Dave Karczynski

Dave Karczynski is the author of From Lure to Fly: Fly Fishing for Spinning and Baitcast Anglers, an Orvis Series book published by Lyons Press. He is also the co-author of Smallmouth: Modern Fly-Fishing Tactics, Tips and Techniques, published through Stackpole Press. A regular contributor to Outdoor Life, The Drake, and many other magazines, he lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he teaches writing and photography at the University of Michigan.

Author Articles

"The Thoughtful Robot"

How efficient is Michigan guide and tier Russ Maddin? Pretty darn efficient. Ask to see his fly box and he'll dangle a ziploc with three flies inside. Ask to drop anchor and he'll shake his head no, since anchoring rewards bad, inefficient casting. And his favorite streamer sticks? Looking to trim all unnecessary weight, Russ throws a 7'6" nine-weight with...

Writing the Rise

Fly fishing has been a source of literary inspiration since the days of Dame Juliana Berners, and over the years we've seen hundreds of thousands of piscatorial pages come to print.  That said, one of the coolest things about the modern fly fishing community is how many different venues there are for the written word: blogs, magazines, e-zines, social...

When You're Not the Only One

Maybe you get to the water late and find yourself working behind another angler—or anglers.  Or maybe winter temps bump up to above freezing for the first time in weeks, sending everyone to your favorite steelhead river and forcing you to fish above and behind other sets of boats.  In those circumstances where there's no place else to go, there are...

In the Valley of the Rainbows

Patagonia is a land of soaring mountains, wide gravel roads, cold blue rivers, and legion trout.  The fact that it's smack full of sun while the Northern Hemisphere is chock full of snow only adds to the allure.  Throw in nightly feasts of local lamb, beef, wine, wine and more wine, and you've got a veritable paradise for any red-blooded angler.  I...

Windows of Opportunity

A few weeks ago I was preparing to fish the evening hatch on a fertile mountain river.  I shared my beat—an pocky expanse of prime dry fly water some 400 yards long—with one other angler.  We both hit the water at the same time—around 6pm.  Knowing from the previous few days' experience that my prime window of opportunity would begin at 8:15 and...

Photo Essay: Labrador

Brookies and ouananiche. Black spruce and alders. Northerns and lake trout. Black flies and mosquitoes. Labrador is simple elements in endless foreground: as long as you keep your eyes open, the country will ram them full of a wildness that needs no introduction, explanation or qualification. I'd dreamt about this country for roughly a decade, listened in...

Interview: Lefty Kreh on a Lifetime of Smallmouth Fishing

Fly-fishing legend Bernard “Lefty” Kreh has either authored or contributed to more than twenty books over the course of his illustrious fifty-plus-year career. Along the way he revolutionized fly casting, designed various fly rods, and developed legendary fly patterns such as The Deceiver. Lefty received the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American...

Ask the Experts: Big Fish Edition

In this week's installment of "Ask the Experts," we went to our cold water guides with the question of specifically targeting the largest fish in the system.  Here's what they had to say about targeting the biggest brown trout, brook trout and steelhead in a given watershed. Brown Trout Landon Mayer, guide, ambassador and author of Sight Fishing for Trout...

The Art of Small Streams

A few years ago a friend of mine, the poet Josh Edwards, wrote something I've been turning over in my head ever since: "Small islands are largely themselves." What I love about the phrase is the promise of transformation it speaks to. It's an idea that the small stream angler—and I mean the really small stream angler—can use as a way of entering into...

Photo Essay: "Getting There"

So much of our traveling is about where we go and what we catch, but over the last few years I've been thinking a lot about the way we move through space.  Sometimes our schedules dictate our locomotion, sometimes our own bodies, other times the landscape itself.  This photo essay explores the following question: How does the way we arrive at and move...