From Lefty Kreh's early days as an outdoors journalist to his many second-career accomplishments as a photographer, marksman, writer, and fly fisher, this well-traveled angler has been an inspiration to generations. Listen as he recounts his career in post-War biological weapon manufacture, demonstration marksmanship, and fly rod design.

Listen to the Podcast (38:15 - 37MB)
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Interviewer: Zach Matthews | Itinerant Angler

Podcast Excerpt: "When I first started in the forties, I went fishing with Joe Brooks, who was the most famous fly fisherman of that time. I was so impressed with how good he was that I asked him to give me a fly casting lesson. So I drove 50 miles to Baltimore in a Model A Ford where he lived, and he selected -- and I paid for -- an outfit. And then he left town -- I'm not sure whether he left town because of my lesson or not -- but anyway I bought a fiberglass rod and was told that it would break as soon as the weather got cold because it was made of glass. They were very new then and they were very bad. They were very floppy, the modulus of the glass was not good, they were full of glue, but you could still cast them."

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Few anglers in the history of the sport have achieved mastery over their chosen specialty on the level of Simon Gawesworth. Listen in as he takes us from the origins of spey casting on the river Spey in Scotland to a common sense explanation of spey techniques, and then on to modern spey casting in the Pacific Northwest.

Listen to the Podcast (35:04 - 31MB)
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Interviewer: Zach Matthews | Itinerant Angler

Podcast Excerpt: "If you want to know exactly what a spey cast is, it's a form of flycasting that changes direction and is perfect for a limited backcasting space. It kind of stems from roll casting -- if people know what a roll cast is they are halfway on the road to knowing what spey casting is. That's regardless of whether it is a single-handed roll or a two-handed roll, or a ten-foot cast or a 175-foot cast."

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

It's easy to think Brian O'Keefe has done it all. He's traveled the world as a fly fisherman and photographer and fished in many of the places most of us just dream about. While sharing plenty of good advice on photography, O'Keefe takes us through a few favorite stories, beginning in New Zealand and ending up on the India/Pakistan border, where an armed confrontation ends as they all should: with someone buying a beer.

Listen to the Podcast (41:44 - 40MB)
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Interviewer: Zach Matthews | Itinerant Angler

Podcast Excerpt: "In 1973, when I told a lot of my friends that I was going to New Zealand, they thought it was like New Guinea or New Caledonia or some real exotic place like that. Those in the know obviously knew all about it, but it was definitely beneath the radar for most. I walked with a backpack and a Fenwick fly rod from the tip of the North Island all the way down to the tip of the South Island and fished every river along the way. It took about eleven and a half months, and of course part of the time it was winter there so I fished as much as I could and then got a job washing dishes at a little hotel and skied every day at that nice little ski area in Queenstown. But that whole time on North and South Island I never saw another fly angler."

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 8:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ted Juracsik walked from Budapest to Austria before finding his way to New York City and a new life in the U.S. In his own distinctive voice, he traces the remarkable path from his beginnings in Hungary as a soccer player and tool and die machinist to his eventual emergence as one of the world's top fly reel designers.

Listen to the Podcast (35:33 - 54MB)
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Interviewer: Zach Matthews | Itinerant Angler

Podcast Excerpt: "It took me almost a week to walk to Austria and I had to go through a minefield -- that was kind of scary -- but you know I was eighteen and didn't really know what was going on. But thank God I made it to Austria and stayed in a refugee camp and the Austrian people were very good to me. I had a couple of fellows with me and we were hiding during the day and walking at night and we finally got to the border. We spent about a month there and then everyone was going to the United States and so we got on a four-engine plane heading to the U.S. but the motors quit over Iceland and we crash landed there. So I was thinking, my goodness, I made it this far and all of a sudden I wind up in Iceland in some godforsaken place ... oh my, it was cold."

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Buzz Bryson has -- frequently -- been titled "the nicest man in fly fishing," and you'll know why after hearing this interview. As a current contributor and the author of Fly Rod and Reel magazine's former long-running "Ask Professor Buzz" column, Buzz has had the opportunity to fish with some of fly fishing's greats, and in some of fly fishing's great places. In this interview he takes us to the Outer Banks of North Carolina with stories of one of the sport's most notorious tackle-busters: the false albacore.

Listen to the Podcast (34:57 - 34MB)
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Interviewer: Zach Matthews | Itinerant Angler

Podcast Excerpt: "I switch to a 10-weight when they get bigger than 12 pounds. What they do when you hook them is, like all tuna, they will go down and away, but mostly down. They never jump. I mean in all the years I have been doing this I may have seen one jump. But the difference between them and tarpon is that you are fighting more vertically, and with a tarpon you are fighting more horizontally and can apply much better pressure. And when you get albacore in close to the boat they will typically circle right under the boat, and it's just a terrible situation for maintaining pressure on them. But they are so fast. If it is quiet, you can literally hear the sizzle of the line cutting through the water over the sound of the drag."

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 6:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Whether they're pummeling rented Jeeps in Patagonia or trout bumming their way across Reykjavik, these young documentarians and explorers make desk-bound anglers everywhere jealous, though as you'll hear, it's not all tall blondes and warm campsites.

Listen to the Podcast (32:01 - 29MB)
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Interviewer: Zach Matthews | Itinerant Angler

Podcast Excerpt: "There was one time we were cruising up this mountain pass and, uh, we had no brakes. And on both sides we had 4,000-foot cliffs, and were putting along in the dark and the jeep just started peeling out and we slipped backwards and the trailer is overhanging and Ryan is on the gas pedal and I end up doing some sticky switch with him. I put my stuff in the passenger seat and put my foot on the brake pedal then went over him. The trailer that's hanging over the cliff weighs something like 4,000 pounds and if that thing had rolled two more inches it would have taken everything with it."

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fly Tier editor David Klausmeyer tells about the early days of the leading magazine of fly tying and gives advice on what it takes to have your fly patterns published. Along the way, he discusses the looming threat of bird flu, the rise of synthetic materials, and his own favorite flies.

Listen to the Podcast (30:54 - 30MB)
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Interviewer: Zach Matthews | Itinerant Angler

Podcast Excerpt: "Even in trout flies we're going to see more and more and more synthetic materials being used. Even in terms of saltwater [the suppliers] are telling me that most of the good saltwater saddles have always been imported, and Tom Schmuecker, who owns Wapsi, the largest fly tying materials distributor in the world, has been identifying some domestic sources, and he says prices are going to be going up a little bit. [Because of bird flu], there is just a very limited supply of product available. A number of years ago, synthetic materials came on the scene, and there were so many articles and a couple of books about them. Now, they're becoming the lifeblood of fly tying."

Posted by Marshall Cutchin at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)