Articles

The glove

Nobody deserves misery but sometimes it's just your turn
Photo: Chad Love

I know exactly—sort of—when I lost the glove. I was standing there on the back deck of a bass boat, freezing my ass off and trying to keep sleet off my camera lens, while my boat driver droned on endlessly about that goddamned fried chicken.

Review: Orvis Plier

A close look at Orvis' revamped, premium fishing pliers
Photo: Cosmo Genova

The last year or so has been a big one for Orvis. They made a splash with new products like the Ultralight Wading system, the Mirage line of reels, the Orvis Nippers, and the masterpiece that is the Helios 3. With one stellar product after another, Orvis affirmed their direction and place in the industry. Another one of those products is the result of Orvis' attempt to breathe new life into its plier game, with a modern design that is a significant overhaul of past models.

5 fly casting tips

Fighting tailing loops, lazy loops, finding your stroke length and more
Casting on Nez Perce Creek in Yellowstone National Park (photo: John Juracek).

In the process of teaching fly casting, certain faults of technique show up regularly among my students. In the notes I send to each student after a lesson, I find myself frequently reiterating certain basic principles. Here are a few of the most common. I hope they’ll stimulate you to think about your own casting.

A dish called Wanda

The mind reeled at the possibilities
Photo: Craig James Myran / cc2.0

A couple of years—eternity, by the adolescent calendar—had passed since we’d last stopped at the resort in Minnesota on our way back from Canada. This time, though, seeing Wanda was my number one priority. Sure, I was looking forward to fishing for rock bass in the little river; I even had an idea that I might try flailing away with my piece-of-crap flyrod. But there had been plenty of action up on Lake of the Woods, and Wanda and I had hit it off so resoundingly before … the mind reeled at the possibilities.

Middle Lake

That bright memory is tangled with another, darker one
Photo: Big Windy Complex / cc2.0 / edited

Below Elizabeth Falls, where it thunders out of Black Lake, the Fond du Lac du Nord relaxes. The river sprawls across a boulder-studded delta, braiding into pools and riffles and narrow chutes before losing velocity and spilling into a mile-wide bowl. The roar of whitewater becomes a murmur, the murmur a sigh. A tall, flat-topped esker, so perfectly and symmetrically formed that it might have been engineered by an ancient civilization, cradles this widening on the far side. The near shore is lower, a gradual rise through willows and alders to the lance-like crowns of spruce.

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