Articles

Has the Okefenokee found its white knight?

Can federal water rights block dragline mining on the edges of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge?

by Chris Hunt - Sunday, Mar 17th, 2024

Photo: TimothyJ / cc2.0.

Just weeks after receiving draft permits to mine for titanium dioxide and other minerals in Trail Ridge near the southeastern boundary of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Twin Pines Minerals LLC now has a new foil that could derail the company’s mining plans: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

4 must-have catch and release tools for musky

Relatively inexpensive tools that every musky angler should have

by Matthew Reilly - Friday, Mar 8th, 2024

Photo: Matt Reilly.

On a rainy December morning, I was sitting at my desk drinking my morning coffee when an excited text message came in from one of my best smallmouth clients and friends.

”Beginners luck, for sure!”

Somewhere in middle Tennessee, on their first attempt at throwing flies at musky, the guys boated a beautiful upper-30s musky on a fly. Later that day, they boated a second.

The continuing search for the lost Yellowfin cutthroat trout

Is a relict population of yellowfin cutthroat lurking high along the spine of the Rockies?

by Chris Hunt - Thursday, Mar 7th, 2024

Image: Public domain.

The tall country along the Continental Divide of central Colorado still keeps its secrets. But aquatic biologist Alex Townsend is slowly unraveling the natural and human history that percolates from the waters of Twin Lakes into the towering “fourteeners” along the spine of the continent.

His ultimate prize? A rendezvous with a ghost fish that disappeared more than 120 years ago, a victim of “progress” as miners crawled along granite ridges in search of the motherlode and loggers razed black timber from the slopes of the Rockies.

New fly fishing gear: March 2024

What's new on the water this month

by Hatch Magazine - Wednesday, Mar 6th, 2024

The new Simms G4Z wader (photo: Darcy Bacha).

Even though each year around this time trout season comes knocking at the door around most of the country, the mid and late winter months aren’t typically prolific when it comes to new gear releases. This year’s late winter season has largely followed suit. But, what this 2024’s winter months have lack in volume, they’ve made up for in impact — with several gear makers bringing innovative and long-awaited products to market.

The greatest outdoor writer you've (probably) never heard of

Mel Ellis was a popular and prolific writer who penned some 20 books, hundreds of magazine articles, and thousands of newspaper columns

by Tom Davis - Saturday, Mar 2nd, 2024

Photo: Mel Ellis with his wife Gwen at Little Lakes (photo: courtesy of the Ellis family).

A New York Times Service story credited Richard Hollingshead Jr., of Camden N.J., with opening the world’s first drive-in movie theater in 1933. I beg to differ. Ten years earlier, as a sprout of eleven, I was attending weekly movies at a drive-in theater in the all-but-deserted village of Dakota, which overlooks the Mecan River, one of a splendid network of small trout streams that meander through Wisconsin’s Waushara County.