Articles

Last day permit

When a shot at a permit does come, you don’t waste it. Not ever.
Like many saltwater fish, the appearance of a permit changes depending on its surroundings. This healthy Turneffe Flats permit takes on the purple and blue hues of the skies above (photo: Chad Shmukler).

I’m not angry. I’m just disappointed.

Daniel, my guide for the week at Turneffe Flats in Belize didn’t say it, but it was written all over his face. By all rights, he should have been disgusted. Getting two chances at the same permit or group of permit can be rare. Getting a dozen or possibly even more is unheard of.

Help protect Bahamas bonefish by supporting two new national parks

Two new proposals would add vital protections for bonefish.
Showing off a healthy bonefish (photo: Chad Shmukler).

Currently on the desk of the prime minister of the Bahamas are two proposals which seek to expand and create new national park lands that would protect vital bonefish and tarpon habitat. One proposal would expand the Grand Bahama national park system, while the other would establish new protections for areas of Abaco.

Short casts catch more trout

Resisting the urge to go long has its benefits.
This pretty brown trout from Patagonia's Rio Frey took a streamer stripped through some nice holding water not 15 feet from the boat (photo: Chad Shmukler).

You would likely be hard pressed to find a fly fisherman that doesn't have an inbuilt tendency to go long. We buy rods that cast further, lines that shoot longer and so on. For the most part, it's easy to see why. For many first time fly casters, casting even 20 feet of line can seem like an insurmountable hurdle. As we begin to get a feel for it, casting a bit further and controlling more line becomes a bit easier. As our control increases even more, casting longer and longer lines becomes a far simpler task. Control, we all quickly learn, is paramount to fishing success. And so we begin to equate our ability to be in control when fishing with our the ability to cast more line.

Plus, it's fun. Watching a well-formed loop unroll on a 50 foot cast is a thing of beauty, and one that any angler can take pride in having created, even if it lasts only for a fraction of a second. The reality, however, is that short casts catch more fish.

Most certainly there are situations when tossing a long cast is a must, but these situations are the exception rather than the rule. Short casts are the norm, at least they should be, and the anglers on the stream that aren't throwing line farther than they need to are often the ones catching the most fish. And there are many good reasons why.

Utah stream access advocates win Weber River case

Hard fought and well earned, and only the first step in the ongoing Utah battle.

The Utah Stream Access Coalition (USAC), which has been fighting to restore public access to streams and rivers throughout Utah, took a significant stride forward on Friday when they were granted a win in the legal battle involving the Weber River. Judge Keith Kelly of Utah's 3rd District Court ruled to restore public access to the Weber, based on his determination that the Weber is indeed a navigable waterway where it crosses the landowner defendant's property.

In his decision, Kelly cited well documented historical records of the Weber in use to float timber down from the Uinta Mountains. According to Kelly, the Weber played a "significant role in developing the railroad and mining industries in northern Utah and the surrounding region."

The upper Truckee in California (photo: Steven Benes).

The Truckee River drains from Lake Tahoe on California’s wooded border toward Pyramid Lake in Northern Nevada’s desert basin. Pyramid Lake, where the Truckee crouches to its end, is a remnant of the prehistoric behemoth Lake Lahontan that, some nine thousand years ago, had most of Nevada under nine hundred feet of icy water. The Truckee River is what keeps the Pyramid Lake basin from turning into Black Rock Desert and breathes continual life into petrified Ichthyosaur skeletons the beachside petroglyphs of the ancients. The river, once abundant with native trophy trout, now often only brings swimming filets to hand.

The ecological diversity of the Truckee does still hold some treasure: the elusive stream- form Lahontan cutthroat trout, which has survived by extreme caution, lies in deep pools throughout the basin. This is what Vic and I, armed to the teeth with flies, tippets, waders, and good boots, set out to find. We are after native trout that, unlike wild or stocked, occur naturally within the watershed. The wild trout, much like its farm-raised cousin the stocker, owes its existence in Nevada to the hand of man. Trout like the German Brown or Brook of the East are typically wild in the West and, through supreme predation, threaten entire populations of native species. Stocked varieties are usually hybridized versions of Rainbow trout – this fish was native to many drainages in the West and, in the time of great money and sportsmen like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt, was considered the ultimate sport fish. It was moved east, genetically altered, and moved back west as railroads brought leisure sportsmen cross-country. The native trout is the ultimate goal for Vic and I; it has survived in these waters since the time before man stood on his hind legs. It does not rely on the hand of man unless to protect it from industrial progress, which is often the case. To hold a native trout in hand, momentarily before watching its smooth flanks fold back into the stream, is to touch a world beyond our own existence.

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