On New West, Bill Schneider comes up with a pretty good set of questions to ask before deciding where to deplane for your next fishing adventure. Example: "Ask if guides fish. As far as I'm concerned, if I'm paying for a guide, he (and it's almost always a he), should not fish. Instead, he should help his clients catch fish, period."

But if you really must, casting instructor Rob Kolakowski offers a good introduction to picking the right spey line for the job in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune."Skagit lines are quite aggressive and used to cast big flies and heavy sink-tips at closer ranges. These lines are available for single or double hand rods. They were first available as shooting heads, but now I also see them as a full lines with running line attached."

Video: Steve Rajeff describes the three main styles of spey casting

Since Labare's book came out last year it's gotten plenty of media attention, so there's no need to heap on praise, but I will add that the book itself is very well produced and that it has added more then $5400 to the coffers of Trout Unlimited and the Grand Lake Stream Historical Society -- both good reasons to give it a closer look. A review on DownEast.com is especially worth reading, and you can find an excerpt on the Fly Rod and Reel Web site.

According to Jeff Lund, the 1800s provides a perfect answer in the neck-beard, a "Thoreauly" independent and fishy expression of personal style. "This-dude-is-so-sweet-we-say-all-three-of-his-names, Ralph Waldo Emerson penned, 'Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.' Is there a better way to live than letting the wild air get stuck in your throat beard? I think not."

As I noted a couple of weeks ago, one solution is simply leaving your camera in the outside environment for a couple of hours before shooting. But another way -- favored by many pro photographers -- is to make a permanent home for silica gel or desiccants within a waterproof pack or bag.

These products can be bought at most high end camera stores and are fairly compact items, easily slipping in a camera bag. They range in price from anywhere from a couple of bucks up to $30 or $40 dollars and work by sucking the moisture off of items and containing it within themselves -- kind of like rice does in salt shakers.

But if you're like me, free is always better. I've found that my local pharmacy has an endless supply of silica gel and desiccants in every shape and size you could conceive of. Apparently almost every drug in the world comes packaged with them and pharmacists just throw them out. Next time you're in need of some camera drying magic simply roll on down to the pharmacy and ask for their extras.

You can read the full results in Milne's report.

"THERE ARE REALLY two levels of information involved in answering this question: first I'll explain the simple mechanics of the editing-and-publishing processes, and then we'll get into some ways you can increase your odds of having a story accepted for publication."

Traditional layering wisdom focuses on the importance of using only synthetic fabric: after all, if you put a pair of cotton long johns on under even the most expensive polypropylene shell, you're still going to be wearing a sponge by the end of the day. However, thanks to some new (old) technology, we now need to add an important caveat. Not ALL organic fabrics are verboten for layering. In fact, wool is one of the best baselayer fabrics known to man.

Tom Rosenbauer recommended the Woolly Bugger as one of eight essential patterns in his The Orvis Fly-Tying Manual, "the Woolly Bugger was first tied in 1967 by Russell Blessing of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who added a marabou tail to a Woolly Worm in an attempt to imitate a hellgrammite, a big mean larva of a dobsonfly. I saw the fly about five years later on the upper Beaverkill. I was sitting on edge of a deep pool with Ron Kusse, a bamboo rod maker who was running the old Leonard Rod Company at the time. It was one of those midday breaks in August when you realize you won't catch a fish for seven hours, when the sun leaves the water. 'Wanna see something amazing?' Rod asked."

As Gary Soucie wrote in his book Woolly Wisdom, Blessing had some specific advice on how to fish his favorite pattern, starting by "dead-drifting the Bugger, 'to see what happens.' If that doesn't produce, he will add jigging motions on the strip, jig it back at the end of the drift ... and across the current and let it swing, use hand-strip retrieves. 'Sometimes,' he says, 'it takes fast strips. Some of the guys around here will strip it as fast as they can.'

'Almost everything works, some of the time.' Amen to that."

"Off the top of my head, I would like to go fly-fishing again. I have fly-fished on vacation a bunch, but last year I went here in town. I have lived here for almost 15 years now and did not know you could fly-fish in Cleveland." Sarah Crump on Cleveland.com.

"In those days there was no way I could have made my living at tournament casting, but I didn't want to find myself happily teaching dance at age 75, without having fulfilled my fishing dreams. So I turned professional as a caster, giving sport show demonstrations, and a line manufacturer gave me part-time work as a good-will representative, calling on its Eastern dealers. I had no ambition to be rich - just happy, in the fishing field."

Where Cool Waters Flow on Amazon.

Simply go to this link and follow the instructions and you'll have a chance at winning a $1000 Orvis gift card or a complete Helios fly rod outfit. Once images are uploaded you can also vote for your favorite. (Each vote costs a buck, but 100% of it goes to American Rivers to fund river preservation efforts.) The final judging will be done by a panel of contest judges. Winners will not be judged by the outcome of the online voting, but the image voted most popular by the masses will be featured on the Orvis website tough. Good luck.