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I've been there

Swimming in waders is never easy
Photo: Tim Schulz

Last night, I couldn’t find a campsite in the dark and rain, so I parked and slept in the day-use lot at Barretts Park Campground. When I crawl out of my truck this morning, I’m about two hundred feet from the Beaverhead River, which flows beside a four-hundred-foot-wide and sixty-foot-high rock formation Lewis and Clark called “Rattlesnake Cliff.”

A sliver of silver

We lingered in the currents, bathed in sunset afterglow
Photos: Marvin T. Williams.

The bright, 14-inch rainbow trout launched into the air, silhouetting itself against the June sky, mirrored in the shining surface of the stream as it fell back to the water with a satisfying smack. It was not the grandest rainbow of my life, but the one that brought me the most joy. It was my first Silver Creek rainbow. My first western trout. Yes, I said to myself. This is it!

Lower Snake River dams are greenhouse gas factories, new study finds

Annually, the LSR dams produce as much greenhouse gasses as burning 2 billion pounds of coal
Little Goose Dam, one of the Lower Snake River dams (photo: Matt Stoecker).

The four lower Snake River dams that produce, on average, about 1,000 megawatts of electric power every year are really “climate catastrophes,” according to the chief scientist for a non-profit that hopes to expose dams as significant greenhouse gas producers and not the generators of clean, green energy they’re often billed to be.

Has the Okefenokee found its white knight?

Can federal water rights block dragline mining on the edges of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge?
Photo: TimothyJ / cc2.0.

Just weeks after receiving draft permits to mine for titanium dioxide and other minerals in Trail Ridge near the southeastern boundary of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Twin Pines Minerals LLC now has a new foil that could derail the company’s mining plans: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Lyme disease: Running riot

I've got it. You may have it, too.
Photo: Mislav Marohnić / cc2.0.

This is a good time to be a tick with Lyme to share. You and I may bemoan the weirdness of the weather, but ticks love it.

As the world gets warmer and wetter, they’re partying. 10 years ago, in the wooded valley I call home, we had two distinct tick seasons — from mid-March to June, and a shorter burst in the autumn. Last year I picked up my first in early February and my dog had his last in November, and they continued without a break right through summer. 

10 things we can do to protect our fisheries in 2024

Angler activism takes many forms, here are just a few
The North Umpqua Wild and Scenic River in Oregon (photo: Bob Wick / BLM).

It’s 2024 and far too many of our fisheries here in the U.S. are in serious trouble. Fortunately, there are some positive steps each of us can take going forward. While not every suggestion below will be a good fit for every single angler, be sure to check as many as possible off the list this year.

4 must-have catch and release tools for musky

Relatively inexpensive tools that every musky angler should have
Photo: Matt Reilly.

On a rainy December morning, I was sitting at my desk drinking my morning coffee when an excited text message came in from one of my best smallmouth clients and friends.

”Beginners luck, for sure!”

Somewhere in middle Tennessee, on their first attempt at throwing flies at musky, the guys boated a beautiful upper-30s musky on a fly. Later that day, they boated a second.

The continuing search for the lost Yellowfin cutthroat trout

Is a relict population of yellowfin cutthroat lurking high along the spine of the Rockies?
Image: Public domain.

The tall country along the Continental Divide of central Colorado still keeps its secrets. But aquatic biologist Alex Townsend is slowly unraveling the natural and human history that percolates from the waters of Twin Lakes into the towering “fourteeners” along the spine of the continent.

His ultimate prize? A rendezvous with a ghost fish that disappeared more than 120 years ago, a victim of “progress” as miners crawled along granite ridges in search of the motherlode and loggers razed black timber from the slopes of the Rockies.

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