Articles

Wild steelhead's last best chance

Is Washington finally waking up?
Photo: Dave McCoy

If you’ve ever picked up a two-handed fly rod to swing for fish, you’ve undoubtedly heard of a Skagit fly line. Skagit lines are the workhorses of the two-hand world. Burly and strong, these lines do the grunt work and excel at throwing heavy flies and weighty tips. This performance is a fitting homage to the line’s namesake river in Washington state’s North Puget Sound.

High desert monsters

Chasing mammoth brown trout on Patagonia's Rio Limay
No river anywhere in the world may hold more big brown trout than Patagonia's Rio Limay (photo: Chad Shmukler).

Sometimes when we fish with friends, we foster an unspoken, cordial competition. You know, the “first fish, most fish, biggest fish” thing. Being successful at fly fishing means you’re likely doing something right—it’s a technical craft, for the most part, and doing it well is usually important to success. It feels good when you’re doing everything right, when you’ve put together a diverse set of elements into a single successful act, and it’s nice to measure your good fortune against others, particularly if they’re solid anglers.

Winston intros New Boron III Plus fly rods

A new rod series from Winston aimed at big, powerful fish

Winston introduced its latest rod series at this year's IFTD show in Orlando, Florida. The new Boron III Plus series is a mostly-but-not-entirely saltwater geared rod aimed squarely at anglers chasing big fish. According to Winston, "The 'Plus' stands for incredible line speed, extra power and design qualities needed to handle monster flies, the wind, sinking and oversized head lines and of course, big, big, fish."

A never ending horror story

Exploring the blue green waters off the Palm Beach coast
Captain Scott Hamilton lurches to wrangle a mahi mahi that was lurking in unexpected waters (photo: Chad Shmukler).

Paul steadies the wheel from the starboard side of the boat while Captain Scott Hamilton hand ties leaders for our 12 weight rigs as we idle through the no wake zone of Palm Beach’s busy harbor. We’re flanked by countless other fishing boats, day cruisers, dive boats and yachts. As we emerge past the jetty’s point and step up to speed, we can see the earliest of beachgoers staking their spots for the day, the busy Florida town’s high rises looming behind them.

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