Articles

If I was starting over

Fly fishing advice for my younger self

by Todd Tanner - Tuesday, Apr 14th, 2026

Photo: Jeremy Roberts / Conservation Media.

While it’s still a little hard for me to believe, I’ve actually been fly fishing since Ronald Reagan was president. And the fact that I’ve been at it so long — I started guiding on the Henry’s Fork and the Madison in 1992, and writing about the sport on a national level a couple of years later — had me wondering what type of advice I’d offer myself if I could go back in time and slip a note in my younger self’s pocket.

So here, on the chance it might prove helpful to at least a few of you, is what I came up with:

$100 million for Canada's Atlantic salmon: What does it mean for recovery?

Canada's PM Carney directs millions to Atlantic salmon

by Chris Hunt - Thursday, Apr 9th, 2026

An Atlantic salmon from the Flowers River in Labrador, Canada (photo: Camden Spear).

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced last week “the largest investment in wild Atlantic salmon conservation in Canadian history” by funding the country’s National Strategy to Ensure the Future of Atlantic Salmon to the tune of $81.7 million over five years.

Imagination is more important than knowledge

There is no better way to explain relativity than the difference between casting from a boat and casting from shore

by Tim Schulz - Saturday, Apr 4th, 2026

Photo: Chad Shmukler.

My good friend and mentor, Professor Earl, straightens me out more often than a spring creek angler uncurls their tippet. Professor Earl, for example, taught me that bananas, tomatoes, and eggplants are berries, but strawberries and raspberries aren’t. He also showed me how the Bluetooth logo is made up of two Nordic runes, ᚼ and ᛒ, which are initials of a king named Harald Bluetooth. He taught me what a rune was, too, of course.

“Did you see that movie about the atomic bomb?” Professor Earl asked the other day. “Oppenheimer?”

Trump administration orders dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service

The headquarters is going to Utah. Every regional office is being shuttered. The research program is being destroyed.

by Jim Pattiz - Thursday, Apr 2nd, 2026

Forest Service staff gather outside the agency's headquarters in the Sidney R. Yates Federal Building in Washington, D.C. in January 2026. As part of the administration's sweeping changes, the Forest Service's headquarters will leave DC and relocate to Salt Lake City, UT (photo: Preston Keres / USDA).

Late Tuesday afternoon, with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the morality of a foreclosure notice, the Trump administration announced the most devastating attack on the U.S. Forest Service in the agency’s 121-year history. Not a budget cut. Not a policy shift. Not a “reorganization.” An execution.

The West's alarmingly low snowpack—and what it could mean for summer trout fishing

Low and quickly melting snowpack across the Rockies likely to result in cascading problems across the West

by Chris Hunt - Thursday, Apr 2nd, 2026

Before long, anglers may be fleeing to western tailwaters like the Missouri River in Montana (photo: Earl Harper).

It’s been a tough winter in the Rockies. Just ask around. Ski areas are closing early — or they closed weeks ago. High-elevation peaks are already shedding what little snow they received. Here in eastern Idaho, I cleared snow off my walks once all winter. With a push broom. It’s been horrifically dry at lower elevations since we got a spate of unusual (and unusually heavy) winter rain right after Christmas.