Richard Donnelly

I heard a key scratch in the lock. The door swung open to reveal a maid, the hotel manager, and a Mexican policeman. It occurred to me I should have tipped the maid. That’s in hindsight. But all lessons are learned in hindsight. The manager shouted something incomprehensible and I barely had time to grab my rod tube. I didn’t test my Spanish. I...

I had tried for roosterfish on my own, and caught one. “You were lucky,” my pal, Greg Flores said. I was unfazed. They all say that. Tomorrow I had the benefit of the expert. Heading north from Cabo San Lucas, Greg would drive me in his Jeep looking for places where the surf flattened and created “pools”, or lingering shallows. This is where you...

“Just bring a tee shirt and fly rod.” Greg Flores had called from his suite at the Las Palmas Hotel. “These roosterfish are monsters. I see their backs during my morning jog. They look like pigs rooting for corncobs.” You can tell Greg grew up in the Midwest. His father is Mexican, though, and with his flawless Spanish and green-eyed charm he...

I disapprove of drinking. But not saloons, oddly enough. Coming off the water on a 90-degree day there’s nothing like a cold one. Even if it’s just Coca-Cola. That first gulp, poured into an ice-filled pint glass, has the same effect as a shot of whiskey. You shiver all over. Every small town has a bar. Sometimes two. In Wisconsin’s Plum City you...

After parking at the bridge and fighting deer flies, buckthorn, stinging nettles, and summer humidity, I stepped from chin-high foxtail into the creek. Or rather fell, throwing my rod to keep it from breaking. I didn't get mad. Far from it. Laughing, I had what every trout angler dreams about: A hot lead on a forgotten creek. “I don’t fish anymore,...

The best trout fishing occurs, as everyone knows, deep in the night. Or a week before opener. Or two miles upstream. I could continue, but it's easier to sum it up like this: The best fishing occurs when you're not there. This came to me as we broke down our fly rods one August evening deep in the Kinnickinnic Valley of Western Wisconsin. We hurried in the...

In bluff country one stumbles on isolated taverns sitting there for no good reason. These are typically at the intersection of bridge and creek. The wading fly angler, bug-bedeviled and leg-tired, finds himself drawn to a battered Pabst Blue Ribbon sign the way a brown trout rises to a well-presented light Cahill. Johnny Cash on the jukebox? There’s the...

One day I up and moved to the Midwest’s Driftless Region, which is blue ribbon trout country. I’m not bragging. And I don’t expect an award. Well, maybe I do. I talked my wife into moving from a city of four million to a town of four thousand. There ought to be some kind of award for that. Driftless is a silly name, I know. Someone ought to change it...

I went fishing last spring with no intention of catching fish. I just wanted to see Gilbert Creek. Immense spring rains, six inches in one night alone, scoured and scored the valley, overturning trees, collapsing banks, burying springs. My cherished brook trout stream had become a wasteland of sandbars and mud. When I saw the creek I said one word. Perfect...

I have friends planning a two-week fly fishing trip to Alaska. This is a dream destination, of course. A sort of Shangri-La for the angler featuring huge fish, wild country, and endless water. They asked if I wanted to join them. I declined. I said I was busy. I didn't admit the whole idea wore me out. The list-making, the plane tickets to Anchorage. The...