Latest Blog Posts

What do we want the Skagit River to be?

Real talk about Skagit River steelhead

by Rich Simms - Wednesday, Feb 21st, 2018

Raindrops on the Skagit River (photo: Sara Parker / cc2.0).

Nobody likes being the nostalgic steelheader in the room, but increasingly I find myself as the gray haired guy at the table waxing poetic about how great wild steelhead fishing on Washington’s Skagit River used to be. You know, back in the “good ole days.” Getting on in years sucks and watching my beloved wild steelhead waters deteriorate even faster than me just adds insult to injury.

Alex Diekmann Peak

Gravestones cheer the living, dear, they’re no use to the dead

by Tom Sadler - Tuesday, Feb 6th, 2018

Steam rises from the Madison River in Montana (photo: NPS / Jacob W. Frank).

The quote from the song "By for Me the Rain" by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band evokes a sad reference to how our memorials to the departed are tangible reminders to the living of the deeds of those no longer among us.

The song came to mind when I heard Donald Trump had signed the Alex Diekmann Peak Designation Act into law (Public Law 115-122) on Jan. 31, two years after Alex’s untimely death on Feb. 1, 2016. This new law designates an unnamed peak in the Lee Metcalf Wilderness in Montana as the "Alex Diekmann Peak."

A question of beauty

Where does the beauty in a fly lie?

by John Juracek - Wednesday, Jan 24th, 2018

Tying a not-so-classic pattern by headlamp at night (photo: T.J. Orton).

For a couple seasons now, one of my fly shop co-workers, Bucky McCormick, has gone retrograde with his flies. He’s been tying and fishing classic patterns. By classic I mean older flies with some degree of historical significance, like the Quill Gordon, Brown Bivisible and Black-Nose Dace. Patterns that practically nobody fishes these days—if they’ve even heard of them at all—especially out here in Montana. (Last time I used one myself was in the early 1980s, gulper fishing on Hebgen Lake.

Y'all want fried bread with that?

Fly fishers are a small and transient band

by Matthew Reilly - Monday, Jan 8th, 2018

Photo: Matt Reilly | Illustration: Andrea Larko

Fly fishing, as I have come to know it, is a sport defined by local flavor and knowledge; its micro-cultures and idiosyncrasies strongly tied to elements of place. The fly fishing community as a whole, sortof likewise, is a small and transient band.

This is what a $12,500 fly tying desk looks like

There until they're gone

by Chad Shmukler - Wednesday, Nov 29th, 2017

Photo: L.L. Bean

I tie flies at my dining room table. Or with my vise precariously balanced on the plastic storage shelves in my basement, a section of which houses the bulky cardboard box where my vise—and a respectable smattering of tying supplies—lives for around 363 days of each year. Among my many shameful inadequacies as an angler, predominant above all is my lack of dedication to tying.