Articles

Closing the circle on the mysterious gar

Half a century of encounters with one of the planet's most prehistoric fish

by Chris Hunt - Tuesday, May 19th, 2026

Photo: Johnny Carroll Sain.

As a kid some 45 years ago, I bathed in the mystery of a sleepy, slow, Southern river. The Sabine of my youth was a muddy puzzle that rarely gave up its secrets to a pre-teen boy armed with a spinning rod, a Zebco 33 spooled with 8-pound mono, and a pocket full of Beetle-Spins. But when it did, the rewards were gigantic. Big cats. The occasional fat crappie. Once in a while, it coughed up a sizable black bass or a foot-long sand bass.

Zero Startup Inertia

The pitfalls of technological advancement

by Tim Schulz - Tuesday, May 12th, 2026

Photo: Chris Daniel.

The multitool was somewhere in my vest. Forty-three tools in one. Well, forty-four if you count being able to hook it to a drift boat’s anchor line when the lighter anchor—the pyramid-shaped one made from lead—wrestles itself free from the carabiner. That was the good news.

Trout under the towers

Fly fishing in the shadow of Torres del Paine

by Chris Hunt - Sunday, May 10th, 2026

The famed Torres del Paine massif looms in the distance while an angler casts to a rising brown trout (photo: Earl Harper).

My friend Vikki tells me that my musical tastes are deeply offensive to her. I just smile and nod — she’s a few years older than me, but, despite her advancing age, she’s much more tuned into what’s popular now than I am.

“You’re not that old,” she chides. “Why do you like that old-man music?” And “old man” comes out as if it’s some sort of epithet. An insult.

Where the Pascagoula meets the Gulf

Fly fishing Horn Island

by Shane Townsend - Saturday, May 9th, 2026

Photo: Shane Townsend.

Look south from Beach Boulevard on a clear day in Jimmy Buffet’s Pascagoula and sometimes you can see well enough to know it’s there. Maybe a cloud stands static above it. Maybe a dark vertical line hints at trees, or pale horizontal suggests beach. Even among those who know of the island, that vista is about as close as most folks come.

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