decade, and fly fishers -- especially the ones who really know the waters -- are breathing a huge sigh of relief. While snow and mud still clog many rivers and cause no end of headaches for outfitters, the resources themselves are getting a much needed respite. Ranchers won't be fighting for higher draw-downs, Montana and Wyoming will stop fighting over Bighorn flows (at least for the season), and rivers where important populations of fish have been decimated by high temperatures have a few months to recover. In short, if you like elbow room and lots of water, and if gas and airline ticket prices haven't already depleted your bank account, this is probably the best year in recent memory to go fish Montana and other northern Rocky Mountains states.

The hand and the arm -- they are, after all, the gears driving any good fly cast. Tip control, proper application of power, and even the particular style of presentation all begin with mastering the fundamentals of hand and arm control. Joan Wulff considered it so important that she began her now-classic instructional DVD "Dynamics of Fly Casting" with a discussion of role of the arm and hand in the casting stroke.

We're lucky to have permission from producer Jeffrey Pill (whom you probably recognize by now as the producer of "Why Fly Fishing" and Gary LaFontaine's "Successful Fly Fishing Strategies") to begin showing segments of Wulff's "Dynamics" on MidCurrent. Wulff has the remarkable distinction of having taken the art of fly casting to its highest level while remaining able to explain complex techniques in the clearest, simplest terms. "The Hand and the Arm" is an example of why she has had such a tremendous impact on fly casting instruction.

Alice Munroe, author of the best seller The Beach House and of the new book Time Is a River, says fly fishing isn't just about catching fish. It's about feeling life. "Monroe says she is taken with the spiritual and intellectual aspect of fly-fishing, just as her character Mia is. 'You'll experience it today,' Monroe says to a fly-fishing novice. 'You'll feel life. You'll study the fish, what they're doing. It's what brings you back every time, trying to figure it all out. It's all about doing the dance with the fish.'" Craig Wilson interviews the author for USAToday.