Articles

Rum and a dead man

Smallmouth fishing on the Bay of Pigs

by Tom Davis - Thursday, Sep 8th, 2016

Photo: Door County Brewing Co.

I had rum and a dead man to thank for my treasure map. Maybe 20 years my senior, Dave was a summer neighbor. One balmy July evening he hailed me across our yards.

“Come on over,” he called. “I’m making daiquiris.”

Dave knew his way around the construction of a proper cocktail. His daiquiris were paradigms of tart-sweet simplicity—white rum, lime juice, superfine sugar, ice—and they went down as silkily as hookers in Havana. Pretty soon our tongues were wagging, and I started blathering about an upcoming trip to Ontario’s Lake of the Woods.

Fish packers

Backpacking trout to high mountain lakes

by Kris Millgate - Wednesday, Sep 7th, 2016

Cutthroat trout are backpacked in bags of water to high mountain lakes in Idaho (photo: Kris Millgate).

I threw up this morning and I have a fever. I feel like hell on this hike, but I’m not confessing my condition. We are backpacking fish to a high mountain lake in Idaho and I don’t want to miss out on what’s at the top.
“These high elevation lakes are pretty spectacular. Lots of rocky bluffs and real pretty water,” says Dan Garren, Idaho Department of Fish and Game regional fisheries manager. “Most of these are hard to get to so when you finally see one, it’s really nice. You change from hustle, hustle, get there to yes, we made it.”

Are you getting the drift?

How to know if you're drifting your nymphs in the right place at the right time

by George Daniel - Tuesday, Sep 6th, 2016

Photo: Yann Abdallah

One of the most common questions I get regarding nymphing is how to know if you’re fishing your nymphs in the strike zone? Since we can’t always see at what level fish are feeding below the surface, we have to work with is our knowledge and powers of observation to formulate an educated guess.

There’s a well-heeled saying which proclaims that you’re not nymphing correctly if you aren’t constantly snagging bottom. As a result, many anglers believe they need to bounce their nymphs along the stream bottom at all times. This is most certainly an overstatement.

The ties that bind the Outdoor Retailer show

Cross-continent collaboration in search of consumer tolerated pricing

by Kris Millgate - Thursday, Sep 1st, 2016

There are 1,626 exhibitors at Outdoor Retailer Show 2016. Among them are 333 fishing related vendors (photo: Kris Millgate).

I’m having breakfast before I walk through the Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake City, Utah in early August. The conversation at the table next to me is a combination of English and Chinese. I’m reviewing my media appointments for the day so the talk to my right is background noise until I hear the word wader. Not the waiter pouring coffee in cups, but wader. The kind I wear when I fish. I stop drafting questions for upcoming interviews and start listening to the wader discussion.

Howl

If forced to pick a favorite from my bevy of cruel mistresses, it would have to be the Peshtigo

by Tom Davis - Wednesday, Aug 31st, 2016

Photo: Ken Lund (adapted).

The Empty Corner of northeastern Wisconsin boasts a suite of brawling freestone rivers with which I have a longstanding love-hate relationship. I love them for their prideful beauty and for their occasional benevolences; I hate them for the way they draw me in, raise my hopes, and, as often as not, dash them.

But then, I suppose that’s only to be expected when you ignore the lessons of history.