Chad Shmukler's blog

Just a few short years ago, it seemed as if recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, conservationists, Alaska's native peoples and more had, after years of tireless advocacy, claimed victory in their battle to prevent the Pebble Mine in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska.

This summer, under the umbrella of the International League of Conservation Photographers, a large collaborative media effort will take a group of accomplished image makers far, far to the north. The group, made up of seasoned conservation photographers with unique specialities, will travel to Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) with the goal of capturing the awe and splendor of the nation's wildest and largest tract of publicly owned land.

"It was always about oil, gas and uranium," reads the title of a recent article from Patagonia's Lisa Sheehy, in which Patagonia continues to call out the Trump administration for its attacks on U.S. public lands.

It’s simple. The best way to become an exceptional angler is to buy the gear you need and head for the river. Not for an hour, mind you, or a day, or a week. Not for a month, even. But for years, and then decades.

The world of trout spey (or whatever moniker is most popular at any given time) is constantly evolving. For a few years, the development of smaller spey rods—typically 11 1/2 feet or smaller and lighter in weight—geared towards two-handed spey casting, but on a similar scale, predominated. While those rods remain popular, more recently, focus has shifted in part to single-hand spey casting, an option that allows anglers to reap the benefits of spey casting with a traditional, single-hand trout rod (and, often, an angler's existing rod).

I tie flies at my dining room table. Or with my vice precariously balanced on the plastic storage shelves in my basement, a section of which houses the bulky cardboard box where my vice—and a respectable smattering of tying supplies—lives for around 363 days of each year. Among my many shameful inadequacies as an angler, predominant above all is my lack of dedication to tying.

Back in 2014, we celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday as so many outlets do, by talking about what we should be thankful for. Generally, doing so is little more than an opportunity to state the obvious or share trite sentiments that are more an exercise of convention and repetition than an expression of gratitude based on thoughtful reflection. But we did our best not to mail it in and, in the process, shined a light on a few things we thought all anglers should take the time to acknowledge.

It's hard to imagine anyone arguing that fly fishers are highly visual individuals. There's so much about our sport that's driven by appreciation for the beauty of the pursuit, whether that be the aesthetics of the landscapes in which we chase our quarry, the lashed fur and feather creations we tempt them with or the artfully crafted tools with which we ply the water. Fly fishing is a sport full of rich and diverse imagery.

Recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, native tribal members, lovers of wild places and defenders of common sense worldwide breathed a massive sigh of relief when, in 2014, the Obama administration finally delivered what so many had spent years tirelessly working for: a Clean Water Act 404(c) veto that would prevent the use of certain Bristol Bay watersheds for use as disposal sites for dredge or fill material. Or, in other words, it would block construction of Pebble Mine.

If you're not familiar with the work of RC Cone, you probably should be. Cone is best known in the fishing world for his films Tributaries and Breathe, but it is his 2016 film The Accord—which told the story of Heiðar Logi Elíasson, an Icelandic surfer that has spent his life chasing waves in the burly, wind-beaten North Atlantic—that has won Cone the most acclaim, as an official selection at both the Banff Film Festival and Telluride Mountainfilm. Cone has a knack for angles and cinematography and it shows through in his work.