Articles

An eye for flies

Thoughts on the art of fly tying

by Todd Tanner - Tuesday, Jul 2nd, 2019

Photo: Jeremy Roberts

When I was nine years old, my Uncle Joe and Aunt Doris gave me a fly tying kit for Christmas. It was boxed and wrapped and tied off with a big shiny red ribbon, and I opened it at the Tanner family Christmas party, which, if memory serves, was held the weekend before the actual holiday. This particular celebration was at Joe’s home (we rotated every Christmas; one year at our house, the next year at Uncle Jim’s, the next at Uncle Austin’s, and so on) and I don’t think I was ever so excited as when I pulled off that wrapping paper and saw the treasure I’d just received.

Fishing and PFDs: Life savers — Part 2

Today's neck-saving wearables aren't the bulky, ungainly things of yesteryear

by Todd Tanner - Friday, Jun 28th, 2019

The West Marine Ultra-Slim (photo: Todd Tanner).

A few years ago, while I was wade fishing Montana’s Missouri River on a windy January day, I was struck from behind by a huge, slow-moving ice flow and pushed out into a deep channel maybe a hundred yards from the nearest bank. I went under a couple of times as I tried to swim in my waders and a heavy, sodden insulated jacket, and if not for the help of a fellow angler, it’s unlikely I would have survived.

The Racine

It was as unimprovable an object as human hands have ever fashioned

by Tom Davis - Tuesday, Jun 25th, 2019

Photo: Aaron Carlson / cc2.0

Buddy Bishop, the man who owned the Racine, was about as un-Buddylike as it’s possible to be. You tend to think of Buddys as ruddy-cheeked back-slappers, the kind of guys who organize softball games at company picnics and spend the rest of the afternoon flipping burgers, tonging hot dogs into buns, and drinking foamy beer from plastic cups.

Fishing and PFDs: Life savers — Part 1

Today's neck-saving wearables aren't the bulky, ungainly things of yesteryear

by Todd Tanner - Monday, Jun 24th, 2019

The Ronny Fisher PFD from Astral Designs (photo: Todd Tanner).

How to fish the carp spawn

Finding and approaching fish, fly choices, hooking and landing and more tips for chasing pre and post-spawn carp that are on the prowl for food

by Chris Hunt - Wednesday, Jun 19th, 2019

Photo: Chris Hunt

In the backwater sloughs and bays of southern Idaho’s Snake River, June is prime time for the carp spawn.

The big invasives, brought here more than a century ago as a food fish from southern Asia (and rarely eaten) start to move into the shallows when Mother Nature strings a few nice days together in April or early May. Some fish will spawn during these first few weeks, but, for the most part, they’re staging. And they’re eating.