Recently in Fly Fishing Trip Category

An article in the Redding, California Record Searchlight notes that The Fly Shop -- a virtual institution in northern California and one of the largest online retailers in the business -- has partnered with Signature West Properties Inc. in real estate marketing. Why does it make sense? "Less than 3 percent of The Fly Shop's retail business" starts in their local area, says The Fly Shop owner's Mike Michalak.

Of course Orvis has been in the real estate business for some time, and Cabela's Trophy Properties is another extension of their brand, but those businesses service worldwide locations.

Is real estate the ultimate high-ticket item for retail businesses that can claim absolute knowledge of a locale? Why not?

Charlie Meyers reports in the Denver Post that an unusually wet year has Colorado anglers scratching their heads and throwing big, ugly flies later in the season than usual. "Persistent rainfall, lagging snowmelt and uncertain reservoir releases have caused indecision on most major streams. 'We haven's seen a flow of 5,000 cubic feet per second on the Colorado River at Pumphouse in a long time,' said Drew Musser of the Fly Fishing Outfitters shop in Avon,"

When we first heard of "Once In A Blue Moon" last fall, we thought it was going to be just another pretty fishing video. Well, in fact it is a pretty fishing video, but with some obvious extras: clever scripting, a unique story, and some of the most gorgeous camera work we've seen in a fly fishing DVD.

"Once In A Blue Moon" follows an attempt by some New Zealand fly fishers to track down what can be loosely called a "mouse hatch." The idea of hitting the timing just right -- when an explosion in the rodent population puts the biggest trout on the feed -- leads to landing some very nice fish on big mouse patterns in stunningly beautiful surroundings. As a bit of early-summer escapism, we're happy to show you a lengthy clip from the DVD, which is just now available for sale in the U.S.

Keys fishing captains are nothing if not resilient. But a drop in tourism has all but the top-tier guides wondering where the next booking might come from. Case in point: the 65-year-old Bud 'N Mary's marina in Islamorada, one of the original magnets for Keys anglers, where owner Richard Stanczyk -- who turned down a $25 million dollar purchase offer three years ago -- may go back to offering his own guiding services to make ends meet. "After 63 years and at least 25 skin surgeries, he's put off retirement at the landmark Islamorada fishing hub and sent in his eighth set of renewal papers for his captain's license." Douglas Hanks in the Miami Herald.

This May, Drs. Jerry Ault and Jiangang Luo of the University of Miami got into SCUBA gear, grabbed some high-def cameras and went deep under Bahia Honda bridge, an important staging point in the migration of tarpon through the Florida Keys. The resulting video gives a great perspective on how these big fish travel.

Environmental writer Doug Peacock gives kudos to John Holt's new Yellowstone Drift (AK Press, June 2009, 275 pages), after first delivering a suberb history of "Elk River" country. Peacock says Holt was the perfect writer for this book. "Hovering over the 671-mile journey is Holt's own thunderstorm of a life; the man is not hesitant taking a stand, whether it's a rage against the livestock-centric insanity of killing free-ranging bison that wander beyond Yellowstone Park's boundary or quietly summoning the 500-year flood that would wipe out all the garish trophy homes littering the river's flood plain."

Yellowstone Drift: Floating the Past in Real Time on Amazon.

According to Colin Moore of ESPN: "In late March, the crew of the ship that transported Jose Wejebe, host of ESPN2's 'Spanish Fly,' and his film team to the Seychelles Islands off the east African coast were waylaid and taken hostage by Somali pirates." After half the ransom was paid, the pirates released the crew, but burned the vessel.

"Even on the darkest night, the angler's eyes become adapted enough after 30 minutes or so that newly hatched insects floating down the river can be seen 10 yards away." Eric Sharp offers several tips on fishing Michigan's Hexagenia hatches, which peak in late June and early July.

"The fly plops on the surface with all the stealth of a plane crash. And like an obese kid headed for fat camp, the trout can't resist one last mega-meal." Mark Freeman describes the five-week frenzy that lasts through the end of June on Oregon's Rogue River. In the Mail Tribune.

Saying that "Afghanistan will become again the tourist destination for Central Asia, for Americans, Europeans, for people of all the world. You can hold me to that. In five years. You can grab me by the tie and hold me to it," Prince Mostapha Zaher, head of Afghanistan's environment agency, holds out much hope for future eco-tourism, according to Peter Graff of Reuters.

Is it possible that Afghanistan could one day become a serious option for fly fishers? As Nick Mills noted last year, the potential is certainly there. "As for the origin of the brown trout, Jean-José wrote a book, La pêche à la truite en Afghanistan, in which he theorizes that the trout migrated from Europe in meltwater streams at the end of the last Ice Age."

By the way, if you care to familiarize yourself with the possibilities, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, by Eric Newby, is regarded as a classic of adventure travel literature, and it's a great read even if you never plan to leave home.

Ed Weber and Gary Giudice are fishing their way "up the spine of the Rocky Mountains following mayfly hatches." They start in Arizona's White Mountains, where they find that the hardest thing about catching Apache trout is getting to where they live. "We were fishing just a few miles from Fort Apache in the White Mountain Apache Reservation on Log Creek where Ed made his first cast. He read the water well. Very few bugs on the water, the odd small caddis was about it. He chose a small caddis emerger and starting rising fish almost immediately." On ESPN.com.

Mike Conner gives excellent advice on what to stuff in your saltwater fly box for Florida summers, and includes pictures of lots of flies -- everything from clousers to crease flies to coneheads. "On mudding stingrays, it's best to fish a fly that stays up in the water column, preferably something that stands out color-wise in the milky water over the ray's back. Black, brown and purple does this well, and a bit of flash will help." On FloridaSportsman.com.

"Mr. Earle routes his concerts through the Western states in August, when mountain streams are full of trout. This year, he's planning two late-summer concerts in Montana. In Bozeman, he'll rendezvous with the guide who taught him to fly-fish, and perhaps get some tips from the locals. He says, Some people come to the bus after the show and let me know where the fish are.'" That's musician Steve Earle in this morning's Wall Street Journal talking about why he chooses the mountain states for his summer tours . Article by John Jurgensen.

Artist and author Bob White tells the story of two crusty Alaskan guides who get their fill of whiskey and rugrats in "Rusty's Big Pike Adventure." "Rusty stood stoically behind his sunglasses, arms crossed, looking like a ZZ Top album cover except when he ducked a lure or dodged a fly rod. 'I'm fly fishing, I'm fly fishing,' the Little Princess sang as she hopped between her brothers, slicing the air in wide and deadly arcs. 'There aren't any fish here,' announced the second-oldest boy, a real weasel if I ever saw one. 'I want to go where there're fish.'" In this month's Gray's Sporting Journal.

See Bob White's art at Whitefishstudio.com.

Beyond noting that "many people stand where they should be fishing and fish where they should be standing," Eric Sharp says it's hard to go wrong during this extended salmon season on the St. Mary's River. "Most years the St. Marys steelhead run would have petered out by June. This year, the big, migratory rainbows are still thick as fleas in the rapids on the Canadian side of the river, and they should be there at least another two weeks and maybe longer." In the Detroit Free Press.

This week on MidCurrent, Phil Monahan -- who in addition to having been the editor of American Angler for ten years has also been an Alaskan lodge guide -- offers excellent advice on how to plan for your first trip to a fly fishing lodge or destination.

Excerpt:

• For any destination that involves fly-outs, choose a lodge that has home water. That way you can still fish when the weather is too nasty for flying. Fly fishermen should choose lodges that cater to them, rather than to conventional anglers.
• Is there a fly shop on the premises? (This is particularly important if you don't plan to bring flies or aren't sure what to bring.) Do they fish in fly-fishing-only waters? Are their guides accomplished fly fishermen?
• Does the lodge specialize in a particular species? Some rivers don't get runs of all kinds of salmon and some flats see few permit.

The past several years have produced many Web-based efforts to provide real-time reports for local fly fishing. It is, in a sense, a holy grail for traveling anglers, destination fly shops and booking agents, because so much of fly fishing depends on current conditions. But local information is ever-changing -- especially when you throw in meta data like hatches, fly patterns, and water flows -- and the model for paying for constant updating just doesn't exist yet. That's why a company like Orvis may have a better chance than most of getting it right.

Yesterday Orvis's Tom Rosenbauer gave us an exclusive peek at their new "Fly Fishing Reports and Conditions" mini-site, which goes public today. Rosenbauer described the challenge of doing map-based fishing reports: "The problem everyone seems to run into is that volunteer writers either lose interest after a while or aren't always as careful of what they report as they should be. We've selected the authors carefully and require them to update their reports at least once a week. Plus we've tried to pack in most of what a fly fisher needs: not just pattern and gear recommendations, but USGS streamflow data for trout streams, tide charts for saltwater, current weather and a localized Google Maps interface."

Most of the reporting is done by Orvis-endorsed lodges, outfitters, guides or fly shop employees, but with many locations yet to appear, I'm guessing that was a matter of convenience. In the end, all that matters is that the reports aren't overly optimistic but instead focus on day-to-day conditions. (We can get optimism by visiting the local fly shop in person and reading the semi-daily scribblings on the chalkboard.) So when I read the report for the Clark Fork in Montana and see something like the following, I'm hopeful: "The Clark Fork is blown out and will remain unfishable for 3 or 4 weeks. Some of the smaller tributaries like Fish Creek, St.Regis River and the Thompson river might be fishable by the weekend."

In the London Times, world traveler Brian Clarke faces the toughest question of all -- What's your favorite place to fish? -- and decides that although sea run browns and glimmering bonefish flats are hard to beat, late May and early June on an English chalk stream take him even further away. "The water crowfoot and its flowers would be sweeping the currents like drowned hair. The mayflies would be hatching, the fish would be up and the surface would be punctuated with slow, oiling rings."

In The New York Times, Peter Kaminsky fishes the Irigoyen River and finds that fishing blind and among "remolinos" and deadfalls could be a tiring experience -- if it weren't for the occasional 10- or 15-pound brown that trashes his fly. "The Irigoyen has high banks and large stands of native lenga trees (they look like wind-bent scrub oaks), which serve as a windbreak; you are, for the most part, spared the polar gales that scour the steppes through which the Rio Grande flows."

"During a 45-minute 'courtship' of teasing and casting, the shark frequently bumped the hull, and occasionally gnawed on the motor and prop, apparently stimulated by the motor's zinc anode."

A note this week from west coast bluewater guide Conway Bowman reminded us of a photo essay assembled by Kirk Deeter on FieldandStream.com a couple of years back. The images, taken by Randall Bryett, show the tremendous size and jumping abilities of big makos -- fish that Bowman and his fellow captains catch on fly rods. According to Bowman, the makos are just now showing up in big numbers off of San Diego; they caught three on fly on May 15.

Chester Allen describes the manic convergence of millions of 3-inch bugs and thousands of frenetic anglers on Oregon's Deschutes River, where the annual salmonfly hatch has already begun its upriver march. "The biggest trout of the year - thick, long, broad-tailed monsters that will rip up your tackle and break your heart - stuff themselves with salmonflies. And all those boats and cars and trucks and bicycles and 18-wheelers - I'm not kidding - carry anglers seething with the need to hook a 20-inch wild rainbow trout on a dry fly that is an unruly catastrophe of elk hair, foam, rooster feathers and rubber legs." In the Washington state Olympian.

From the Clark Fork of the Yellowstone to the private and public waters that dot the surrounding ranchlands and plateaus, northwest Wyoming offers abundant fly fishing. Charlie Meyers writes about it in the Denver Post. "The place that caught my attention, what would send the notebook of any writer into a whirring frenzy, was the Beartooth Ranch. Laced with inviting runs that wandered beneath deep cut banks that fairly shouted as a hiding place for large brown trout, the Beartooth promises a full mile of public access."

Is there something that western North Carolina fly fishers don't want to share with the hungering masses of fly fishers? Could it be that the multitude of streams and the absence of anglers makes a difference? In The New York Times, Christopher Percy Collier pens a short but sweet guide for trout fishers wanting to explore the area. "'In many instances, the hatches in western North Carolina are not as dense as those on Western rivers,' Mr. Weldon said. Therefore, he explained, the trout are largely opportunistic feeders, meaning that flies needn't be dead ringers for the real thing, with patterns tending toward time-tested conglomerations of feathers and yarn."

Former Olympic skier and repeat tarpon tournament champion Andy Mill goes back to a sport he covered on television fifteen years ago: fly fishing for big grass carp in Florida's roadside canals. "Mill throws his line in a perfectly tight loop so that the fly alights beneath a broad, leafy ficus tree. The fly, a tiny cork ball painted cherries-jubilee red with Avon nail polish, bobs briefly on the canal's riffled surface. Suddenly, a wake foams up from nowhere and the fly disappears as Mill's rod bends into a semicircle." Susan Cocking in The Miami Herald.

By the way, Mill's new in-depth book on fly fishing for tarpon is due out from Wild River Press later this year. Reports from early readers say it will be quite a collection of insights.

From pronouncing "Miami" like a true Florida cracker to showing how guides towed their underpowered skiffs into the backcountry and positioned themselves on the flats, the narrator of this old film segment -- revived by the IGFA -- gives as genuine a picture of 1950s Florida Keys bonefishing as you'll find anywhere. The clip features the legendary Captain Jimmie Albright and shows the "GAF Ashaway experimental nylon" fly line ("Jimmie examines this line with interest") and Albright's bucktail fly. The camera even captures the angler casting to and hooking a big tarpon in 2 feet of water.

Also interesting is that the leader Albright used would in today's terms might be considered a "stealth rig," tapering down to 6-pound tippet (tied to the fly with a clinch knot). Of course a 6-pound tippet in 1959 would have had a considerably larger diameter than today's materials -- a reminder of how technology has changed the sport.

The Jackson, Mossy Creek, and the Rapidan make the short list for Beau Beasley, director of the Virginia Fly Fishing Festival and the author of Fly Fishing Virginia. "The good news is that Virginia is blessed with an abundance of good water. And the bad news? Virginia has so much to offer the fly angler, in fact, that one hardly knows where to begin." In Virginia Game & Fish magazine.

Author and South Korean fishing guide James Card takes a detour from fly fishing for Japanese sea bass and discovers the arboretum of Carl Ferris Miller, an American expatriate who created one of the world's most important collections of trees. "When Mr. Miller settled at his new seaside retreat, he decided it needed some trees, and he deepened his roots in Korea to the point of no return. He later said he'd had no idea he would create an arboretum recognized by international horticultural societies, no idea that he would give up his nationality and no idea he would be awarded the highest honor the Korean government can bestow on a civilian." In the Wall Street Journal.

You can also read James Card's account of fly fishing along the Korean demilitarized zone on MidCurrent.

Writer and Scott Fly Rod Pro Staff member Rich Culver offers advice on preparing to fly fish for salmon and char near southeast Alaskan coastal estuaries. Where the water can change 22 feet in depth, it's all about studying the tides. "Ebb tides are worth fishing, too, especially near the bottom of the tidal cycle. I've noted on many occasions that an ebb tide in the early morning hours usually leaves a generous number of fresh fish holding in the channels, and most will aggressively grab the first fly they see." In the Capital City Weekly.

If you interested in video on shoreline and estuary fishing, check out Jeff Putnam's instructional clip on MidCurrent.

"Give the thermometer a couple of shakes and these bugs respond accordingly. Thus the effect of the canyon also plays a major role in the march. Shielded from the sun, these swifter, cooler waters actually can cause the caddis to boogie backward a few steps." In the Denver Post, Charlie Meyers suggests ways to avoid the frustration attendant with chasing the year's first major hatch of caddisflies.

It's not the first report we've heard of fly fishers who have run into trouble in Mexico this year, but it certainly adds a layer of poignancy when a spouse can't get government assistance in continuing an investigation. Ronald Scheepstra disappeared three weeks ago near the tiny town of Xcalak in southernmost Mexico after separating from friends. "Photographs of the Xcalak police department show messy stacks of files. Cindy fears Ronald's file will vanish in the stacks, much like he did. 'Files are just going to end up in a box somewhere and no one will ever have answers and families need answers,' said Scheepstra." Jena Johnson of Lufkin, Texas's KTRE.

The Atlantic Salmon Museum in central New Brunswick houses more than just a fine view of the Southwest Miramichi River. It contains a ton of memorabilia, including Ted Williams's salmon fishing hat, antique rods, reels and flies, and paintings by Henry McDaniel and John Swan. It's also adjacent to an aquarium and plans to add an underwater river camera this year. Kevin Bisset of the Canadian Press calls it a "hidden treasure."

Apparently South Africa's Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) is quite serious about their proposed new rules for alien species eradication, moving to a second draft of their Alien and Invasive Species Regulations. Those rules, according to reporter Andrew Stone, would mean the end of trout fishing in that country. "Although trout have been established in South Africa for over a century, they are not indigenous to the country and would therefore need to be eradicated, according to DEAT."

Author John Gierach acquires a new custom cane rod and decides on a less-than-perfect test: fishing the slush of Colorado's South Platte. "I've repeatedly promised myself that I won't fish if it's so windy I can't keep my hat on or so cold the line freezes, but most years I end up doing both a few times anyway, sometimes by accident and occasionally on purpose, because, as Annie Dillard said, 'Tomorrow is another day only up to a point.'" In Gray's Sporting Journal.

Aaron "Chubbs" Peterson and friends attended the 16th annual East Idaho Fly Tying and Fishing Expo in Idaho Falls last week and came away with a considerably longer list of great northern Rockies fishing spots, thanks to Jack Dennis. They posted the 20 spots -- or more accurately, experiences -- on the FlyFishingFrenzy Web site and it's worth a long look, even if you are a veteran Western trout addict. Lots of interesting stuff here, including Dennis's take on fly rods: "Jack went on a little rant at this point in the presentation that you need to invest in a 4 piece 3 wt rod and not to buy a $500 rod, and that no one should own a $500 + rod. He apologized to Sage and other expensive rod companies, but said St. Croix makes a fantastic 4 peice 3 wt for $180."

In the Chicago Tribune, writer Tom Hundley details the rich history and carnival-barker ambience of Bud 'N Mary's marina in Islamorada, then goes fly fishing for bonefish with guide Vic Gaspeny and lands -- astonishingly -- an 11-pounder. "When some fool (me) approaches Gaspeny about bonefishing with a fly rod, his advice is blunt: 'Go to the hardware store, buy yourself a ball-peen hammer and try to knock that stupid idea out of your head.'"

Ed Engle goes fishing with buddy John Gierach and has what most will recognize as typical pre-excitement fishing, where prospecting and persistence make the difference. "We dawdled at the coffee shop in Lyons, light heartedly complained about the bluebird skies and philosophized about the relative merits of reading the classics instead of modern western literature. In short, it was pretty much what we always do when we think the Blue-winged Olives will be coming off the Big Thompson River in the afternoon." In the Boulder Daily Camera.

"I took casting lessons on dry land in a park near my Alexandria, Va., home. 'You've got natural rhythm,' called out a homeless guy who was watching me. Everyone, it seems, is an expert on fly-fishing." In USA Today's new magazine OpenAir, newcomer Mindy Fetterman is convinced by a friend to take up fly fishing, and eventually finds herself in a hypnotic trance in the middle of Montana's Madison River.

Val Kilmer, whose 6000-acre ranch near Santa Fe, New Mexico has been home to a fly fishing lodge for several years now, just listed his entire property with real estate broker Orvis/Cushman & Wakefield after failing to sell parts of it in recent years. "The star of "The Doors" (1991) and "Batman Forever" (1995) assembled the ranch roughly 13 years ago. In 2006, he asked $18 million for 1,800 acres of the property, including the main houses. In January Mr. Kilmer offered those houses on a 1,000-acre parcel for $9 million, down from $12 million a few months earlier." Christina S. N. Lewis in The Wall Street Journal.

Although Atlantic salmon are already protected as an endangered species on eight smaller rivers in Maine and despite objections from the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission has decided to go ahead with a catch-and-release season on the Penobscot in two weeks. "So on May 1, a 3-mile stretch of the Penobscot just north of Bangor will be open to spring salmon fishing for only the second time in a decade -- that is, unless federal officials decide to play hardball by immediately implementing protections for the fish." Kevin Miller in the Bangor Daily News. (Thanks to reader Matt Boutet for this link.)

As we reported last week, Governor Brian Schweitzer was scheduled to sign Montana's new stream access bill yesterday. Sign it he did, and in the process reporters got both a video and sound bite or two. "'They can build a fence that keeps an Angus bull in, but can't build a fence that keeps a sportsman out,' Schweitzer said. With the most public access to waterways in the region, experts say the bill will also encourage tourists to come to Montana for fishing trips." Sarah Gravlee of KULR8.com.

Yesterday in The New York Times, Bill Becher reported on a recent trip to California's famed Hot Creek, where he managed to fool some very smart fish into taking small dry flies. His article raised the question of whether trout need -- as some veteran anglers say -- a "vacation" from being constantly fished. Better, suggest some experts, to have a closed season during the warmest months of the year. "Colder winter water holds more oxygen, so it would be better for the fish to have a closed season in the dog days of August, according to Roger Bloom, a senior fisheries biologist who oversees California's wild and heritage trout program. More stress on trout comes from anglers fishing in slow-moving water in the heat of summer."

"This tough little bug also has the punch to produce two separate broods each year; rare among mayflies, it yields a second hatch almost precisely six months later, in late September and October -- just in case we didn't have enough fun first time around. " The Denver Post's Charlie Meyers says the time is right for BWOs in Colorado.

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Tom Stienstra hopes -- along with thousands of other U.S. fly fishers -- that normalization of relations with Cuba will finally make one of the safest countries in Caribbean accessible to anglers. "As part of the trip, I spent a day in Havana with a government representative. I found out that, yes, as a citizen, you need the government's permission to buy a Sage SP 8-Weight rod for bonefish."

"At any given access site you might find license plates from Nevada, Washington, Oregon, Wyoming and beyond. There's good reason for that activity -- the skwala hatch is the season's first emergence of big bugs and the trout, accordingly, pack their stomachs with skwala nymphs and winged adults." Greg Thomas describes last week's trip to western Montana's Bitterroot Valley to catch the skwala stonefly action as early-season bliss. In Fly Rod & Reel.

Roy Tanami and Tim Romano recently took time out from a four-day redfishing trip to Louisiana to record the vanishing culture of the bayou. See it and you'll think you were there.

No doubt there are hundreds of unnamed anglers who scour secret drainages for wild trout, but Ed Hayne of Charleston, West Virginia, has found at least 200 more trout streams than existed in the state's Division of Natural Resources's lists. "'I got a structural geologic map of the state and learned how to read it,' he said. 'I learned to look for surface formations that contain limestone, because the presence of limestone helps buffer the effects of acid rain. My batting average for finding new trout streams went up significantly.'"

John McCoy also offers a review of resources for blueliners in a separate article. In the Charleston Gazette.

Looking for more info on stream geology? Read Tom Rosenbauer's excellent "Rich and Poor Trout Streams" on MidCurrent.

In the Los Angeles Times, fly-fishing guide Ed Kunze describes the situation in and around Zihuatanejo -- where once the only danger to tourists was bull sharks -- as relatively safe: "'Just use common sense,' Kunze advised. 'Do not go out late at night to strip joints, high-profile bars or discos, where young men with a lot of money to flash around would hang out. I would not want to be in one of these locations if two rival factions were there at the same time.'" Article by Pete Thomas.

London Telegraph travel writer Nick Trend -- who admits to being a novice fly fisher -- explores the brown trout fishery of Iceland in a new video and article on the paper's site. "The brown trout that lurk in Iceland's lakes and rivers are among the biggest you will find anywhere. They feed heartily in the deep, clear water, unmolested by predators except for the occasional angler. A typical fish, like this one, reaches five pounds; sometimes they weigh more than double that."

The Greater Yellowstone Geotourism Web site has teamed up with National Geographic and others to create an interesting annotated map of the Park and its surroundings. Available for download or order on the Greater Yellowstone site, the two-sided map is, naturally, filled with references for anglers, mentioning even rodmakers Sweetgrass and Winston, the Henry's Fork, and the Madison and offering great perspective for those who want to get their bearings for the area. There's also an interactive (though not highly detailed, yet) map that shows everything from accommodations to "Action Opportunies."

Get beyond the cold peanut-butter sandwiches and out of the smoke of frying Italian sausage and apparently you can do quite well catching steelhead on Wisconsin's Brule river right now. Sam Cook describes the opening day action near Mays Ledges on Saturday and notes that an opportunity was missed by those who looked only at temperatures and stream flows: "The river wore jewelry for the opener. Ice beads clung to a red osier dogwood over the water. Ice earrings dangled from low-hanging ash branches. Ice pendants hung from midriver snags." In the River Falls Journal.

Sydney, Australia fly-fishing guide Justin Duggan comments on the increasing number of near-fatal shark attacks along the country's shorelines, including one in February near downtown Sydney. "'The harbour is so full of baitfish -- that's why there are so many predators around,' says Duggan, a fishing guide for seven years. 'It's a protein soup.' Duggan attributes the baitfish boom and the increase in predators -- which themselves attract sharks -- to a ban on commercial fishing in the harbour in 2005 and anti-pollution measures producing cleaner waters." Article by AFP.

Fishing Jones's Pete McDonald offers an excellent "Brief History of Ditch Fishing," noting that unglamorous fly fishing was probably pioneered by south Floridians Flip Pallot, Chico Fernandez, Norman Duncan and others who liked to cast lines in drainage ditches and Everglades potholes, long before carp ever appeared on the fly fisher's radar. McDonald includes some excellent links, including one to a Sports Illustrated story about Rocky Weinstein, who turned to ditch fishing because he couldn't read a map. "'He used to take Chico and Bill Curtis and he had this little short fly rod he used and his big thing was he could tell where to fish by looking on the road for squashed leopard frogs.'"

"Two forks of Bishop Creek provide anglers with scenery, solitude and spectacular pools that might yield an 8-pound rainbow along with the fishing experience of a lifetime. Smaller ponds in the basin can yield native brook trout or offer a still-water paradise where flyfishermen can spend hours connecting with stocked rainbows or native browns." Ernie Cowan describes the fishing opportunities in California's Bishop Basin, which despite drawing plenty of attention to its stocked lakes and streams also contains plenty of hike-and-fish opportunities and a number of wilderness lakes. In California Game & Fish.

Despite disgruntlement among some landowners over "prescriptive easements," HB190 will head to the Montana senate floor for debate this week, after being passed virtually unanimously by the house and being reviewed in committee. "HB190 seeks to end a dispute that erupted in 2000 when landowners in Madison County, including billionaire absentee landowner James Cox Kennedy, put fences on county bridges. Sportsmen contended these fences denied them their right to access to public streams and rivers under Montana law." Charles S. Johnson on Helenair.com.

This week on MidCurrent we introduce a film segment from last year's very popular visual journey "Drift." The DVD, directed by Chris Patterson of Warren Miller films fame, put the lens to a variety of fly fishing destinations and to the unique characters that call them home. This particular clip includes a profile of John and Amy Hazel, whose lives revolve around steelhead fishing on Oregon's Deschutes River.

Excerpt: "The real draw is that steelhead are a fish of a thousand casts. So one's gotta become a pretty good caster if they're fishing for steelhead, because truly - if you average it all out - you get one steelhead to hand about every eight hours."

New York Times writer Jim Robbins describes the gas explosion that rocked downtown Bozeman less than two weeks ago as a painful injury to an already suffering part of the country, where second-home sales have dried up and large real estate developments have been mothballed. "Beyond the obvious destruction, the blast delivered a deep psychic blow to the business district, which was already going through some difficulty because of the declining economy. 'The explosion has significantly rocked this community,' said Chris Pope, a commercial real estate agent and the owner of a severely damaged building." (Thanks to contributor David Dalu for this link.)

While fly fishing on Russia's Kamchatka peninsula, Mark Angelo, chair of the Rivers Institute and head of the British Columbia Institute of Technology's Fish and Wildlife Program, is reminded that wilderness and fish usually combine to produce a healthy population of grizzly bears. "As I knelt over to gently release him, a glimpse of a dark foreboding figure appeared through the storey-high sedge growth. Suddenly, the thick wall of grass parted and there, just metres away, stood a large male grizzly bear -- his eyes fixed on the fish." From the CanWest News Service.

Ken Allen talks phenology and suggest Maine should follow the lead of other states in touting the dates of fly hatches to grab more business from anglers. "For example, during most years on my home river, a tiny water, red quills (Ephemerella subvaria) start hatching in early afternoon around May 7 and kick off the spring's first consistent dry-fly fishing. It has always astounded me how predictable this hatch can be on this water. The emergence begins when water reaches about 53 degrees Fahrenheit and red trilliums bloom on drab banks before the greening starts." In the Kennebec Journal.

Chester Allen forgets to bring a sinking line and spends the time that he should have been catching fish unhooking his buddy's sea-runs cutts. "Sinking feeling" indeed. "Sea-run cutts often hang out in shallow water near shore, but on this day, they were camped out in deeper water. Most of the trout weren't willing to swim up 5 or 6 feet of water to whack my Knudsen Spider. But they were happy to hit Cloud's fly, which was swinging right in front of their noses." In the Washington state Olympian.

For more on the importance of having sinking lines in your arsenal, read "Deep Thinking" and "Deep Thoughts," both on MidCurrent.

In the U.K.'s Daily Mail, Andrew Malone returns to fishing a decade after losing his father, who taught him how to fly fish. On New Brunswick's Miramichi River, he's rewarded with his first salmon. "Boyd, whose back is jiggered from hauling wood during freezing six-month winters, had been watching from the bank. With line disappearing fast from the reel, my salmon cavorted and bucked through the water. To my surprise, I was calm. Boyd called out that I should keep the rod up, and then drop the tip when the fish erupted from the water, giving it slack so the line didn't break."

London Telegraph writer Martin Jackson perfectly captures the quirkiness of Missoula, Montana as he fishes the Bitterroot and Blackfoot and a nearby wilderness creek. "We floated through the heart of Maclean's book and some of the world's most spectacular upland scenery -- yet I was almost oblivious. Attention focused on an endlessly changing square foot of water and my lame efforts to land the perfect cast. Occasionally I'd look up, to be jolted by rearing bluffs, rain-riven and gouged, the faces peppered with the mud nests of bank martins."

Noting that Singaporeans are just as likely as their Western counterparts to practice snobbery, writer and guide James Card says that fishing for peacocks in Singapore canals carries with it all the social/legal trappings of that island city-state. "He said the peacock bass (the butterfly strain, cichla ocellaris) were stocked by "some wiseguy" years ago and the population took off; however, angling in the reservoirs was not allowed at the time. When the ban was lifted, fishing was allowed only at designated points, as it still is today. There are no catch limits, size limits, fishing licenses or angling rules of any kind -- other than the stipulation that you must fish from the exact spot the government tells you to fish from." In The New York Times.

Just imagine what happens if you drop used fishing line on the ground.

There are plenty of fly fishers who, like Charles Rangeley-Wilson, say of that if they could give up everything for a single fish, it would be bonefish. But there aren't many people who can communicate the excitement of bonefishing the way Rangeley-Wilson can. This week we add a clip from the writer and photographer's recent "Bonefish: A Fishing Odyssey."

Excerpt: "It is like a drug. I think that's what it is. What is it about bonefish? You know every fisherman asks themselves, 'If I could give up everything, for one fish, in one place, what would it be?' And the more I go, the more I'm sure it would be a big bonefish in the Caribbean."

One thing's for sure: deflation hasn't hit the cost of hatchery-raised trout. A rise in price from $1.27 to $3.38 per fish from Pennsylvania's main stocked trout source has led the state to cancel the purchase of 130,000 trout, according to Deborah Weisberg in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

This morning the Miami Herald lists 11 Alaskan wilderness lodges that range in price from around $8000 per week to $2000 for a four-night stay. Among the value lodges: "North Face and Camp Denali, private lodges inside Denali National Park, are 90 miles from the National Park entrance, in sight of snow-capped Mt. McKinley. Owned by the Cole Family, the two lodges sit less than a mile apart. Each offers all-inclusive six, four and three-night stays for active guests interested in experiencing the tundra ecology first-hand. Included are guided naturalist walks and hikes, birding, and use of sports gear, including bikes, canoes and fishing equipment."

For more on Alaska lodges, read "Alaska Trips: Choosing a Lodge" on MidCurrent.

On Friday, February 20, Peter Harrison caught a steelhead estimated at 29-30 pounds on an 8kg tippet on Washington State's Hoh River. The existing IGFA world record for rainbow trout (the IGFA groups steelhead with rainbows) on 8kg tippet is a 28-pound fish caught by Chuck Stephens on the Skeena River over 24 years ago. The story, first reported on the blog The Big Pull, has elicited congratulations and groans -- the latter from those who believe steelhead, especially large fish, should always be released. But because it was bleeding from the gills and was "the fish of a lifetime," said Harrison, he decided to take the fish.

What a great idea. Western North Carolina's Jackson County Tourism authority has laid claim to the first trail connecting fifteen fly fishing stops on rivers in the Great Smoky Mountains. The Fly Fishing Trail "takes you to 15 excellent spots for catching brook, brown and rainbow trout." You can see the detailed map (1MB download), which contains information on parking and access information as well as water-type details, here.

For more detailed info on where to stay in the area, visit MountainLovers.com.

Photojournalist Tim Romano tells the story of Alice and Hannah Belford's unique steelhead operation on the Damdochax River in northern British Columbia. "The Damdochax is a small river by British Columbia standards, only 12 miles long. It flows from Damdochax Lake to the confluence of the third largest river in BC, the Nass. Although small in size, its stature as one of the most important steelhead tributaries of the entire Nass system is well recognized. It is located in an incredibly remote area of BC, requiring first a 700 mile flight north from Vancouver to Smithers, then another 135 mile floatplane trip to reach the lake." Be sure not to miss the photo of Hannah's muck boots.

Hundreds of anglers showed up yesterday to protest Utah's proposed HB187 legislation that would rewrite a judicial decision in favor of free access. "'All waters in this state are owned by the people and we have a right to use those waters,' Glade Gunther, of Utah Water Guardians, told the crowd, many of whom carried fly rods and fishing nets. 'The Supreme Court ruling last summer made it clear that the easement on state water was not effective unless it extended with it the ability to use that easement. The court determined that it was lawful to touch the stream bed in order to recreate.'" Tom Wharton in The Salt Lake Tribune.

Fish for tarpon long enough and you begin to realize that there is no perfect set of gear, no magic technique, no absolute level of skill. In fact the most common pitfall for tarpon anglers is lack of consistency. When we received a copy of Bill Bishop's new book on tarpon fishing, we opened it hoping that we'd finally hear someone hammer that notion home. Bishop, who spends hundreds of days fly fishing for tarpon each year, didn't disappoint. His High Rollers (Headwater/Stackpole Books, February 2009, 152 pages) is a plain-spoken guide to being able to find, fight and land tarpon based on decades of trial and error.

A tarpon's initial take and jumps rivet us, and for many anglers, it's all that matters. But Bishop likes to land fish quick and remove the hook. This week we excerpt a portion of Bishop's description of the tarpon end-game, a little-considered topic that he covers extremely well.

High Rollers: Fly Fishing for Giant Tarpon on Amazon.

Be careful where you kayak. That's the lesson learned by Carter Simcoe when he got the notion to paddle his kayak out for some fly fishing near one of Louisana's nearshore oil rigs. "Funny how a little static in the air can turn a fly rod into a lightning rod. I did the only thing I could think to do: snatch the rod and throw it overboard. It wasn't a moment too soon. The closest strike yet thudded nearby, rattling my chest and scorching the air with the smell of a large electrical short, like a blown transformer." On ESPN.com.

A new bill that would reverse a unanimous state supreme court decision to allow public access to all streambeds is taking final form in the Utah legislature. The bill contains a dramatic change: no access would be allowed on Utah waters unless explicitly stated in the legislation, effectively closing off the majority of use of streambeds except on rivers and streams that are already popular. Currently only 14 rivers are listed. "HB187, sponsored by Rep. Ben Ferry, R-Corinne, and made public Wednesday, would designate the beds of sections of 14 Utah rivers as open to recreational use by anglers and boaters. All others would be closed, leaving recreationists open to trespassing citations." Tom Wharton in the Salt Lake Tribune.

As we noted in January, last July The Utah Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling that says Utahns have the right to walk on the beds of all streams and rivers, regardless of who owns the land beneath them.

If you want to get involved in preserving access to Utah rivers, visit the Utah Water Guardians Web site, where you can find specific advice for communicating your concerns to state representatives.

Yesterday we received an air mail package from Australia containing a copy of In Season: Tasmania (HtwoMedia, 120 pages), a beautiful book about fly fishing on that island. The book was originally released as a hardcover in 2007, but the softcover version we received is one of the most attractive pieces of print we've seen in months. The book is very cleverly laid out, divided by chapter into seasons and the experiences that an angler is likely to have during any given month. It's the brainchild of fly fishing guide Daniel Hackett and professional photographer Brad Harris, who spent months chronicling their encounters with the waters, insects and fish of Tasmania. For more info, check out the InSeasonFlyFishing.com Web site. (There are also a couple of these softcover editions available from resellers on Amazon, but I doubt they'll be around long.)

An $80,000 winning bid for a trip with the former president and first lady to Georgia's Brigadoon Lodge was second only to a baseball hand-signed by five U.S. presidents in raising money for the Carter Center this past weekend.

The latest issue of the Gray's Sporting Journal's Expeditions & Guides Annual contains a long story from Charles Rangeley-Wilson, who travels from his native England to New Caledonia in the South Pacific and discovers that quick tides and big fish make for serious drama: "Big, big bones in tight, fast-swimming platoons that are on you and past before you can blink or think. We see them for a fraction of the tide, and haven't yet worked out where they are before and after. But in those few minutes of chance all hell has broken loose. My first whopper -- a 10-, maybe 11-pound fish that I flossed on the first strike and that took again -- ran me ragged for 10 minutes only to be abraded off the line by the rough skin of a pursuing shark."

An interesting new Web site on fly fishing for Atlantic salmon and sea trout popped up this weekend. Angling Iceland (www.anglingiceland.is/) is a collaborative effort of several of the country's outfitters, is organized by river, and includes details on full-service and "self-catering" (smaller, self-serve) opportunities on a few dozen Icelandic rivers. It also contains info on topics as far-ranging as hair-wing salmon flies, April Volkey's "girl school" on the Midfjardara, and the huge brown trout of Minnivallalaekur: "Then, as I had completed a cast and was stripping the fly back over a more shallow stretch a huge splash almost gave me a heart attack! It was almost as if a full grown human being had fallen into the river. The brown had been following the fly and suddenly decided that it was not going to let it get away."

In a new podcast, author Tom Rosenbauer offers several bits of advice on preparing for success on your first bonefishing trip, including recommendations on casting, seeing fish, and strip-striking.

Excerpt: "The first thing you've got to be able to do is cast forty feet. And you've got to be able to pick up line and cast quickly and accurately. I know you can probably get the line out there forty feet, but I mean forty feet reliably and accurately. You don't really need long casts for most bonefishing. Occasionally a 60- or 70-foot cast is going to get you out of trouble, but most bonefish are caught between 30 or 40 feet from the boat or from the wading angler. But you really have to practice your casting."

"But enough of this dirty talk, this pornographic reverie. Chasing bonefish is an activity that in its way is as addictive as golf, or mainlining narcotics. Suffice it to say: There are plenty of fish in the Bahamas and it would be terrific to catch them all. It is wise to speak little of that, however, save with other fishermen." In the New York Times, Sam Sifton offers an excellent guide to bonefishing on Acklins Island in the Bahamas; even the food tips will make you want to go.

There's also a great little slide show that accompanies the story.

Thinking about buying a little piece of paradise? A seventy-five percent drop in sales activity has buyers and sellers engaged in a Mexican standoff in the real estate market around Bozeman, Montana, according to an article by Jessica Mayrer in the Daily Chronicle. "In the Bozeman area, the average listing price for a lot was $516,000 in 2008. But the average sale price was $260,000. And, of the 600 listed lots that size in the area, only 64 sold last year."

In the New York Times, Christopher Percy Collier describes kayaking the shallows around the lower and middle Florida Keys. He lists a number of kayak rental places along U.S. 1 where, as he says, "finding a kayak outfitter has come to be about as difficult as spotting a pelican." Add finding a bar to the same list.

There are plenty of bonefish flats that are accessible via kayak, if you know where to go, or just care to do some exploring. My advice: stay near the mainland and look for light colored bottom either north or south of the highway. Without the advantage of height, you'll need all the help you can get. Speaking of which, if you really want to see fish anywhere in the Florida Keys, hiring a guide and fishing from a skiff is your best option. Because of the lousy economy, plenty of top guides who would otherwise be booked for the entire year already are going to have openings here and there. It's a great opportunity to get some recurring dates.

A bridge-access bill that was threatened with derailment by the lawyers of at least one large private landowner has passed the Montana house by a large majority. This is terrific news for Montana anglers and for traveling fly fishers, because it promises to prevent private landowners from arbitrarily fencing off access to rivers at bridges. Further, it removes control of bridge access from the county and places it in the hands of the state, where treatment is sure to be more even-handed. (Oddly enough, wealthy landowners have had great success in influencing local enforcement.) "As it reads, HB190 makes the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks responsible for resolving conflicts. The Montana Association of Counties supports the bill as is." Daniel Person in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. (Thanks to reader Wayne Hadley for the early news.)

I remember my first night after fishing the Ventuari River in Amazon region of south Venezeula. My guide -- odd enough by himself -- was describing what was unique about the area, and after long tale about a pack of peccaries turning the tables on a jaguar, he offered that if we wanted to, we could continue upriver and cross the Brazilian border. From there, we could travel downriver past Barcelos to Manaus, and visit the magnificent Amazon Theater, an opera house built in during the rubber boom of the late 1800s. Washington Post writer Andrea Sachs brought those memories back (and ones of swimming to escape the heat) with her piece about the now-gritty Manaus, which serves as a hub for many Amazonian adventures.

Last summer's "too-good-to-be-true" Utah Supreme Court ruling which gave anglers almost limitless access to the state's streams is destined to be compromised, according to Brett Prettyman in The Salt Lake Tribune. "What I've heard through the grapevine is that the bill includes a list of popular Utah waters that would become more accessible to anglers, waters like the Provo, Weber, Duchesne, Strawberry and more. Rivers running through private lands not on the list would be off limits to anglers and other recreationists, unless the landowner decides to allow access."

A column by Ed Engle reminds me of days when I enjoy fish watching as much as I enjoy fish catching. That might be hard for some to understand, but if you spend enough time looking for fish, there is a sublime satisfaction to be found in observing their behavior. Here Engle describes examining a river he knows as well as any other, Colorado's South Platte, where over the course of years fishing was changed dramatically by natural events. "It then occurred to me that the wildfire was simply the last event in a chain of bad luck that the river had endured since whirling disease devastated the wild rainbow trout population in the 1990s. For those of us who fished there before whirling disease, it's hard to explain how good things were. Maybe I've just needed time to get used to what the river is today."

Move over, 14-weights. Houston, British Columbia, lays claim to the largest fly fishing rod in the world, which, according to the Travel British Columbia Web site, "sits menacingly between the Chamber of Commerce building and Steelhead Park." "The rod is 60-feet long and made entirely of aluminum (aluminium for you readers outside of North America). To date, the rod has never caught a fish - nor has anyone been Herculean enough to even use it - but tales from local fishermen of valiant struggles and harrowing escapes from titanic monsters of the sea indicate that the rod will eventually be brought into action." (Which PR agency wrote that copy?)

Here's a better picture.

"The Chimehuin originates from the glacier-fed waters of Lake Huechulafquen in the Andes and runs for 37 scenic miles until it flows into the Collon Cura River. The Malleo and Aluminé Rivers also flow into the Collon Cura, and, collectively, these four rivers provide some of the premier trout fishing in the world, famous for the quality and size of their brook, brown and rainbow trout." Owen Schroeder finds a bounty in Neuquén Province in central Argentina. On TheLeafChronicle.com.

Spend lots of time on a body of water and you may eventually be lucky enough to come across what I call a "pseudo-hatch:" when unusual conditions trigger the sudden abundance of food for fish and a frenzy of feeding. (I discovered an event like this in Key West in the 1980s, when on a low tide early in the morning oxygen-deprived pipefish and other small bait fish covered the surface of a large basin, sending tarpon into a rampage.)

One little-known but locally famous pseudo-hatch, the shad kill, occurs in Arkansas's White River system, turning monster trout stupid. When the temperature of lakes behind the rivers' dams drops into the mid- to low 40s, dead and dying shad will be sucked through the turbines and spat out into the tailwaters below. Big trout immediately clue into the event and begin eating the shad bodies throughout the water column, although as Steve Dally of Mountain River Fly Shop in Cotter tells us, "the real appeal is when shad bodies litter the surface bringing up the trout for 'dry fly' action." According to Dally, baitfish patterns like Jim Mengle's shad gurgler, Davy Wotton's floating shad, and crease flies are the most productive during these events.

Since this is largely a boat-based fishery, guides are suddenly at a premium when the shad kill starts. But the kill can be expected to continue on and off through February and even early March depending on conditions.

So if you have a hankering to do something different this winter and think you might be able to find your way to Arkansas, check out the coverage on the Mountain River Journal Weblog, which includes some interesting photos by guide Jimmy "T" Traylor. Or if you don't need more convincing, check in at the Mountain River Fly Shop Web site to find out if they have any guides available.

Looking for signs of a thawing in Cuban-U.S. relations? The thousands of documents that Cuba has digitized and plans to make available to scholars worldwide will find a U.S. home at the John F. Kennedy presidential library in Boston. (If you miss the irony here, catch "The Missiles of October".) "Most of the papers have never been published and will give new insight into the 21 years Hemingway spent at Finca Vigia in San Francisco de Paula where he wrote some of his greatest works, said Ada Rosa Alfonso Rosales, director of Museo Ernest Hemingway." From Reuters, via FishingJones.com.

If you can stand frozen anchor lines and arranging your own shuttle, drifting Montana's Upper Missouri River in winter can be a great experience. Ryan Casne, who'd drop everything to float the Missouri in cold weather, ties and uses flies that resemble the tiny crustaceans that proliferate in big tailwaters. "While dexterously threading a 5X tippet through the eye of a homemade nymph, Casne advises me, 'Think pink.' His patterns for winter resemble tiny fresh water shrimp, or scuds, or even smaller silvery nymphs, all adorned in flamboyant pink." Chad Trettin on Helenair.com.

"'Guys are pushing the envelope every time they sit down and tie some of the shiny, high-tech materials on a hook,' said Patagonia representative Jerry Darkes of Strongsville, an angling artist when he slips a bare hook into a fly-tying vise. 'And we're learning something new each day we spend on the rivers.'" In an article noting the explosion of interest in fly fishing for steelhead in northeast Ohio, D'Arcy Egan mentions three patterns that are staples: the black stone nymph, the sucker spawn fly, and the Boa minnow and Boa leech. In the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

24-year-old Christian Goodpaster lost his fight with Cystic Fibrosis in December, but not before filming a segment of "Spanish Fly" with Jose Wejebe. This Sunday's episode of (ESPN2, 9:30 a.m. ET) will feature Wejebe and Goodpaster's August trip in Key West. "Wejebe didn't know at the time of its taping that it would also serve as a memorial. Goodpaster, of Elizabeth, Ind., died on Dec. 18 in Durham, N.C., while awaiting another lung transplant." On ESPN.com.

A New Year's Eve blaze that firefighters are calling the biggest in the Keys in 20 years has closed Cheeca Lodge indefinitely. It appears that the lodge, a favorite among upscale Islamorada fly fishers, may lose months of business in the height of the season. "Resort officials on Thursday officially closed the entire 199-room resort indefinitely while repairs are made. More than 80 firefighters from departments from Marathon in the Middle Keys to South Miami-Dade responded to the blaze that began around 9:45 p.m. in the front of the hotel." In the Miami Herald. (Thanks to David Dalu for this link.)

"Anglers call it the 'lady of the stream', but with its ability to disappear in even the shallowest, clearest water, and to vanish temporarily from whole stretches of river, the grayling seems to me more like the ghost of the stream. Winter's bleak skies and short, dark days are good for a spot of ghost hunting." In London's Financial Times, Bob Sherwood stalks grayling in sections of the Test and Itchen that are rarely fished in winter.

In The New York Times, Bill Becher gives a brief history of the California striped bass, touching on the fish's controversial place in the coastal environment. "Striped bass look as if they are sculpted out of aluminum and carbon fiber. Their eponymous horizontal black markings cover an efficient eating machine that can grow from an egg to a 25-inch fish in five years. The California sport record striped bass is a 67 ½-pound fish caught in 1992."

"It was slow, as we all know, by today's standards, but I could bush-whack, fall down and torture the heck out of it on big fish and it never faltered. Eleven months later I took the Fenwick to Western Australia, then to Borneo, where I even used the Fenwick, in it's original brown tube, as a weapon and fended off an angry group of lepers who wanted to steal my stuff." On Cameron Mortenson's interesting new blog "The Fiberglass Manifesto," Brian O'Keefe recounts the virtues of traveling the world with fiberglass fly rods, which served as both practical tools and talismans.

"Since the Mad River Fish Hatchery sits so close to the ocean, the early-run fish here are extremely bright and full of fight. As the season wears on, you're more apt to run into 'guacamoles' -- the locals' term for fish that have been in the river for a while and have 'greened up.'" J.D. Richey describes the December steelhead run on the Mad River, where most of the fish are 6-12-pound hatchery-raised steelies that concentrate in an eight-miles stretch. In California Game & Fish.

The Trout Unlimited film crew travels to Arkansas so that Frank Smethurst can fish with expert guide John Wilson for big brown trout. Wilson spots an out-sized Little Red brown, Smethurst casts, fish eats. Film records 35-inch brown trout. "Great Guppy Hunter" smirks. Crew leaves muttering about all the time they've wasted video-taping 12-inch trout in other parts of the country.

"'Look there, see that monster ... 20 pounds, 25 pounds ... and there are some little ones beside them that are 25 inches!' Wilson said as he pointed them out. Dennis and I would look at each other and admit that often we didn't see them. To Wilson, it's an easy task. It would be like the rest of us noticing that there is a new couch in the living room." Clay Henry on HawgsIllustrated.com.

The first and only time I made serious plans to fish Cuba was during the last week of February, 1996. The day before I was due to leave, Cuban MiGs shot down two anti-Castro activist planes that had flown into Cuban air space. I took it as a sign, and paid a visit South America instead.

Today, Cuba watchers on both sides of the Florida Straights predict normalized relations with the U.S. Whether it happens in 3 months or 3 years, the good news for anglers is that a vast and relatively untouched area of flats awaits U.S. anglers, who will be eager to play catch-up with Canadians, Europeans and others who've enjoyed fishing there for years. Even a deluge of U.S. interest, though, should have minimal impact on the fishery, since the Cuban government has limited licensed guiding operations to only a few providers.

This week George Anderson writes about his most recent trip to Cuba and specifically to the archipelago of islands that stretch southeast from the Isla de Juventud.

"South Korea holds the world's southernmost population of lenok (also called Manchurian trout, Brachymystax lenok) that only exists in deep mountain valleys. They are distributed from Korea up through Russia and Mongolia and are mentioned in one of the best outdoor books ever written, Dersu the Trapper by V. K. Arseniev." Field & Stream just published a photo essay by James Card, who writes about pursuing cherry trout (actually a type of Pacific salmon) and other native species along the southern half of the 416-mile long Baekdudaegan mountain range.

Card has also written for MidCurrent on fishing the Korean DMZ.

"A small and self-serving group with guidance from the BC Ministry of the Environment is trying to drive a wedge in the long, happy and mutually advantageous alliance between the good people of the Skeena Valley and the traveling anglers from around the world who have treasured this resource and taken its side when it has been threatened."

That's what Thomas McGuane told Seth Norman recently during Norman's investigation into a new movement to limit or ban non-resident steelheaders on the Skeena River and its tributaries.

It seems that the British Columbia Ministry of Environment (MoE) is bent on killing the B.C. steelhead guiding business -- or at least putting interests of locals who depend on the fishing economy ($35 and $50 million per year) second to those who might benefit from less fishing in the area. The most curious thing Norman turned up is that there were so few stakeholders involved in the process of re-examining river regulation in the first place.

Rather than repeat what Norman says in his excellent article on the subject, we encourage you to go read it in its entirety on the Fly Rod & Reel Web site. As Norman points out, there are all sorts of intriguing clues as to what might be motivating the MoE -- possibly involving competition for headwaters lands among developers and even giant companies like Royal Dutch Shell and Enbridge, Inc.

A central Michigan Morning Sun writer and friend decide that the best way to enjoy the twenty-degree weather is to drop a canoe in the Pere Marquette and fly cast for steelhead. "'Well,' John finally said matter-of-factly, 'we did it. And in this weather too. But I'll tell you what, I wouldn't do it again tomorrow.'"

"The only mandatory expense on the Margaree is $57 for one-week license. The many pools on the river do attract a fair number of anglers, but salmon casters learn rotational fishing. That's the practice of making a couple of casts and them stepping downstream in the pool to make room for the next angler." John Corrigan writes about the Margaree River in Nova Scotia, where anglers who don't want to spend thousand of dollars for private access can still have a chance at an Atlantic salmon. In the Concord [New Hampshire] Monitor.

After hiking in to fish the beautiful and remote high-country rivers on New Zealand's South Island, Cameron Williamson is given a place name by his guide: "'That's the Nunya,' says backcountry fishing guide and photographer Zane Mirfin in answer to my query about the whereabouts of a great-looking trout river. Not one I'd heard of. 'Yeah, it's Nunya effing business.'" In New Zealand's Dominion Post.

One of Colorado's busiest access ramps, on the Roaring Fork River in northwest Colorado, is back in official business after the state agreed to pay the owners $20,000 per year. "After months of negotiations followed by months of bureaucratic process, the Colorado Division of Wildlife and the owners of a popular boat ramp on the Roaring Fork River in Carbondale have signed a new lease." Brent Gardner-Smith in the Aspen Daily News.

In London's Financial Times, John O'Connor joins veteran guide Brendan McCarthy the pursuit of stripers and bluefish in the cold waters of lower New York Harbor. "New York City might not be the first place one thinks of when it comes to catching fish on a fly rod. But some of the best fly-fishing on the eastern seaboard can be found here, just a short subway-ride from Manhattan, in places such as Red Hook in Brooklyn, City Island in the Bronx and our destination today: the waters off the Gateway National Recreation Area in Far Rockaway."

"In Ohio the vast majority of steelhead begin life in the Castalia State Fish Hatchery in Erie County, where eggs and milt are stripped from 'breeder' stock, then incubated, hatched, and reared to yearling size of five to seven inches. Some 400,000 yearlings annually are planted in five central Lake Erie tributaries -- the Vermilion, Rocky, Chagrin, and Grand rivers, and Conneaut Creek. The latter stream also receives stockings by neighboring Pennsylvania." In the Toledo Blade, Steve Pollick and Jeff Basting offer an excellent overview of nothern Ohio's steelhead fishery.

If you wonder just how many king salmon crowd the Pere Marquette during late fall, take a look at the video of John Heider fishing near Baldwin, Michigan and hoping to catch a 10-20-pound fish on an eight weight. "Another type of fly that's worked well for me is what's called a spey fly. It's basically a flashy, billowy type of fly that might strike a salmon as an invader to their space. They'll often nail it with the kind of no-doubt-about-it turn of their whole body, opening of their big, toothy mouth and bite that's a real joy to see and experience." From the Gannett News Service.

The addictions, anger and depression that accompany many veterans aren't well answered by traditional means, but over the past four years Project Healing Waters has proved that simply being on a trout stream can help wounded veterans take a few steps toward normalcy. Cindy Wolff writes about a recent PHW expedition on Arkansas's White River, where the local Delta Trout Unlimited club worked with the Veterans Administration and $14,000 in private donations to arrange a week-long fly fishing experience. "Travis Dulaney keeps an Army-issue tin cup with him -- a touchstone to remind him sometimes when he wakes from a drunken stupor that he's alive. The 46-year-old who has had a few "come aparts" in his life, spent years trying to get put back together. He has prayed with Army chaplains in Georgia, walked in and out of detox, took 12 steps and then some, been on and off the wagon, in and out of jail." On CommercialAppeal.com.

Like anyone who knows a place that is still wild and mostly unchanged, I hesitate to recommend that anyone go spend time there. But I also recognized long ago that many mostly-wild places stay that way only because of public awareness. This has never been truer than in the U.S. wildlife refuges that surround Florida's Lower Keys, where only a continuous, determined effort has prevented economic exploitation from turning them into on-the-water theme parks. In this morning's Miami Herald, Cammy Clark notes the centennial of the Key West National Wildlife Refuge, which stretches north and west from Key West and provides some of the best permit, bonefish and tarpon fishing in the world to those who learn its secrets. "The refuge, located off the coast of Key West, is full of life -- and surprises. Green sea turtles nest on its sandy beaches. Rare Miami blue butterflies flutter along its dunes. Hawks use the mangroves for resting areas to and from the Caribbean."

Kirk Deeter of Fly Talk sent us a note late last night to let us know that Denny Breer, who was featured in his book Castwork, was killed in an accident yesterday. Breer, who also operated Trout Creek Flies and was the author of a definitive guide to fishing Utah's Green River, Utah's Green River: A Fly Fisher's Guide to the Flaming Gorge Tailwater (June 1998) as well as several DVDs, was considered one of the top guides in the U.S. west. Apparently he died during an attempt to jack up one of his large pigeon coops.

Kirk Deeter writes in more detail this morning on Fly Talk.

New West's Bill Schneider takes a sojourn to Oregon's Grande Ronde and finds steelhead doing the thing that makes fly fishers' hearts pound: taking skated dry flies. "This means using a huge fly, extensively doped with floatant, cast roughly at a 45 degree angle downstream and then skated back toward shore until directly downstream. Instead of trying to leave no wake, you want the largest wake possible, which is why they call it either waking or skating your fly."

"A red ball of bait -- tens of thousands of bay anchovies -- pulsed like a giant beating heart as bluefish, their sides flashing like metal, ate their way through the frenzied bait." In this morning's New York Times, Peter Kaminsky takes his daughter fly fishing for bluefish and stripers, a fall activity that often requires a keen eye for birds and an understanding of how predators trap prey.

One of the pleasures of spending lots of time fishing is that it eventually turns almost all of us into "fish watchers." Many of my most memorable fishing days have been about the spectacle of some macro-event -- giant herds of permit, clouds of palolo worms, blizzards of black caddis and rises filling one hundred yards of river. Right now, in British Columbia, the salmon spawn is in full swing and provides even those without rod and reel a chance to get a glimpse of what makes our sport so entrancing. Jack Christie writes about the salmon crowding the Stave and Cowichan Rivers on Straight.com, noting that easy access is provided by several trails: "Trestle 66 is an ideal place to connect with the Cowichan by either heading upriver or downriver on foot or bike. Even if you only walk from the parking lot to the bridge high above the river, pause here. The North Side Walking Trail is an inviting stretch of single track that leads upstream for five kilometres to Skutz Falls."

"In a shallow run on the mighty River Spey in Scotland, an Atlantic salmon has taken my fly and is slaloming around rocks in an attempt to head back towards the sea. I am grateful for the power of my 15ft, Scott double-handed rod as I try to subdue what turns out to be a 9lb salmon, fresh off the tide." Bob Sherwood goes salmon fishing with British politico Charlie Whelan on Scotland's River Spey in London's Financial Times.

Not counting the time I broke a fence post by hitting a barbed wire gate going 30 miles per hour on my mountain bike, I've always followed the simple rule learned in my first days in Montana: always be sure to leave gates in the same state -- open or closed -- as the way you found them.

It sounds obvious, but it also requires that you know how to open and close a barbed wire gate -- not always easy, especially if a rancher strings a tight fence. Sometimes it's a two-person effort. Many pay-per-rod waters, which often exist on working ranches, have stepped walk-overs that allow anglers in waders to simply step over barbed wire. But if you are planning on asking permission to fish water on private land, or if you are taking advantage of laws that allow public access to "private waters" (see the story on new access granted in Utah), be sure you respect landowners' fences.

Here's a little teaser for a new video produced by Justin Coupe and Palmer Taylor. "Rivers of the Lost Coast" covers the history of northwest U.S. coastal steelhead fishing and is narrated by Tom Skerrit. From the Facebook page: "At the turn of the 20th century a handful of pioneers carried their fly rods into California's remote north coast and gave birth to a culture that would revolutionize their sport. For a select few, steelhead fly fishing became an obsessive pursuit without compromise."

I distinctly remember the first time I enjoyed the company of a professional trout guide. The fishing was educational, of course, but the moment that noon arrived and the guide began a setting out a stunning spread of food is what sticks in my mind. I had guided for years in the Keys already, and the idea that a guide would serve food to the client was novel by itself. But it quickly became apparent to me that the "shore lunch" was not just a simple daily event. It was a ritual as important as the fishing itself.

In New West, Bill Schneider expresses a similar amazement at the shore lunch concept and outlines the step-by-step ingredients for a great midday meal. "On our last day we had hor'dourves--blackened pike. Mike kept a small pike so we could have some thin fillets, and then he put the frying pan directly on the fire (not on the grill), so it could get 'white hot.' He soaked the fillets in butter and added a liberal doze of Cajun spice on both sides before searing them for about a minute on each side. They don't make adjectives to aptly describe how delicious it was."

Almost every time Field & Stream's Kirk Deeter does a fly fishing expedition somewhere, I find myself looking at the post-trip images and thinking two things: Man, I wish I had been there; and, Man, I'm glad I didn't have to do that. This time, though, I didn't have the second thought. Despite the twelve-hour bus rides and the flights through "cocaine country," the fishing for 20-plus-pound Dorado in Bolivia looks like a cure for any domestic malaise.

"What do dorado eat? Big flies. Dark flies (and spoons.) With eyes. Sometimes a fish would grab a fly and I'd miss the hookset, yet the eyes of my fly would be torn away. Dorado aim for the head."

Read more about fly fishing for Dorado on MidCurrent.

The Miami Herald's Sue Cocking has the enemy in her sights, makes contact, and manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. "One thing about quests is that if they're completed too quickly, they don't really seem like quests. Like locating the Holy Grail, finishing an Ironman triathlon, or writing, as one woman did, a book about doing the wild thing with your husband 365 days in a row, there has to be some suffering and some setbacks and a decent interval before reaching the finish line."

Time magazine covers the spread of brown trout from Europe to its former colonies and suggests that if you want to do something good for the environment you should head down to Dullstroom, South Africa and help them get rid of all those seven-pounders infesting the waters.

The water is rising in Hebgen Lake. After emergency repairs finally allowed the dam operators to lower the flow into Montana's Madison River a few weeks ago, everyone had their fingers crossed that the temporary patch would work. Now it appears that there will be plenty of holding capacity for the Madison through the winter and that brown trout spawning won't be interrupted. "'We're actually gaining water on the lake now a little bit,' said David Hoffman, spokesman for PPL Montana, operator of the dam. 'The more major rehabilitation will have to wait, possibly until the spring or the spring of 2010.'" Brett French in the Billings Gazette.

Just because Buffalo Bill is buried on a hill west of Denver doesn't mean that Colorado has better fishing than the countryside within fifty miles of Cody, Wyoming, according to Charlie Meyers in the Denver Post. "This thing about Glenwood Springs being the best fly-fishing town in America was just so much male bovine dung. A much more deserving recipient, the missive continued, would be Cody, Wyo. Further, John Baughman declared, I should deliver my misinformed carcass up there and see for myself."

Fishing with terrestrials for fall trout in Wisconsin's Driftless Area elicits a wry comment from Steve Engelbert. "'If you are landing a beaver, you're fishing too stout,' says Engelbert." Maybe that will help us set the upper limit for performance on the new stump-puller-style short fly rods. In the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

In Gray's Sporting Journal, John Larison writes a golden fall tale of fly fishing for steelhead after being called by the smell of blackberries. "About when the wild blackberries drip their sweet purple honey onto the emerald leaves below, and the east winds sweep off the Cascades carrying the stoning smell over my little Willamette Valley town, we know it's time to take a day off. Summer steelhead, in the rivers since May or June, will finally emerge from their heat-induced comas and take our dry flies."

Gordon Wickstrom recounts weaving his way through lascivious hippies in the sixties to find his way to the Golden Gate Angling and Casting Club, and then returning more than 40 years later. "It was thrilling for me to revisit this fabled shrine of angling where during the 1940s and '50s, fly-fishing would take on an indelible and thoroughly American character. Here was codified the double haul cast, shooting head lines backed to monofilament, big-water, heavy-river distance casting, and a new dispensation in flies, the big 'attractor' flies capable of irritating steelhead and big trout into savage strikes." In the Boulder Daily Camera.

"The biggest cutthroat of the year come to my egg flies when the chinook salmon do their dance of death and life in South Sound rivers. The Nisqually, the Skokomish and the rivers that flow into Hood Canal also offer great cutthroat trout fishing during the salmon spawn. I usually lose these big cutts to the snags or my own excitement." Chester Allen writes about fishing egg flies for big cutthroat in the many Washington rivers where salmon spawn in the fall. In the Olympian.

After sunset, those in search of the brown trout of a lifetime hunt the shorelines of Colorado's North Delaney Butte Lake, hoping to catch a fat fish before the state begins netting egg-filled fish for hatcheries. "As darkness grows, more monsters join in a display brown trout share with their close cousins, the Atlantic salmon. The late Lee Wulff compared this anxious surface leaping to a hyperactive boy kicking a can, a stirring that expresses some deep emotion, but no real purpose." Charlie Meyers in the Denver Post.

You'd be hard pressed to find a serious trout angler who doesn't have New Zealand on their life list. The brown trout there are legendary for their size and selectivity, and if sight-casting to big fish in complete solitude is your thing, there's hardly a better place.

This week we're showing a segment from theflyfishingDVD.com's new "Backcountry Trout," an example of the trend toward making downloads of high-quality fishing films available over the Web. Australian fly fishing expert Peter Morse, along with guide Nigel Birt, demonstrates how a careful approach, the correct fly choice, and observing fish reactions all make a difference on a bluebird day in the New Zealand lowlands.

An "idiot hole" can be either a spot where anyone can catch a fish, or a place that leaves even expert anglers feeling like they've lost their mojo. Oregon's Metiolus is home to at least one of the latter, but fall's hatches can change all that, according to Mark Morical in the Washington Olympian. "Autumn also brings the second green drake hatch of the season on the Metolius. The green drake hatch in June is well known and brings anglers from across the country when the large, olive-toned mayflies cover the river. The fall hatch, however, is known by relatively few and often surprises even local anglers."

One of the most scenic lodges in the Caribbean (it's actually built on an ancient Mayan fishing camp, with the coral reef within 200 feet of any cabin door) is offering a free DVD on bonefish, permit and tarpon fishing on the Turneffe atoll. The DVD also includes details on scuba diving and other atoll adventures and can be gotten free by calling (888) 512-8812 or emailing reservations@tflats.com.

When fly fishers hear the word 'Bighorn,' they immediately think of the giant spring-creek-like outflow from the Yellowtail dam in Montana. But south of the Montana border, in Wyoming's Bighorn mountains, are plenty of places to fish in complete solitude for trout that don't see anglers every day. In Wisconsin's Leader-Telegram, Joe Knight talks about a recent trip to the Tongue River. "You just might be a trout bum if the first thing you do in the morning, after scaring the mule deer and free-range cattle out of the camp site, is eat a breakfast cooked over a one-burner stove in a cast-iron frying pan, then clamp a fly-tying vise on a picnic table and tie flies until the sun has warmed the streams enough for fishing."

In a short video, fly fishing guide Karl Weixlmann discusses essential gear and flies for catching steelhead from the Lake Erie shoreline.

The accompanying article also gives lots of advice on technique: "After making the cast, I like to tuck the cork handle of the fly rod under my arm pit and use both hands to strip in the fly line and dump it into a stripping basket. You simply cannot outstrip a steelhead that's bent on eating your fly in open water. Another retrieve that works on the lakeshore is to strip the line in erratic spurts from 1 foot to 3 feet long with your line hand while keeping the line tucked under the cork handle with your rod hand."

On NWPAOutdoors.com.

"'A lot of deep-water sanctuary and access, and a variety and surplus of bait to sustain these fish,'' [George] Poveromo wrote in an e-mail. 'Big fish can drop off into the [Sea of Abaco] within seconds and be safe. Those on the oceanside flats can drop off into a channel or deep water within seconds. Then there's less fishing pressure here.''' Sue Cocking fishes the off-season at Green Turtle Cay and still manages to catch fish in only a half day of fly casting. In the Miami Herald.

Forget about those expensive waders. With its art, culture, and nude beach on the Wisconsin river, the Town of Mazomanie would have to be on your list of cool (too cool?) places to live in Wisconsin. "The September issue of Budget Travel named Mazomanie one of the '10 Coolest Small Towns,' noting that the village is saturated with artists. Mazomanie's comeback is partly due to historical society members who saw the potential of their hamlet nestled amid rolling hills, the Wisconsin River, Black Earth Creek (a Class A trout stream) and farm fields."

The crash that killed a guide, pilot and two anglers on their way to Alaska's Royal Wulff Lodge last year was caused by corrosion in the wing, according to a federal accident report. Unfortunately, this kind of corrosion would be undetectable without removing the wings, so the FAA sent a special bulletin on Sept. 9 to all operators of the type of plane involved -- the Helio Courier. "[Royal Wulff co-owner Chris] Branham said he bought the plane from legendary Bush pilot Lowell Thomas in the 1980s, and his lodge uses three other Helio Couriers. The reason his company chose this type of plane for the lodge was its reputation as one of the safest in the world, he said." Elizabeth Bluemink in the Anchorage Daily News.

Like any savvy angler, John Berry knows when a good thing might slip away. With Hurricane Ike on the horizon and the Corps of Engineers reducing water flow on both Bull Shoals and Norfork Dams in preparation, he and his wife make a beeline for Arkansas's White River. "The trout had not seen much of anything but brightly colored San Juan worms in months. With the fish more concentrated in the lower water, anglers able to wade to their favorite holes and fish that had never been effectively fished over in months, it was a prescription for great fishing." In the Baxter Bulletin.

Chris Santella and friends hire an outfitter to fly them, their raft, and their meager gear to Alaska's Kanektok, where they enjoy indifferent bears and some of the best fly fishing in North America. "Seeing the bear seemed to alter our luck. That day, we caught Arctic char and Dolly Varden at will -- 30, 40, 50 apiece. Some were pushing 25 inches and 5 or 6 pounds, brilliantly mottled in black, gold and orange. We found a beautiful campsite that looked out at a mountainside dotted with stands of blueberries." In The New York Times.

As Eric Sharp points out, fishing for St. Marys River pink salmon with indicators is about as easy as salmon fishing gets. The best part is that catching pinks will give you all the experience you need in determining when any type of salmon has taken a fly. "Sometimes the bright green, acorn-size foam indicator jiggled a little without going completely underwater. Other times it suddenly slowed down. Either occurrence was a signal to raise the rod tip and feel the sudden, hard headshake of a hooked fish." In the Detroit Free Press.

Field & Stream fishing columnist and MidCurrent editorial board member John Merwin turned up this very interesting story about research into the age of a monster brown trout caught on Argentina's Rio Grande River last year. The fish, estimated at 41.5 pounds, was caught and released by Brian Yamamoto, a dentist from Fairbanks, Alaska. The University of Montana's Sarah O'Neal, who studies Rio Grande fish, got one of the scales and "read" the fish's history in the rings and scars: "We can't know with 100% accuracy the exact size of this guy at each year of his life. But regardless, they suggest that he was a fast-grower from the get go. Even in freshwater you can see he was larger than the average sea trout. And then he just went nuts out there at sea."

By the way, Merwin's new blogging efforts make a regular visit to his "The Honest Angler" a requirement for smart fishermen. I particularly wish I had had his solution to "bumper bashing" when I was trailering a boat 300 days a year.

A landmark decision by the Belizean government yesterday will provide much-needed protection for bonefish, permit and tarpon. As we noted back in June, Craig Hayes, owner of Turneffe Flats Lodge, and Ali Flota, owner of El Pescador Lodge, were leading an effort to provide the necessary economic data and angler support for the measure, which will stop commercial fishing for these important species. As research now shows, many of the juvenile fish for the Florida Keys and other areas originate in Belize, so these new protections hold great promise.

Thanks to all of those who responded to the original request for support.

Visit the Turneffe Flats Lodge Web site.

Visit the El Pescador Web site.

Read MidCurrent's guide to fly fishing in Belize.

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

"The pervasive stillness on the Teton River makes the fishing all the more intense. Slow currents slide and twist along the hay-lined banks, pulling tricos, the product of a light hatch earlier this morning, around in the river's relaxed spin cycle." Samuel S. Bacon writes a lyrical entry on trico fishing on the Teton in the Denver Post.

Anyone who thinks a guide can be expected to post accurate blog entries while competing with another guide for business is probably not familiar with Ed Zern's wonderful observation: "Fishermen are born honest, but they get over it." Still, it's a step up from word-of-mouth. Adam Edwards describes the blogging efforts of two River Tay keepers, Jock Monteith and Bob White, in the U.K. Telegraph. "The spin-off from this electronic competition between the two men has given those anoraks who eat, drink and sleep fly-fishing unique access, wherever they are in the world, to two short stretches of the Tay. In the past the reputation of a particular beat came from the log books and the stories that were handed down. Neither was always as accurate as it might have been."

You can find Monteith's blog here, and White's here.

"One finds another form of freedom in these high places. Since these headwaters nearly always involve public lands, there's never a question of access. All that's required to claim them is a bit of research and the willingness to walk. Where this involves those special places at high elevation, getting there is a large part of the fun." Charlie Meyers describes using your feet to trace the squiggly blue lines of topo maps as one of the great pleasures of fall, especially in a year like this one. In the Denver Post.

While there have been rumors that New Zealand's Conservation Minister Steve Chadwick would not approve the proposed ban on felt soles in that country, today Chadwick announced that she will indeed follow the advice of the New Zealand Fish and Game Council. According to the Fish and Game New Zealand government Web site, "The new condition is part of the Anglers Notice and comes into affect from the beginning of the fishing season on 1 October. 'The New Zealand Fish and Game Council has recommended that people who hold a licence to fish for trout, and other sports fish, should contribute to the national campaign to halt the spread of didymo by not using felt-soled waders when fishing.'"

August always reminds me of black blizzards of caddis swirling in the Bighorn twilight. Dennis Anderson recently visited Montana's Bighorn with his sons and experienced the angst of watching some big fish get away because the boys weren't quite as quick with the net as he might have been. "Sometime tonight, we'll grill dinner there over charcoal while distant coyotes bay at the moon, and stars sparkle in a black sky that seems to stretch from yesterday to tomorrow, and beyond. For now, this clean, cold river envelopes our boat, as our flies -- nymphs -- drift near the bottom, carried downstream at the exact speed of the current." In the Minneapolis - St. Paul Star Tribune.

A 14,000-acre wildfire has entered the south part of the Nature Conservancy preserve near Idaho's Silver Creek, but officials believe they will be able to contain the blaze by tonight.

John Berry reports that FFF affiliate Mid-South Fly Fishers in Memphis has just come out with latest edition of their indispensable guide book Home Waters, which covers Arkansas and Tennessee. Besides listing all accesses and directions for how to get there, the book includes details on how to fish each location, written by seasoned guides and veteran anglers. "Another feature that will appeal to the traveling angler is the accommodations matrix. It lists all of the accommodations available near the streams in the guide and provides contact information. It includes a lot of data concerning extras (fireplaces, kitchens, pets and adjacent restaurants), fishing facilities and boat rentals. There is also a listing of guide services and fly shops by area with contact information." The 192-page book is available from local fly shops for $34. In the Baxter Bulletin.

It used to be that only Florida Keys bonefish pursued post-graduate educations. With the rise in fishing pressure along Florida's Gulf coast, redfish have become the new doctors of selective eating, according to this Sarasota Herald-Tribune writer: "Head for exotic destinations such as the Bahamas, Venezuela, Mexico, Belize or Christmas Island, and even the most inexperienced fly fisher can become a seasoned bonefish pro. For our money, redfish are tougher than bonefish when it comes to shallow water sight-fishing with flies or artificial lures. Redfish can make bonefish look downright easy."

Retired Houston Chronicle writer Joe Doggett packs more information about Alaskan fly fishing opportunities into this one article than we've seen in entire book chapters. He briefly describes fishing on a number of smaller Alaskan river, but says the Moraine is the "purest Alaskan experience." "It is most famous for consistent numbers of 'mid-20s,' football-fat, brightly colored trout in the 22- to 26-inch class, any one of which might be a season topper -- maybe a career topper -- in public streams in the Lower 48." Be sure to check out the "Resources" sidebar, which details the seasons for the most sought-after fish.

Abe and Patsy Chavez opened the doors to their $5-a-day fishing shop on August 18, 1958, only to see the construction of the Navajo Dam push them into the motel business. Fifty years later, they are selling flies and float trips to anglers on the San Juan -- now a tailwater with a world-wide reputation. Writer Cornelia De Bruin suggests a possible secret to the longevity of their marriage and their fly shop: a sign in the dining room that reads "We interrupt this marriage to bring you fishing season." In the Las Cruces, New Mexico Sun-News.

"A trout in moving water is like a batter in baseball. The fish has a strike zone that's zealously guarded. Like an overanxious batter, a hungry trout will sometimes fall for an outside pitch, but the fish mostly waits patiently until the current delivers a juicy snack right down the middle of the proverbial plate." In the Dallas Morning News, Ray Sasser writes about hopper fishing on the waters of the members-only Marabou Ranch near Steamboat Springs.

We see a lot of newspaper articles on fly fishing. It's nice to see one present coverage of the local fishing in a clean layout and with some truly impressive photos. (Now if they could only bother to include an attribution.) Craig Dilger (we think) writes about fly-fishing guide Jeremy Jones and the seasons on the Provo in the Daily Herald. "Jones is completely serious about fishing year-round. "'The winter fishing is great,' he said. 'It just gets cold, people's hands start getting cold and the eyelets on the fly-rod start to ice up, so it makes it tough to cast. But I have had some of my best days on the Provo River in complete blizzards at negative 10 degrees and still catching fish. Nobody is out there, and everything is so white. It is beautiful.'"

It doesn't quite rank with the Montana guide to fishing locations, but the new Google-maps based page showing all the possible locations to fish for various species in Arizona is certainly crammed with info. One of the coolest features is that you can filter the map icons by species (use the check boxes at the bottom of the map.) We also suggest using the drop-down at the upper right to change the map setting from "Map" view to "Terrain."

Ryan Peterson, who works in the travel department at California's The Fly Shop, posted a long and decidedly low-tech blog entry on a recent trip to Kamchatka. In tow were the crew from Felt Soul Media and Frank Smethurst, who spent some time false-casting in Red Square. Via Moldy Chum.

Ray Petersen, an Alaska aviation pioneer who in the 1950s built some of the first fly-in fishing lodges in Alaska, died at age 96 on Tuesday. "In 1947 he formed Northern Consolidated Airlines, merging his Bethel-based air service, Ray Petersen Flying Service, with several other small airlines. In 1950 he brokered a deal with the National Park Service to build lodges in what was then Katmai National Monument. The five lodges launched a new era of fishing tourism in rural Alaska. Julia O'Malley in the Anchorage Daily News.

Not only will anglers have more options when it comes to lodging when fishing the Henry's Fork, but they'll get their Wi-Fi too when the state is done with major renovations, which began this summer. "'The unfortunate part is there's not a lot of lodging opportunities, and what was there was in need of repair.' So crews from Idaho Falls' SE/Z Construction began work this summer to take some historic buildings back to the new look they had 75 years ago, incorporating more lodging and dining opportunities along the way. They'll restore the Middle Dude, the Harriman Cottage and the Bunkhouse and remodel the South Dude Barn." Dani Grigg in the Idaho Business Review.

In Barrons, Jim McTague describes his horrifying encounter with Ursus wallstreetus horribilis on a trip to Maine's Grand Lake Stream for smallmouth. "They included big-bank economists, bond traders, money managers and financial consultants who have been brought together in this enchanted world of pristine lakes for almost 10 years by David Kotok, an expert fly fisherman and the chairman and chief investment officer of Cumberland Advisors, a money-management firm in Vineland, N.J."

"Anglers driving east on Rio Blanco County Road 8 from Colorado Highway 13 go past miles of attractive water but it's all private property with virtually no access. The Nelson/Prather easement, named after a couple of local ranching families, offered the only public water between Meeker and an easement through Sleepy Cat Ranch about 17 miles east." Dave Buchanan writes about the likely closure of a key access point on the White River in the Grand Junction Sentinel.

One of the impacts of lower airline profits is the disappearance of routes to local airports. That has communities like Butte, Montana trying things like "travel banks," funded by local businesses, which purchase seats to ensure the airlines continue their local flights. But the immediate result is likely to be more traveling anglers fishing closer to hubs like Bozeman and Denver -- good news for hub-based outfitters, but another challenge to the viability of far-flung fly shops and outfitters. "'If people are going to fly into the Bozeman airport, they're more likely to fish with lodges close to the Bozeman airport,' Hanson, partner and manager of the Complete Fly Fisher, told ABCNews.com. 'We are losing our grip by the second.'" Article by Kate Barrett.

It's not postcard beauty, notes Bob Welch, but the incredible richness of southeast Oregon derives from its very remoteness and landscape subtleties. "In two fly-fishing trips on the Donner und Blitzen River, we never saw another line in the water beyond ours. As for 'locals,' if you ignore antelope - we saw dozens - and deduct the, uh, population hubs of Hines and Burns - 60 miles north of Frenchglen - you have 2,885 people spread over a county that's larger than eight U.S. states. That's about 3.6 square miles for each person." In the Oregon Register-Guard.

More about the Donner und Blitzen river.

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While the hundreds of rail cars left immobile by the recession are an eyesore to some, the fishing in the upper Missouri has been fantastic this year. One thing the article by John S. Adams doesn't touch on is the fact that the railroad beds themselves -- often lined with boulders that provide great shelter for brown trout -- have long been a favorite stalking-ground for anglers looking for risers among the rocks. (In fact the photo in the article shows a favorite bank.) "'They don't bother me. I come here to fish, and it's not hurting the fishing,' said Ken Nordeste of Sacramento, Calif. Nordeste has been returning to fish the Missouri River for more than 20 years." In the Great Falls Tribune.

CNBC business news analyst Steve Leisman -- an avid fly fisher -- reported from a meeting of rather pessimistic economists at Maine's Leens Lodge this morning. Of course he was teased by Joe and Becky about his casual attire, but he had a quick comeback for the question of whether he would fish in the rain today: "Fish don't mind getting wet," he said. "And you gotta remember, fish are just like stock pickers -- they've got to pick these small flies out of an ocean of water. A little bit of rain won't bother them."

"For 30 or so miles from Greers Ferry Dam in Cleburne County to the state Route 305 bridge in northern White County, it teems with stocked rainbow trout, a self-sustaining population of wild browns and a sprinkling of colorful brook and cutthroat trout." Cindy and Steve Taylor write about the Little Red, where fishing strategies are ruled by generator output at the Greers Fairy Dam, and about the catch-and-release Collins Creek, which empties into the Red. In Arkansas Game & Fish magazine.

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.

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."

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."

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.

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.

"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.

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?"

"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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

"A Joe's Hopper was tied to my three-foot leader that tested eight pounds. This is no place for delicacy: keep the leader short and stout. Wispy leaders seldom can keep a big night-feeder out of the log jams or sweepers, and big fish are strong and heavy in the current." Dave Richey hunts down a hex hatch on Michigan's AuSable. In the Traverse City Record-Eagle.

New on MidCurrent, watch R. A. Beattie's artful clip on fly fishing for small- and largemouth bass from the arid shoreline of Lake Powell.

Last year filmmaker and journalist Edward Nachtrieb took the season off from his job as a Travel Channel director to film wounded veterans floating and fishing Montana's Smith River. The Smith floats, organized by outfitter Mike Geary, are captured in Nachtrieb's new flim "All the Way Home." "Three years ago, Montana fishing outfitter Mike Geary was inspired by news reports to organize fly fishing trips for disabled veterans down one of the American West's most isolated rivers. In this film, we meet a group of veterans that reflects the diversity of challenges facing our returning soldiers. Some, on leave from Walter Reed Hospital, bear the obvious physical wounds of war while others cope with hidden traumas that are invisible, yet dangerous."

One of the unique aspects of Texas redfish flats is that they often wadeable, and kayaks enable anglers to get deep into no-motor zones and the network of shallow lakes that dot much of the coast. As Mike Leggett notes in the Austin American-Statesman, Lighthouse Lakes is one of the most popular, and its value to anglers has only increased since in 2006 Texas made it illegal to destroy seagrasses in the Redfish Bay area. "We will paddle close to six miles during the day, which turns into a quiet, peaceful sojourn over redfish, close to roseate spoonbills and great blue herons and around scattered oyster beds that serve as feeding platforms for the schools of reds that cruise the area."

All the news focused on the massive slug of water stretching the banks of the Mississippi like a bird's egg in a snake made me take another look at the clever "concept blog" done recently by Nate Matthews and Tim Romano of Field & Stream. Their "Big Muddy Road Trip," while geared to hook-and-bullet sensibilities, is a clever and gritty bucket of journalism. And Tim Romano may be one of the most under-appreciated photo-journalists in the fishing business. Here's a taste from their last on-the-river post: "A strong wind and an incoming tide were pushing directly against the Mississippi's 2,320 mile-long current, and this created some massive waves. These were crashing against the jetty with great force, throwing gouts of spray into the air, where it was blown sideways by the wind. When I saw this I knew we wouldn't be doing much fishing. But there are times when I'm possessed by a mulish sort of stubborn, and I was damned if we'd come this far to turn around without at least touching the waters of the Gulf."

David Dedmon, owner of Montana Flywater Company in Hamilton, Montana, died Sunday after the raft he and his wife were using flipped over in the Bitterroot River. They were scouting the river to be sure it was safe for clients. "'He wasn't a rookie," [Ravalli County Sheriff Chris] Hoffman said. 'He'd spent a lot of time on the river. This accident was simply a very painful reminder of how dangerous this river can be. Every year, we beg and plead with people to be patient and wait until the river comes down.'" The Bitterroot River is considered by many to be one of the most perilous in the state, primarily because of the number of log jams and sweepers on the river." Anthony Quirini on Missoulian.com.

If you must float a river that has dangerous sweepers and debris in it, wear a personal flotation device at all times, and learn the defensive swim position: on your back, with feet facing downstream, and toes up so that your feet do not get trapped in debris.

Last week I fished with the folks from H2O Bonefishing, who operate out of Pelican Bay Hotel in Lucaya, Grand Bahama. I was there on the invitation of Orvis, who wanted to gather "pros" and amateur anglers together to assist in the tagging and fin-clipping of bonefish for Tarpon & Bonefish Unlimited. BTU, if you didn't know, has made great strides in the past ten years in determining the spawning habits, range and species differentiation among bonefish (not to mention gathering extensive data on tarpon as well). This was Orvis's first foray into saltwater research, and during the week dozens of fish were tagged or fin-clipped so that BTU could add the fish of that area to their ever-expanding database.

I fished only two days -- just enough to stretch the line on some very nice fish and remind myself that not all bonefish want a fly stripped cautiously. In fact the fish on the northern flats of Grand Bahama chased the flies we were throwing -- mostly weighted size-4 "McKnife" patterns with toad-like yarn bodies, red eyes, orange crystal hair tails and chartreuse thread -- like barracudas.

Read more in the extended entry ...

"'Tarraleah is the fly fishing resort you create when you are not creating a fly fishing resort,' says manager Mark Newcombe." In the Sydney Morning Herald, Susan Gough Henly writes about a recent visit to Tarraleah Lodge, a luxury hotel which Conde Naste Travelller's British edition rated among the top 65 new hotels in the world.

"There are two questions every trout angler wishes he'd asked before stepping off the bank into the nippy waters of a June stream. 'Did I find and patch all the holes in my waders before I put them into storage last fall?' 'Where did I put the mosquito repellent?'" In the Green Bay Press Gazette, Jim Lee finds fishing after a wet spring is more about bug dope and bear sitings than he and his companions might wish.

"On about the fifth or sixth cast, my flyline jumped and I reared back on a silver torpedo. The bone ran off 30 yards of flyline effortlessly, zooming right through the school on its mad dash for freedom, which sent all the other fish scurrying for safety. 'Keep your rod tip up,' Westby hollered, but I knew that." The Washington Post's Angus Phillips has an experience in Belize's Glover's Reef that reminds him of maxim number one: never leave fish to find fish.

It's not often that an opportunity to save fishing for the next generation comes to a vote, but that's just what's happening right now in the Belize legislature. Thanks to an effort lead by Turneffe Flats lodge owner Craig Hayes, who helped fund an economic impact study showing the enormous importance of tarpon, permit and bonefish to the Belizean economy, the government may be about to designate those three fish as catch-and-release only.

Here's a great opportunity for you to get personally involved by writing a supporting letter to the Belizean ministers of tourism and fishing so that it can be presented by Hayes at an important June 24 cabinet meeting. The ministers are already behind the change, but they need a "show of hands" from U.S. anglers, travelers and business people to keep the momentum going forward.

If you believe that these three fish are more valuable caught and released than they are in a fish market, please take a few minutes to write an actual letter -- not an e-mail -- expressing your thoughts.

Read the extended entry for details on how to write a supporting letter.

Robin Carey writes about a return to a childhood dream, of hunting garnets and catching cutthroats, in Gray's Sporting Journal. "A tad off center, along the crystalline axes, shone the star. So the star was there, as the cutthroat had been, but the facets were gone, and the right creek ran in another drainage."

Citing a classic George Carlin line ("If a man speaks in the forest and there's no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?"), Susan Cocking sorts through similar mysteries, such whether a permit not eating her fly signifies a bad cast -- or anything at all. "Starting with last June's trip to Mexico's southern Yucatan Peninsula, followed by a three-day July outing to our own 'Seven Sisters' Key West flats and three days last month on the flats of Placencia in southern Belize, I am beginning to think that catching a permit using a fake crab in three feet of clear water is akin to stumbling blind down a 10,000-foot mine shaft and finding the spot where the Hope Diamond is buried." In the Miami Herald.

"Centuries of tumbling, uncontrolled spring water that flows in the East Branch of the Westfield River has shaped and smoothed the rocks -- some the size of log cabins -- into comforting, almost huggable sculptures. They dot the river in a serendipitous fashion creating sort of an art gallery of nature's most appealing works; you are welcomed to step in and fish." A Worcester Telegram and Gazette writer describes the remotest part of Massachusetts's Westfield River, an important tributary of the Connecticut.

"The Esopus rises in the remote high country of the Catskill Mountains, and flows southeastward through Ulster County. Most of the fishing takes place on the 12 miles or so from Allaben, just above Phoenicia, to Boiceville. At Allaben, the Esopus gets a shot of cold water courtesy of the New York City water supply system, which pipes water from Schoharie reservoir to the Esopus, then lets it flow down the creek to Ashokan Reservoir." Morgan Lyle profiles Esopus Creek in the Schenectady, New York Daily Gazette.

On Oregon's Lower Deschutes and other western rivers, anglers wait for the annual phenomenon of the salmonfly hatch, which typically lasts only a couple of weeks. Paul Hansen, owner of the Riffle Fly Shop in Warm Springs and Bend, gives his advice on how to fish the early emergence of salmonflies, which, unlike mayflies, escape the water by crawling to the edges of rivers and streams. "'Same as every year, the first fish to look for (salmon fly) adults is in the big grass-lined banks and overlaying tree banks,' Hansen said. 'The riffles don't fish as well early on. That's the main mistake people make. Salmon flies crawl out and turn into adults, and fish don't see them until their emergence. The fish out in the middle aren't seeing any of them.'" Mark Morical in the Bend Bulletin.

Settling a dispute between guides who felt using more than two flies was hurting the trout population and those who claimed it was a traditional and accepted practice, yesterday the New Mexico Fish and Game Commission "voted unanimously to adopt the new rule limiting anglers fishing in the upper four miles of the San Juan River just below Navajo Dam to the use of two flies." Read Karl Moffatt's coverage of the issue.

Just as rivers like Montana's Bighorn suffer from dramatic changes in water release levels, similar policies exist in other large and important tailwater fisheries in the U.S. east. Many are questioning the simplistic "off or on" policies of resources managers, who seem to ignore the health of rivers in favor of pure risk management. Perhaps the best example is the West Branch of the Delaware, which was visited recently by New York Times writer Peter Kaminsky. "[Al] Caucci was gratified, but disturbed, explaining that wild fluctuations in river flow, like the one we had experienced, disorient the trout. And when a high flow is followed immediately by a precipitous drop, precious insect life is stranded to die on exposed gravel beds, thus depleting the food supply of the river."

Meanwhile, on Arkansas's North Fork River, the massive releases of this spring have caused another problem: warm-water fish invading the tailwaters. Of course dam releases here have been a response to true potential disasters, but it does show how tricky managing large impoundments can be. The state is now electro-shocking the tailwaters and transporting bass and walleye back above the dam.

And finally, in this morning's news The New York Times covers the March breaching of the Milltown dam, which few can doubt will have an enormously beneficial impact on the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers. Not surprisingly, the loudest calls for the dam's removal came after a sudden release of water in 1996 -- in response to the threat of damage from a huge ice jam -- caused a massive fish kill because of the heavy metals contained in the sediment behind the dam.

Arkansas isn't the only state that has struggled with too much water this spring. Places like Washington, Oregon and California have seen unusual winter precipitation turn into a torrent of runoff as temperatures rise. But one look at NOAA's Western Water Supply forecasts will give you a sense of perspective. Except for portions of southern Colorado and Oregon, no place is getting hit as hard as western Arkansas.

Still, high waters in Yosemite led Washington Post writer Angus Phillips to spend his days waterfall-watching rather than fly fishing. That in turn "exposed" some of the dangers of hiking in an overcrowded park: "Halfway up Willow Creek, bushwhacking through the scrub oak and pine, we rounded a bend to find a hugely fat, tattooed man stretched out on a rock, stark naked and sunning himself. The women recoiled in mock horror."

It may sound surprising that Yellowstone, Glacier and other U.S. parks popular among fly fishers could be more crowded this summer, but the low U.S. dollar may mean more Canadian and European visitors. Higher gas prices may also lead some anglers to get more "bang for their buck" by taking trips to fish-rich locales instead of flying overseas. "The Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research at the University of Montana-Missoula reported 2.083 million visits to Glacier Park in 2007, the highest in 13 years and 6 percent higher than the previous year, despite gasoline prices in the $3 a gallon range." Paul Lloyd-Davies and Jo Dee Black in the Great Falls Tribune.

To heck with what was certainly abysmal gas mileage, I say "finest" because the Nash Airflyte was the first automobile designed for for anglers and hunters who wanted a convertible bed on wheels, and because it inspired Ed Zern to write some of the best car ads of all time, according to Kit Kiefer in The New York Times. "Fly-fishing in the Catskills was the preferred sport of the outdoor writer Ed Zern, and the Au Sable was where Nash's chairman, George Mason, persuaded Zern in 1950 to write the ads that did as much for Nash's reputation as an outdoors vehicle as its comfy convertible beds. Nash began wholeheartedly pursuing hunting-and-fishing types after Mason went fly-fishing with Zern, illustrator and author of 'To Hell With Fishing' and an ad man on the Nash account."

What started as a way to mock their relative poverty became an important annual event for a generation of Pere Marquette fly fishers at this classic club. "Member Carl Graef, a former Texan who lives in Mount Pleasant, said he likes the weekend tradition because he 'absolutely lives to fly-fish.' 'This is my way of communing with God,' he said. 'This is the most beautiful place I know of. It is so far removed from the stresses of my everyday work life. You look down on this river and these trees, and they call to you.'" David V. Graham in the Flint Journal.

FamilyTravel.com editor Lynn O'Rourke Hayes gives her picks for the five best places to take the family fly fishing this summer. "1. The Gallatin Valley, Montana - If you saw Robert Redford's movie A River Runs Through It, you know how beautiful Big Sky country can be. With the Madison, Gallatin and Yellowstone rivers within easy reach, you'll return home with more fish stories than you'll have time to tell." In the Dallas Morning News.

Veteran Florida guide Rick Grasset visits Andros South lodge (www.androssouth.com), shares guides with Jimmy Buffet, and watches a client catch 17 bonefish on 17 casts. "Frank and I had one of the best days of the trip when we fished the "airplane flat" on the southwest corner of Andros with Fredlon. The broad flat, which is well offshore of Fish Key, has a crashed airplane on it left over from past drug-smuggling days. We fished one of the largest schools of bonefish that I have ever seen -thousands of fish! We caught about 30 fish each for the day and most were three-pounds or more." In the Bradenton Herald.

Already, at 7AM on Wednesday, the wind was blowing over 20 knots out of the east. We drove to an oceanside flat where fish being drawn in to several channel mouths might move our way. In the low early light, all we could do to be effective was drive the pushpole in and wait. Glenn had a few shots at passing fish, then at about 8:30 a pod of happy tarpon appeared to our left, out near some crab pots. I pulled the stake and we were able to get one shot before the wind -- now 25 knots -- made pursuit impossible. Fortunately one fish ate the fly as it was being stripped back through the school, reminding me that the wind might work in our favor on a day like today. As we turned the boat, another pod of fish was coming up inside of us and we jumped a fish out of that school as well. Soon more big blobs of fish appeared far down the flat. They were deep purple-brown in the morning sun and were moving very slowly.

When the wind is gusting over 25 knots, the best a poler can do is to keep the boat in position and keep it out of the fish as the caster does what they can with the casting direction. In this case, as we moved down to the fish I pointed the stern of the skiff at the fish and poled backwards, into the wind. This enabled Glenn to get three or four shots into each school before they bounced off the boat. Since the fish were very happy, our strategy worked, and for about two hours we were constantly into hungry fish that readily ate a yellow-orange-grizzly fly. Glenn was using a stripping basket, which was a sort of silly hood ornament in a wind like this (even if he threw the line into the basket, it just blew right out), so there were plenty of line management mishaps, but there were so many fish that we just laughed when things went awry.

Though there were still fish coming through at midday, I decided to run back east to the Toilet Bowl and pole the couple of miles of small flats there. Again we started to see strings of fish and Glenn started to connect almost right away. We saw most of the fish at the end of our pole, where another guide ran in and staked out in front of us, so we just ran back up the flat and did the pole over again to end the day. By 2PM the wind had not let up, and Glenn and I were both exhausted from chasing and casting to fish. Even though there were still fish all around us, we decided to save our strength.

The day had highlighted two lessons for windy-day fishing. One, the wind can be your friend. Even though we didn't always have the best casting positions many of our eats came with flies being stripped across or even back through the fish as they moved off. The fish were coming much closer to the boat, and sticking around longer, than they would have on a calm day. And two, stripping baskets are fine up until the point at which the wind blows over 20 knots. Then they can become an impediment, especially if you are trained to strip line into a basket that you are standing next to. In a humping wind, better to throw line into the wide recess of the boat deck behind you, even if that means stepping down with one foot to the deck as you strip.

In the Anchorage Daily News, Ken Marsh gives advice on biking to and fishing remote waters like Crescent Lake in Chugach National Forest. "My fishing tackle included a four-piece, five-weight Sage fly rod; reel with floating line; a couple of fly boxes containing a selection of my favorite lake streamers (marabou Lake Leeches, small Woolly Buggers and sparsely tied Muddler Minnows); and an assortment of dry-flies and tippet material. Beyond that, I carried a compact bicycle tire pump; first-aid kit; lighter; a basic bicycle repair kit; food; bear spray; bug dope and a light jacket."

A few days ago Glenn Pittard and I hauled my skiff down to Key West for three days of tarpon fishing, timing our arrival with the weaker tides of the month, which I like because it takes the tarpon longer to do what they are going to do with less water flow. If that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, you might want to think of it this way: tarpon are very tide-sensitive and highly predictable unless they are in full-on migration mode.

We got to the lower Keys just after the passage of a weak cold front, and day one started with a light northeast breeze and no humidity. We'd have good light all day, but I was worried about the effect of the northern slant to the wind, especially since we had heard from several guides that the fish were hard to feed ("as usual"). I headed to the backcountry to a network of channels that feed a small basin, looking for wind and tide moving the same direction, which tends to slick the surface and make tarpon more likely to roll. We saw only one fish, which rolled as he felt the boat push toward him on the shoulder of a channel.

With so few fish in this location, which is a kind of "indicator spot" for backcountry fish, we abandoned the Gulf side and ran to Butterfly Basin near the ocean. There were plenty of big tarpon there, most of them high in the water, and even at 8AM we could see laid-up fish as we moved into casting range. Unfortunately these fish were very picky, and after 20 or 30 casts and the arrival of a few more boats I decided to head west.

We fished the Jewelry Store for laid-up fish and found only a couple of pairs of fish but didn't connect. Then we ran to the Toilet Bowl on the ocean side and had a couple of quick shots before we got our first fish to eat; it was a big fish, and turned and ran back to the fly after it swam under the leader. "That's the kind of fish we're looking for," I said to Glenn. We had a couple more shots and a few fish eat the fly on the ocean, then I wanted to show Glenn some more laid-up fish so we headed to an interior basin. We began to pole a rather nondescript deep grass flat and almost immediately began to see the dim purple-gray backs of fish lying immobile in water. These fish required a lighter-colored fly, so we tied on a Coker Smoker and Glenn began throwing at groups of fish stacked like pickup sticks about 6 feet down in the water column. The first throw got an eat, then the second, and third, and fourth. We kept that up for a while, then decided to give those fish a rest, hoping they'd be there for another day or two.

After running to the end of the Lakes, we pulled in to a point not far from where some of the filming for the 1973 film "Tarpon" was done. Almost as soon as we stopped the boat I saw a school of about 80 daisy chaining tarpon about 200 yards down the flat. It was a gorgeous sight. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the fish -- who were very happy and floating around in a large counter-clockwise circle -- had their tails sticking out of the water and seemed to be actually shuddering with excitement. These were obviously new fish, fresh out of the ocean, and Glenn's first cast confirmed it. He jumped a nice fish out of this school, and played it for a while before the hook pulled. I chased the school down again and he hooked another red-hot fish, which he fought to the boat. I could still see the school, which was about 1/4 mile away, so I poled after them again and Glenn jumped another fish. We could have kept following them and jumping fish but I thought we had put them through enough.

We ended the day by running back to an oceanside channel where we could watch for fish on the high incoming. By 5:15 we decided to call it a day even though the visibility was still spectacular. The bright day and the fish had left us giddy and worn. I switched on the radio and we listened to the forecast for the next day: 15-25 knots out of the east. We slid off the flat and planed up for Garrison Bight. The thrumming of light seas against the hull reminded us of what a good day it had been.

"Most of the fishing is subsurface, and I'd estimate you will be nymphing about 80 percent of the time. But there can be sensational surface bites, typically on warm evenings in late May and early June, when shade takes over after a hot afternoon. Fly fishers should always be ready to switch between the two styles, pocket-water nymphing and dry-fly drifting." In the San Francisco Chronicle, Tom Stienstra profiles Calilfornia's Pit River, which flows from Lake Briton to Lake Shasta in Shasta National Forest.

Robert Van Riper decides that walking out the front door with fly rod in hand can be a perfectly fine answer to the question of where to go fishing this year.

Looking again at a copy of "Tarpon," the 1974 film by Guy de la Valdene and Christian Odasso of UYA Films, got me wondering more about the slice of time that produced so much interest in tarpon fishing and conservation in the Florida Keys. A little research turned up this piece by Jim Harrison in Sports Illustrated's December 1973 issue on the prominent Keys guides of the era: "When he is not enervated by bad weather, Woody Sexton gives the appearance of tremendous strength and vitality. He constitutes some sort of classic in conservative guiding; while most guides have turned to larger skiffs -- Fiber Craft or Hewes -- for the comfort of their customers, Sexton keeps his light Nova Scotia. The skiff was bought from a Hamiltonian Republican who named it Amagiri years ago after the Japanese destroyer that sank PT-109. The name is still on the skiff and has been known to vex some of the Navy personnel on the Keys."

Interestingly, the makers of "Tarpon" chose not to focus on the guides but on the fish and the slightly hallucinatory experience of fly fishing on the flats. Harrison's piece proves, I think, that the writers who were fishing there at the time understood the game very well, no doubt because of the guides, who were genuinely impassioned about the sport and not in the game to become celebrities. The film's estimation of the threat to the future of tarpon bound the writers, guides, fishermen to accept that it was all too good to last. Yet here we are, 35 years later, with most of that first generation of expert guides gone, and the tarpon are still coming.

Heading off to your favorite Montana retreat or bonefishing destination this summer? Thanks to the major airlines joining the charge-for-everything club, be prepared to pay $25 for each extra baggage item you carry. That includes rods and the wet/dry bag you might carry for waders and boots. For fly fishers, one way around the extra charge is to stuff your four-piece rods into a single suitcase along with all your other essential gear. But an even better way is to ship your gear ahead of time. Not only are you more sure of having your gear when you arrive, but it will probably be in better shape. (Even international shipments are relatively cheap if you plan ahead.)

As Joshua Brockman reports on NPR, the new fees have luggage designers looking for innovative solutions. "Rolling duffels have a lot of capacity and are increasingly popular, says Stewart Sherman, the vice president for marketing at Travelpro. Eagle Creek has a rolling duffel with a separate piece that zips onto the front -- transforming the one bag to two. And L.L. Bean has been redesigning its luggage line with lighter nylon fabrics."

Another idea: Wade wet. Or rent your waders and boots from a local fly shop. By doing so, you won't be toting wet gear back home, and you'll be practicing good environmental stewardship because you won't be providing a piggy-back service for invasive species.

Back in November, Google rather quietly implemented a "Terrain" display on Google Maps. Why is this so cool? Because if you were used to getting your topo maps online via subscription -- or if you are dedicated blueliner -- your "print screen" button now gives you access to a reasonably detailed version of a topo map (not to mention a satellite view) of your next "secret spot." If you want more detail, you still might opt to use a service like that provided by MyTopo.com, which offers an online version of a traditional topo map. But between Google's satellite and terrain versions, you may be perfectly happy with the free information that is now at your fingertips.

On FieldandStream.com, Joe Cermele writes about the results of his 900-mile, $150-a-day self-guided venture through Montana. Among the rules he discovered: "It's easy to be optimistic when you're tying up the first fly of the day. That changes when you're two hours in and have yet to hook up on the Madison when trout are boiling all over."

Many of us wonder if we'll ever have the chance to fish New Zealand's stories waters. Fewer can consider doing it in the style offered by places like Solitaire Lodge and Treetops Lodge and Estate, which are members of Small Luxury Hotels of the World and offer unparalleled access -- via helicopter -- to pristine fisheries. Sue Gough Henly writes about the two lodges, whose guides fish many of the same waters. "I recently visited two lodges (one on a lake and one tucked into the forest) near the geothermal centre of Rotorua, which some say is the trout fishing capital of the world. Solitaire Lodge and Treetops Lodge and Estate are within 40 minutes' drive of 14 lakes while more than 60 rivers and streams criss-cross the region. Eleven of the lakes and most streams are open for fly- or boat-fishing year round, with fishing at its best from October through June."

I still have shivers from reading this one. An eco-tour to an island wildlife preserve in the Pacific was extended unexpectedly when the charter plane carrying the group had engine troubles, forcing the travelers to evacuate to nearby Christmas Island. But to the probable horror of group member and fly fisher Kevin Reilly, bonefish flies are in short supply.

Patagonia sent Dave Skok a "spokesmodel" (Tom Rapone) and one of their new waterproof Stormfront packs and what did they get in return? Some pretty incredible photos of rainbow trout from the Costa Rican highlands. Moldy Chum covers the story with a cool photo montage.

As Charlie Meyers notes in the Denver Post, one day can make all the difference when runoff and water flow management combine. Catch it right, though, and the first big hatches of tiny mayflies are your reward. "The result is a deliciously maddening scenario in which small pods of free-rising trout cruise the pools slurping BWOs from the blanket of naturals coating the surface. An angler trying desperately to gauge this erratic pattern watches 20-inchers repeatedly grab flies inches from his own, an action that always prompts a rapid sucking in of breath."

"Some of the most thoughtful fly-fishing insights have come from anglers who spent their lives learning the secrets of one or two rivers. These were the kind of fly-fishers who probably wrote a single book toward the end of their fishing years that artfully condensed everything they had learned. I have always admired that." Ed Engle talks about the tug of home waters in the Boulder Daily Camera.

Looking for a new place to paddle and fish from your kayak or canoe? Check out the Great Calusa Blueway, nearly 200 miles of trail stretching through mangroves and creeks that line the coast near Sanibel and Fort Myers, Florida. I can tell you from personal experience that the trail will take you some of the best redfish and snook habitat in the area. Ellen Albanese writes about the Blueway in this morning's Boston Globe. "The trail encompasses three regions of the Gulf Coast: Estero Bay, Pine Island Sound, and the Caloosahatchee. It uses Global Positioning System coordinates and key points are marked along the trail to aid in navigation. Many routes follow trails charted some 2,000 years ago by the area's earliest inhabitants, the Calusa Indians."

Jim Casada's review of Tennessee tailwaters starts with a look back at the controversial start for the dams that have been providing such great fishing for the past half century. He goes on to suggest different strategies for fishing when the water is "on" (high and fast because of dam releases) and "off:" "Long, delicate casts and light tippets increase the likelihood of takes. Also, when the current moves so slowly as to be barely discernible, go against the dry-fly canon and fish downstream. The trout sees the fly first, as opposed to leader and tippet, and is less likely to be spooked. If fish seem particularly finicky or even the most delicate of casts puts them down, you can feed line out until the fly drifts into the fish’s feeding zone." In Tennessee Game & Fish.

If you happen to be a California fly fisher and like to plan your trips based on current reality rather than on the weatherman's conjurations, be sure to investigate the SierraVisions.com Web site, which features live pictures of more than a hundred different locations across the state. For example, they link to this more-or-less live image of the Kern River.

Locals are already testing the Clark Fork for after-effects of the Milltown Dam removal, and what they've found is encouraging. Despite increased turbidity and worries about contamination, the fishing's better than expected. "Scott Stanko, an employee at the Missoulian Angler, said, in the short term, the cloudy water might strain the fish, but in the long term, the dam’s removal will be great for fish and great for fishing. 'In the next four or five years, you’re going to see the Clark Fork become a blue ribbon fishing destination for the state,' Stanko said." Alex Tenenbaum in Montana Kaimen.

"It would be easy to skip Opening Day with its prospect of cold boots and frosty fingers. But no, that wouldn't do - spring is about to come strolling over the hill, and she and I have a longstanding agreement to spend the day together at the edge of some brook among the alders, willows, and maples celebrating life's reawakening." On Boston.com.

Bill Schneider's account of pursuing his first steelhead on a fly reminds me of the feverishness -- in my case literal -- with which I sought my first fly-caught permit.

It was July, and I had an inkling that the evening incoming tide would provide a perfect water temperature for permit in the backcountry behind Sugarloaf Key in the Florida Keys. I was young, and the fact that I had a 102-degree temperature was barely a consideration. Just the idea of seeing all those black sickle tails at sunset while standing in cool water was enough to make me throw my rod in the skiff and go. When I got to the spot -- an area of finger flats bordered by an ancient reef line that provided cover for fish in between tides -- the permit were already floating up with the incoming tide, looking for periwinkles to crush and swallow. This was before the invention of yarn flies, and the deer-hair fly I tied on weighed about as much as a child's mini-hamburger.

I must have thrown that fly in front of 100 permit before the sun set. I had a tough choice to make, because soon it would be too dark to find the narrow channels leading home. I was sweating profusely by this time and beginning to get the shakes -- apparently all this effort wasn't helping my flu symptoms, but I was bound to the experience, you might say. Another cast and suddenly my line jumped, then came tight. This was it! I lifted the rod and tried to keep my balance as the fish left for the Gulf with the rest of his school. Eventually I started getting line back and brought the fish close enough to the skiff that I could grab my net. But now it was almost completely dark, and I was having a hard time seeing the fish. I had the idea, though, that if I took a picture with my flash camera, at least I could see exactly what he looked like later. And I would have proof. I lay the fish on the bottom of the skiff, took the photo, fumbled around and got the fly out and slid the fish back in the water. I managed one of those miraculous white-knuckle return trips through the coral-head-studded backcountry, feeling quite nauseous for other reasons but embraced in a kind of angling delirium that made me forget that I was sick at all.

The next day I raced over to one-hour photo on Simonton and waited, still not feeling well enough to walk around, until the evidence was handed back to me. Shuffling through the photos, I came across a very bad picture of a smallish white permit framed in green net nylon. Everything was very dark, except for bright sides of the fish and the brilliant reflection of the camera flash in the fish's eye.

And there was the fly, a fuzzy brown blob stuck, not in the fish's mouth, but outside of his mouth, in front of his eye. I hadn't caught the fish. He was snagged.

Here's a little gem of a story featuring Washington state guide Jack Mitchell, who managed to turn the advice of Larry Lee Palmer's father into even more durable memories on the cold Upper Columbia. We added a few turns of phrase to our angling lexicon from this one, including 'bobbercators,' 'hydrotherapy,' and 'foam is home, baby.' "Mitchell roused us the next morning. He's bald, burly and has a non-stop patter geared to enthuse his constituency. Fishing rods are 'sticks,' and 'hydrotherapy' is the relaxation and insight gathered while plying the river with sticks."

As Bill Scheider describes it, it's a "pandemic with no cure." Pretty hard to argue with someone who has so obviously succumbed, except to wonder if he is indeed hoping for treatment. "Not only do steelheaders miss a lot of work (if they still have a job) and family dinners (if they’re still married), but even when they aren’t on the river, they can’t concentrate on anything else because they’re thinking about being on the river. At the office, you can easily spot them. Remember the movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Now you understand how Steelhead Fever manifests itself." In New West.

Gary Borger, Thad Robison, Tim Pask, Tom Dickson, Greg Grip, and Erin Mooney cast their votes for the world's top trout and salmon destinations on MSNBC. "'Nothing, even having a tigerfish take a Dahlberg Diver from the surface of the Zambezi River, compares to watching a 35-pound Atlantic salmon rise up from the Petite Cascapedia River bottom,' says Tom Dickson, long-time trout nut and editor of Montana Outdoors." Article by Greg Breining.

"As it flows to the lake through an industrial valley, the river witnesses graffiti-lined walls and abandoned factories. Its water is sullied by discarded shopping carts and urban runoff. But, too, the river meanders past stands of hardwoods and newly restored banks. Last weekend the river was dressed in its Easter finest: The sun dappled like diamonds in the riffles, marshmallow snow blanketed the banks and striped the trees." Paul Smith gets his bell wrung by a steelhead on one of Wisconsin's little urban anomalies, the Menomonee River in Milwaukee.

Meanwhile the anglers arriving on Wisconsin's Brule at 2 AM are dismayed to find two cars already in the parking lot. "Anglers were right about one thing. It was cold in the darkness before dawn. Right at 20 degrees. A half-moon rode a starry sky above the boughs of white pines. Anglers built small fires for warmth as they staked out favorite runs. Fishing wouldn’t be legal until half an hour before sunrise, about 6:25 a.m." Sam Cook in the Duluth News Tribune.

"Most cutthroat in the lower Rogue and Illinois rivers are sea-runs, whose life history mirrors steelhead, including time in the ocean and a river return for spawning. The vast majority of upper Rogue cutthroats are called 'fluvials.' They use the main-stem Rogue like the sea, dropping into the Rogue to feed most of the year before heading into tributaries like Elk Creek to spawn." Mark Freeman writes about what serious anglers do on the Upper Rogue when steelhead are scarce. In the Oregon Mail Tribune.

Joe Doggett reappears in the Houston Chronicle (thankfully) writing about two people who were instrumental in bringing fly fishing to waters around Rockport, Texas. I've fished with Dave Hayward, who is now Orvis's southwest regional manager, in both Texas and the Keys, and he is easily qualified to be a professional guide in his own right. Chuck Scates was a name in the business at a time when fly fishers were just discovering the fabulous sight fishing in Aransas Bay. "Hayward redeemed the choke with an excellent cast on a 27-inch redfish weaving through water so shallow the gleaming back was exposed. The fish snatched the fly and turned against the positive strip strike. Five minutes later, Hayward held the red against the hull, then opened his hands for a clean release. Scates grinned from the poling platform. 'It's a lot easier when you wait until they get the fly in their mouth, eh?'"

On Fly Talk, Kirk Deeter lines up a perfect schedule for the North American fly fisher. Sure, he left out October permit in Key West, but on the whole this list is fodder for more than a few daydreams. "August: Early Mako Sharks, off San Diego (new moon); Early-Mid Tricos, Missouri River, Montana, below Holter Dam; Mid callibaetis hatch, Silver Creek Idaho, Madison Arm of Hebgen Lake (gulpers); Mid-Late Stimmies and beetles, San Miguel River near Telluride, Colorado; Late Hoppers! on the South Fork, Idaho."

Forbes Traveler polls Lefty Kreh, Tim Holschlag, Tim Pask and others for their opinions on the best North American fishing spots. “'When it comes to monster pike, Saskatchewan’s Wollaston Lake is hard to beat,' says Tim Holschlag, fishing guide and writer whose beat reaches from his Minneapolis home far north into Canada." The article by Greg Breining includes a slideshow of the experts' top picks.

The Free Argentine Waters blog reported today that three US citizens were deported from Chile after being caught guiding professionally under tourist visas, which of course don't allow someone to work in the country.

Virtual Angler blogger Nick Mills tells an interesting story about an abortive attempt to catch trout in Afghanistan and his subsequent research, which turned up some history on the country's brown trout, which were first mentioned in the writings of Herodotus and Marco Polo. "As for the origin of the brown trout, Jean-José wrote a book, La pêche à la truite en Afghanistan, in which he theorizes that the trout migrated from Europe in meltwater streams at the end of the last Ice Age." In Maine Today.

"This is a sport, all wrapped up in mystique like a Christmas gift draped in colorful ribbons. It is a mood, as well as being a happy form of spring enchantment. Not everyone can be a steelheader and not everyone wants to chase these fish." Dave Richey describes the impulse to fish for steelhead as not unlike the same impulse that pushes steelhead upstream. In Michigan's Travis City Record.

Brian Strickland mentions the Cache la Poudre River near Fort Collins and the Conejos River in the southwest part of the state as good bets for trout streams on the upswing in 2008. "For several minutes, the flex in my 5-weight Sage fly rod played this 20-inch hog. After several drag-ripping runs, my 7X tippet could only take so much and with the next hard tug, it snapped and brought this fly-fishing junky to his knees." In Rocky Mountain Game & Fish magazine.

Ed Dentry reports that in Colorado snowpacks in almost all areas are nearing 100% of average, with many areas reaching far above that level. "The heartiest heaps are in southern Colorado: upper Rio Grande, 163 percent; Arkansas, 155 percent; San Miguel, Dolores, Animas and San Juan, 152 percent; Gunnison, 145 percent. Northern Colorado also has been dealt generous snow: upper Colorado River, 129 percent; Yampa and White, 112 percent; North Platte, 111 percent; South Platte, 110 percent." In the Rocky Mountain News.

Meanwhile Montana is looking at a similar picture, with snowpacks near or much above average in most districts.

What's it all mean for trout and trout anglers? A healthy scouring of streambeds, plenty of water for spawning fish, a season that will stretch into fall, and maybe even a quieting of the fight over resources that has marked recent summers.

Think carp are cagey? Think permit are paranoid? You've obviously never met a Pine Island redfish. Whether it is because of the constant roar of big outboards or the simple fact that the waters between Boca Grande and Fort Myers are a redfish nursery and only the skittish survive, the area holds some of the most difficult redfish in the U.S. Norm Zeigler writes about it in this morning's New York Times. "The redfish of southwest Florida’s lower Caloosahatchee River estuary, which includes Pine Island Sound, Matlacha Pass and San Carlos Bay, have a well-deserved reputation as some of the spookiest in the United States. Locals refer to them as Pine Island Sound bonefish."

"It's a hard place to dislike. The Rose is a gin-clear freestone stream that tumbles out of the Blue Ridge into a picturesque farm valley in the shadow of Old Rag Mountain, an hour and a half's drive west of the Beltway." Angus Phillips writes in The Washington Post about the pay-per-rod operation of Douglas Dear, board chairman of Project Healing Waters, a national nonprofit organization that teaches injured veterans how to tie flies and fly fish.

The good news in many western U.S. states this year is that they are seeing snows like they haven't seen in twenty years. The bad news -- if you can call it that -- is that runoff conditions will be extreme in many places and last longer than they have in years. And in those fisheries below impounded water, like New Mexico's San Juan, large releases are completely changing the character of early season fishing. Sante Fe New Mexican journalist Karl Moffat writes about last week's abrupt end to wading on the San Juan: "The higher flow of 5,000 CFS not only delivers stored water downstream to designated users but also mimics the annual spring flooding experienced by natural rivers. The higher flow helps scour out silt and sediment in the riverbed which promotes a healthier fish habitat."

In The New York Times, James Prosek reports on a trip to the Agua Boa river, near the border between Brazil and southern Venezuela. "The peacock bass is notorious for taking flies and lures with brutal predatory focus, and once hooked is a relentless fighter. I soon learned that these were not like largemouth bass (they are not closely related) when I attempted to land a 14-pounder by hand. The sandpapery teeth and steel-trap jaws shredded my thumb. As I watched the blood cascade down my hand and wrist, I momentarily woke from my jet lag and realized I was in the Amazon."

"His head still pounding from too much goat-milk vodka the night before, Justin Crump makes the best of idle time waiting for his backwoods shuttle van to pick him up along the true backwaters of Mongolia. Onto massive saltwater hooks, Crump lashes foot-long strands of coarse hair trimmed off a yak's back at a nearby village. It's a new streamer fly the wayward anglers have concocted to pick a fight with taimen, those 40-pound, 50-year-old Mongolian trout that Crump and his band of fishing bums are after." Mark Freeman chases the free-range videographers to Mongolia and around the states in this article about the origins of the Fly Fishing Film Tour.

Seven years before ESPN's somewhat stilted production of Guide House (featuring Paul Dixon, Brendan McCarthy, Amanda Switzer, Matthew Miller, and Bryan Goulart), Dixon was profiled in New York magazine by writer Guy Martin. Besides noting Dixon's annoyance at Peter Kaminsky for wanting to eat his fish, Martin captured some nice subtleties about the sport and the person. "Martha Stewart's $400,000 Hinckley 'picnic boat,' the Skylands II, lolls -- as its owner would loll if its owner were a half-million-dollar pleasure boat -- primly buttoned under a white canvas skirt. Not fifteen feet away, a sun-blasted captain named Paul Dixon engages in the martial preflight check of his craft, a twenty-foot Hewes skiff so shorn of detail that it looks like it's been stripped for refitting: no cabin, no above-deck cleats, no seats with backs, no rail."

Washington Post writer Richard Morin describes El Pescador lodge in Ambergris Caye, Belize as one of the most likely places to catch a grand slam -- a bonefish, permit and tarpon on fly. "'Strip! Strip!' ordered fishing guide Kachu Marin, crouched next to my friend Mike Traugott on the forward platform of the 23-foot panga. Mike began to strip in his fly line in short, deliberate tugs. Fifty feet from the skiff and three feet down in the greenish-blue water, the tiny fly inched forward erratically along the sandy bottom." This is a more thorough piece than you'll normally see in a newspaper, with some interesting side notes on the family who runs the lodge and on Ambergris itself.

For more on fly fishing in Belize, check out MidCurrent's Belize Trip Guide.

One of the worst effects of large forest fires is that they invite erosion and stream siltation -- bad news for juvenile trout that literally get ground up by the sediment. It will likely take many years before the silt resulting from the 2002 Cheesman fire is fully flushed from the South Platte, but meanwhile biologists continue to stock juvenile rainbows and browns and say the river is coming back to life. Matt Gray provides an update on the popular fishery near Denver and quotes local expert Pat Dorsey: "'The fishery has changed, from the standpoint that there are more brown trout now, and they can be a little tougher to catch. They have really taken to the river now, and depending on what section you’re in, the ratio of browns to rainbows can be 60 to 40.'” In Rocky Mountain Game & Fish.

"Thin silver crystals of ice shimmered in the air. The fly landed just above the feeding trout and floated high on the ripples. The surface erupted as the fish struck. I raised the rod tip, pulled down firmly on the line and felt the weight and fury of the brown." While schools close and ice fishermen huddle in their shacks, Brian Jones takes his bamboo rod to northwestern Utah's Weber river tailwaters and fishes for big browns. His complete guide appears on Rocky Mountain Game & Fish.

Ken Allen points anglers to Maine's top spring trout and landlocked salmon fishing via DeLorme's Maine Atlas and Gazetteer. "One wonderful region of Maine takes a little effort to reach because of its remoteness -- the Munsungan and Mooseleuk area north of Baxter State Park. Check out Map 57, B-2 for Mooseleuk Stream and Map 56, C-5 for Munsungan Lake and the blue-ribbon brookie ponds west of this lake." On MaineToday.com.

Among the highlights of Bill Graves's billfish adventure was saving a large green turtle from death-by-longliner. "If and when a sailfish does appear, it’s the first mate’s job to keep pulling the teaser away from him, enraging the fish into more violent attacks. Once the teaser of interest is within casting range, the mate jerks it away and the angler casts an 8/0 fly about the size of a robin into the path of the hot sailfish." In the Bangor (Maine) Daily News.

Saying that the snagging of wild steelhead has gotten out of control, FFF's northern California members are asking the state to close the popular 26-mile section of the river from Nimbus Dam to the Sacramento River during February and March. "The lower stretch of the American has nearly shriveled into a muddy ribbon compared to its typical rippling abundance because of stingy dam releases, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. That isn't likely to change during the next two months because, even with the recent storms, there isn't enough snowmelt to spare more water, said Ron Milligan of the bureau's Central Valley Project." M.S. Enkoji in the Sacramento Bee.

Some outfitters are angered by a new 3% "tax" on revenues they will have to pay while guiding clients on the Madison, but others -- including the state and many private anglers -- are saying the license fee is good medicine for a river that is suffering from ever-increasing pressure and lack of management. While public comment will be taken by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks up until February 15, it looks like the license is a done deal, at least for this year. A story in the Bozeman Chronicle by Daniel Person describes the hubbub and the state response (note: at this time, the link does not seem to work in the lastest version of Internet Explorer, but does work in Firefox). (Thanks to reader John DeVault for bringing this story to our attention.)

Also, we are still trying to figure out what "rouge guides" are. If anyone knows, please clue us in.

Though I seriously doubt anyone is paying $750 for "rubber" waders, there's little question that as baby boomers move to the countryside -- enabled by the Internet and a changing job culture -- they are transforming rural areas. In The Wall Street Journal, Conor Daugherty describes how the demands of affluent retirees and wired businesspeople are bringing rapid change to quiet backwaters. "'What we're seeing is a class colonization,' says Peter Nelson, an associate professor of geography at Middlebury College and an expert on rural migration. 'It really represents a shift in the nature of the economy from a resource-extraction economy to an aesthetic-based economy.'" Be sure to check out the map of locales that have become rural money magnets.

A break in winter weather can mean the appearance of the year's first big meals for hungry trout on California's Yuba. "Skwalas have a distinctive profile that the trout key in on and a good imitation is called for. They stand on the surface film with their wings folded flat on their backs. The profile is about an inch long and less that a quarter-inch wide. They can ride the current this way for as far as you can see them. This bug is the first large portion meal these fish have seen since the salmon egg feasts of Halloween." Denis Pierce on TheUnion.com.

In the February issue, editors at Field & Stream list their twenty choices for the best fishing towns in the U.S. Glenwood Springs, Colorado is on the top of the heap. "It's the geographic center of the best flyfishing in the state: The Roaring Fork and Colorado Rivers merge right in town, and the Eagle River, the Frying Pan, and the Gunnison are easy day trips. In any season (even the dead of winter), there's always at least one world-class flyfishing option." The rest of the top ten:

2. Mountain Home, Ark.
3. Traverse City, Mich.
4. Bozeman, Mont.
5. Minocqua, Wis.
6. Apalachicola, Fla.
7. Nantucket, Mass.
8. Bend, Ore.
9. Guntersville, Ala.
10. Morehead City, N.C.

Apparently the folks in Missoula, Montana, which came in eleventh, disagree with any listing of their town as a good fishing base. "It's too cold up here," one commenter said, "You won't like it."

January, to fly fishers who aren't enjoying Patagonia, New Zealand or a cold Beliken beer on some secret Central American patch flat, is typically pure downtime. But a cadre of steelheaders in the U.S. northwest is hard at play, doing what they look forward to all year long: stalking and sight-casting to big, solitary steelhead. Of course you have to know the spots. And with that comes dues-paying and various oaths of secrecy.

On MidCurrent this week confessed steelhead junkie Kevin Wright gives us a little taste of how one of his recent trips turned out in "Sasquatch Style."

Turneffe Flats lodge in Belize has a few openings left in January and February and is reducing its rates for a few key weeks. See the extended entry for the press release and details.

"A plane carrying 14 people, including eight Italians and one Swiss passenger, crashed into the sea close to a group of Venezuelan islands on Friday and had not yet been found, officials said." Los Roques is a popular bonefish destination for fly fishers, and the Transaven-operated aircraft are the standard way for anglers to get to and from the islands.

The Big Thompson is a tributary of the Platte River and flows eastward out of Rocky Mountain Park and down the slopes of Colorado's rockies. Mike Oakley says forget about gear in the dead of winter -- staying warm is the chief requirement -- and take the smallest black flies you can find. You'll have plenty of company. "'Doesn’t anybody work anymore,' Hatch asked. That’s sort of a running joke between us, though for some reason both of us had imagined having the river mostly to ourselves -- as if every Colorado fly fisherman living north of I-70 and east of the Continental Divide who’d already bought their 2008 license was not keenly aware that the Big Thompson below Olympus Dam is about the only game going on the Front Range between November and April." In the Estes Park Trail-Gazette.

Oh, the stories I could tell. In the Miami Herald, Susan Cocking writes about long-time fly fishing guide Jan Isley, his role in the development of the first effective permit flies, and his return to Key West. "Today, after an almost 20-year absence, Isley, who is 59, is back in Key West, guiding light-tackle and fly-fishing clients in his Dolphin Super Skiff out of Hurricane Hole Marina. 'If I were going to fish somewhere else, it would take me too long to learn the area,' Isley said. 'It's a little late when you're 59 to come up with a new career.'''

Do yourself a favor and book Jan for some fishing. You'll touch a little history and fish with one of the most interesting and talented guides to ever come out of the Florida Keys. (305) 295-3596 or (985) 264-8332.

John Gifford reports on a trip to Deadman's Cay, off Long Island, in the far southern Bahamas, noting that the landscape on the island first "discovered" by Columbus features incredible vistas, and that one pays a price for not bringing rain gear. "An hour after the rain had ended, a 9-weight fly rod in hand and battling a 30-pound blacktip shark, I looked up to see a trio of waterspouts in the distance. They danced, receded and eventually dissipated on the horizon as a beam of sunlight filtered through an aperture in the clouds, illuminating and enhancing the blue water around us." From Oklahoma's NewsOK.com.

You too can have a trailer on stilts for less than $400,000. And if you have to ask what a house on Shark Key costs, you can't afford it. Yes, in many ways it is exactly what Charles Passy reports in The New York Times: a Jimmy Buffet song come to life. (Side note: Jimmy Buffet is getting into the casino business and just leased a twenty-some-thousand-foot business space in Orlando to help him sell paraphernalia to parrotheads.)

"Prospective members, [club president] Arias warned, should be willing to fish through violent thunderstorms, float jungle rivers at night, and drop everything, including jobs or family members, when the snook and tarpon run the coastal rivers." In The New York Times, Dave Sherwood investigates the mania that grabs members of the Costa Rican National Fishing Club, who will do just about anything to fish for big, toothy critters among the crocodiles and mosquitos of the country's interior.

We just got word that the 4.5-hour flights that allowed anglers to reach Kamchatka from Anchorage, Alaska will be back after a three-year hiatus. Beginning July 7, 2008 Vladivostok Air will offer the twice-weekly service using brand new 142-seat TU 204-300 aircraft. This makes the trip for U.S. anglers exponentially shorter and allows anglers to be at camp fishing the same day they left the US. It also makes the return trip a one-day affair. For more information, contact William Blair at www.thebestofkamchatka.com or (530) 941-8524.

Veteran steelhead guide John Nagy is releasing an expanded and updated edition of his Steelhead Guide: Flyfishing Techniques and Strategies for Lake Erie Steelhead (Great Lakes Publishing, December 2007, 320 pages). The 4th edition has 119 new and innovative steelhead fly patterns contributed by guides, fly tiers and steelhead fly fisherman from all over the Lake Erie region -- 44 tiers in all. Deborah Weisberg writes about the upcoming book and a couple of the hot patterns from the book's "Deadly Dozen," including Greg Senyo's Wiggle Stone, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "The Wiggle Stone is patterned after the stonefly nymph that abounds on Great Lakes tributaries, and gets its lifelike movement from its jointed construction. 'Stoneflies cling or crawl; they don't swim. When dislodged from rocks, they move frantically, trying to find something to grab onto,' said Senyo, whose Jag Fly Co. employs tiers in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan."

You can pre-order a copy of Nagy's new book from his Web site.

You might never see a Hell's Bay skiff on an Argentinian river. Nor are you likely to see a wrangler stack his saddle and personal effects on the foredeck for a ferry ride, unless, of course, you watch this video that Kirk Deeter and Tim Romano dug up on Field & Stream's Fly Talk blog.

It is almost impossible to explain to someone who hasn't fully invested themselves in guiding for a number of years what being a good guide requires. Taking enormous energy and personal flexibility, it's simply one of those things that you won't fully understand until you live and breath it. Almost inevitably, a long-time guide begins to ask himself or herself "Why?" Coloradan Gary Hubbell guided for 20-odd years before recently deciding that he had given up enough. Here's his well-written explanation, complete with thanks to the horses.

"Tim Alpers' Owens River Ranch, one of the more famous trout-fishing ranches in the West, will close to fishing if the proposed sale of the property is finalized." Ed Zieralski in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Thanks to a regular and smaller number of releases from the Wolf Creek Dam, whose repair is the focus of the Army Corps of Engineers, the brown trout in this tailwater fishery are doing quite well, despite forecasts of a massive die-off. But it's anybody's guess what normal rains would bring; the southeast U.S. has experienced severe drought now for several months. "Conditions also are perfect for brown trout to spawn, and Dreeves says they probably have. Whether the eggs will survive to produce little trout depends largely on the weather. Heavy winter rains would restart the power-generation process, tailwater levels would jump significantly and any trout eggs probably would be lost." Gary Garth in the Louisville Courier-Journal.

"It took about 2 1/2 hours to reach our destination -- the Savegre Mountain Hotel in the village of San Gerardo de Dota. The hotel is located in the so-called cloud forest, deep in a valley along the Savegre river, but still 7,000 feet above sea level. The climate and terrain were much different than what we'd seen at Tiskita. It was chilly, in the 50s, and the setting appeared more European than Central American. Oak and spruce trees outnumbered palm." Ben Sturtevant survives Cerro de la Muerte ("the mountain of death") and boot-chafed calves to fish for rainbows with Dave Sherwood deep inside Costa Rica. On MaineToday.com.

Late fall and early winter are a great time to take advantage of clear water and eager redfish along the south Texas coastline. "I make the move to the left just as the thick-shouldered red is illuminated by a shaft of light. The fly drops softly a foot past him but he's moved further left and I'm still just off his tail. 'Strip out anyway,' [guide Chuck] Naiser says and I do, just as the fish turns back toward the grassy shore and sees the white Seaducer squirt by." In the Austin American-Statesman.

Kamchatka. Sounds like it's far away, and it is, for most anglers in Western Hemisphere and Europe. But for the past 30 years it has tantalized adventurous anglers with big, wild fish, incredible scenery, and an excess of elbow room. Of course as Pat Pendergast's rollicking report of a recent trip reminds us, leaving place in your luggage for a good sense of humor and a hopeful spirit is always a wise idea when preparing to fishing Russia's rainbow trout heaven.

Read "Kamchatka: Wade Deep, Fish Hard" on MidCurrent.

Australia's Peter Morse talks about the four species of bonefish found around his native land, the jaw-dropping power of New Guinea Bass, the amazing species of fish found on the Australian mainland, and wade fishing in the land of crocodiles. On New Guinea bass: "There are two species: one is the black bass and the other is the spot-tail bass, and I recall when I was guiding up there a fellow landed a spot-tail bass about 35 pounds. And we used to lip-gaff these things and lift them into the boat for photographs, and as it came in this 35-pound bass spewed up a whole possum." New on MidCurrent.

We've fly fished throughout the Caribbean and have a few favorite spots that we would return to on a moment's notice. On the top of that list is Belize, a country no larger than Massachusetts but with one of the richest coastlines in the Western hemisphere. Permit don't live in ugly places, and there are lots of permit in Belize. And bonefish. And tarpon. And even snook.

With our Belize guide, we're launching a new series of electronic handbooks for travel to fly fishing destinations all over the world. All our guides will feature map "mashups" that show key locations and give you a way to place a destination geographically. We'll try to distill as much information as possible -- costs, fly and gear selections, lodging and travel info -- and hopefully give you a jump-start on preparing for your next trip. Enjoy MidCurrent's "Fly Fishing Trip Guide: Belize."

The number of steelhead showing up in the Trinity this season is also drawing large numbers of anglers from those areas like the Sacramento Valley where fishing is slow. "This year's run is headed toward eclipsing last year's record return of these sea-run rainbow trout. The weir counts at Willow Creek on the lower end of the river have been consistently over 1,000 fish per week. In contrast, I can remember years when the entire run was counted in hundreds for an entire season." Denis Peirce on TheUnion.com.

PAGE, Ariz., Oct. 24 – The scenery here on Lake Powell is just extraordinary. At about 186 miles long and hard on the border between Arizona and Utah, the big lake is tightly framed by towering red-sandstone cliffs that seem to glow in morning sunlight. They are the exposed remains of the vast Colorado River canyon complex flooded by Glen Canyon dam in the 1960s, where the watery fingers of countless side canyons now hold smallmouth bass and landlocked stripers.

Jason Brunner and I are scheduled to fish together this morning. He is a talented young rod designer for St. Croix Rod Company, which is hosting this trip. We’ve spent the night on a houseboat anchored some 30 miles up-lake from the main marina at Page, which is near the dam at the lake’s southern end.

I am drinking coffee, squinting at the rising sun, and feeling just the touch of an ache in my arthritic knees. “So, Jason,” I say, as he appears, ready to go in full fishing garb. “You need to know something. I am The Old Guy, and you are The Young Guy. Do you understand about this?”

Brunner doesn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, I do,” he says. “It’s like the Old Bull and the Young Bull.” I’m immediately laughing and ask him to explain.

“Well,” he says, “the Young Bull and the Old Bull are standing on a hillside overlooking a pasture full of cows. The Young Bull is prancing around, all excited, and says to the Old Bull, ‘Let’s run down there and [bleep] some of those cows!’

“The Old Bull just shakes his head. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘Let’s walk down there and [bleep] all of them.’"

I choked on my coffee, fortunately near the side of the boat. Then I got a second cup with which to toast his wisdom, unusual for a young angler. We killed some more time warming ourselves like rock-bound cormorants in the growing sunlight. Finally I felt like fishing, so we hopped on a bass boat and ran off to catch small stripers with fast-sinking fly lines and chartreuse Clouser minnows.

"This past week, my late father must have been rolling in his grave. His only son skipped deer hunting on the second open day of the regular firearms season to fly-fish the Solon stretch of the Kennebec River. 'What kind of effete elitist would fly-fish during deer season?' he would have asked." Ken Allen is rewarded for thinking the timing is perfect for a blue-winged olive hatch on Maine's Kennebec River.

BARNSTABLE, Mass., Oct. 8 -- We are fishing through a lowery day on Cape Cod; drizzling rain, patches of fog, and a gentle southwest breeze that drifts our skiff silently along the marsh-grass edges where striped bass lurk.

Four of us—my wife Martha, son Jason, daughter-in-law Milena, and myself—alternately toss flies or jigs and are enjoying a steady pick of stripers that range from 4 to about 8 pounds. Small silversides and juvenile bunker have followed the flooding tide into the grasses, trying to escape the cruising bass. Today’s fly of choice is a size 4 chartreuse-over-white Clouser Deep Minnow.

In the midst of all this, I happen to notice that a large praying mantis has landed on top of Martha’s rain hat. This is a big bug, perhaps six inches long, and it sits there among the raindrops facing forward as if to watch the action. There is no panic over the new arrival. We collectively decide to leave it alone to see what might happen next.

As the tide begins ebbing, small groups of stripers start breaking water in the growing current between the small islands. I had hoped to help Milena get her first fly-rod striper and the aggressively feeding fish are a perfect opportunity.

I stop the boat at the upcurrent end of a narrow channel, and cut the motor. Some surface-breaking bass obligingly start feeding toward us. Milena casts, a bass takes, and after a little give and take is flopping at the end of a Boga-Grip. Mission accomplished.

Milena’s happy with the fish but not with my fly rod. “That 10-weight is a telephone pole!” she says, shaking her head. “Why do you need such a big rod?”

I explain that a seven- or eight-weight would do fine for the small bass we are encountering, except for a couple of things. First, I sometimes toss big, herring-size flies for stripers, for which casting a ten-weight is essential. Then, too, a lighter rod just won’t cut it when fighting bigger bass of 20 pounds or more. Fish of that size and larger are always a possibility, even in the shallow backwaters of a salt marsh. Should I hook one, a ten-weight gives me ample pulling power with which to land it in reasonable fashion.

Some hours pass. More rain comes and goes. The mantis remains unmoving, even as Martha moves about the boat and lands her share of stripers.

Ultimately, it’s time. We leave the breaking fish and head for the boat ramp. The skiff is hauled out, plugs are pulled, and tie-downs are secured. Our mantis companion still adorns the bright blue hat. Martha takes the hat off and holds it in some bushes. The mantis crawls slowly away, and we start our own long drive back north.

"'I'd have to say that September, October and early November are my favorite times of the year to fish,' said Willhelm, education coordinator for the Federation of Fly Fishers in Livingston and a master casting instructor. 'For a lot of people, it's about getting away from the rat race.'" Be sure to check out the video that features Wilhelm fishing the Boulder during some classic fall weather in Montana. Brett French in the Billings Gazette.