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New bill seeks to vastly expand Bristol Bay mining protections

If passed, the legislation would protect Bristol Bay salmon from over 20 active mining claims

by Hatch Magazine - Thursday, Jun 5th, 2025

A float plane lands on a river in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska (photo: Earl Harper).

A new bill introduced in the closing hours of Alaska’s legislative session seeks to expand protection for the Bristol Bay region, home to a prolific wild salmon fishery that produces over $2.2 billion in economic output and supports over 15,000 Alaskan jobs. The bill, introduced by Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon (I- Dillingham) and Representative Andy Josephson (D- Anchorage), would ban metallic sulfide mining, also known as hard-rock mining, throughout the Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve, where oil and gas development is already banned without approval of the Alaska legislature.

The Missouri River Gale of 2024

Damn that wind. Damn it all to hell.

by Chris Hunt - Wednesday, Jun 4th, 2025

Photo: Earl Harper.

It wasn’t one of those windstorms that made the news last summer in central Montana. TV coverage might have included the weatherman on the local Helena ABC affiliate remarking about how “it sure was windy today,” although seemingly minor events can make the news on a slow day. Just this week, a squirrel got zapped in an electrical substation, cutting power to thousands in Helena. But, as I said, it wasn’t a windstorm that made me rush to social media after I got off the Missouri with Craig DeMark just to let the rest of the world know I was safe from the Missouri River Gale of 2024.

Toxic waste stands in the way of protecting the Great Lakes from invasive carp

Only 40 miles separate voracious Asian carp from the world's largest freshwater ecosystem. To stop them, Illinois must reckon with its legacy of coal ash pollution.

by Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco - Saturday, May 31st, 2025

USFWS staff collect jumping silver carp as part of a telemetry study (photo: Ryan Hagerty/USFWS).

Last week, Illinois officials took possession of a 50-acre stretch of riverbed in Chicago’s shipping channel in a last-ditch effort to prevent an ecological disaster from reaching Lake Michigan.

Should I cast or should I go?

Practicing "slow fishing" on the Upper Delaware River

by Stephen Sautner - Friday, May 30th, 2025

Photo: Jim Leedom.

The jambalaya recipe came from an old Boy Scout cookbook. Pour a can of condensed onion soup, beef stock, and tomato sauce, along with two cans of water, into a Dutch oven. Add two cups of rice, smoked sausage, shrimp, diced bell pepper and green onions, plus garlic, herbs and spices. Cover the lid with charcoal briquettes. In 90 minutes, it’s done. Easy, right?

If only those trout would have stopped rising.

What makes a pike fly great?

Tips on buying and tying pike flies that work

by Chris Hunt - Thursday, May 29th, 2025

Photo: Earl Harper.

My pike problem started during the summer of 2007 in northwest Saskatchewan. It was my first trip to Canada to fly fish for pike and grayling, and I was kind of flying by the seat of my pants. Unsure what to use, I managed to tie up some serviceable streamers prior to my trip, and, while some would prove to work just fine, the first words out of the mouth of my guide, a member of the Dene First Nation in the region, were, “Too small.”

Simms introduces ultralight Flyweight Packable Waders

Weighing in at less than 2.5 pounds, Simms latest is its lightest ever

by Hatch Magazine - Friday, May 23rd, 2025

Photo: Darcy Bacha.

Ultralight waders have been around for at least a couple of decades, likely more. The designers of these types of waders are faced with a difficult challenge: build a wader that is lightweight, packable, and comfortable but also one that stands up to the elements and the abuse that anglers inevitably deliver. Over the years, ultralight waders have always come with compromises. But as design and technology improves, each iteration seems to offer less and less to grin and bear — performing nearly as well as “normal” waders.

The beasts of the Bighorn

One of the West's most storied tailwaters rarely disappoints

by Chris Hunt - Thursday, May 22nd, 2025

Photo: Earl Harper.

I’ve lost count of the number of eye-rolling stories that I’ve heard from guides about clients killing trophy fish caught from the West’s great trout rivers. The notion that a fish must die to appease the ego, it seems, is still richly embedded among a few trout anglers. And guides, well, they get to know a few trout anglers.

The solace of mediocre water

It's not great or even decent fishing

by Chad Love - Tuesday, May 20th, 2025

Photo: Chad Love.

Salvation is a vexing thing. Some people seem to find it in the familiar comfort of the shared liturgical experience, immersing themselves in those codified rituals and behaviors that promise it. Other people seem to find it where no one else is looking, in things no one else sees; private little salvations known only to them. Still other people—the majority of them, really—search all their lives for it, but don’t know where to look for it, or how to recognize it when they find it. So they drift, seeking balm for a despair they feel deeply, but cannot quite define.