Spencer Durrant

2024 was a fun year for new fly fishing gear. Looking back, it's surprising just how much awesome product hit the market (including some fantastic new rods). The MidCurrent team has had the good fortune to get our hands on quite a lot of it, and that in-person experience informs the selections we made for the 2024 MidCurrent Holiday Gift Guide.  With...

The folks at Riversmith invited me to sit down for a demo earlier this year for a new product line that was hush-hush. I was intrigued—what new accessory had they dreamt up?—but I wasn't expecting to see the Convoy Collection, a series of purpose-built luggage items for fly anglers. And at first, I wasn't sure what to make of this lineup. A few of the...

Fly anglers spend an inordinate amount of time drooling over rods, and I should know—I do more than enough drooling for all of us. One part of our kit that we regularly overlook, however, is the fly line. Fly fishing revolves around fly line. Without fly line, the fly cast is impossible, and the way we fish doesn't exist. Yet so many anglers are willing...

I picked John Gierach and Bob White up from the Salt Lake Airport on a March evening, and I'm certain I did an awful job of containing my excitement. Through some friends at the Flaming Gorge Chamber of Commerce, I'd arranged to have John and Bob treated to three days of floating the Green River below Flaming Gorge Dam, so long as I wrote a story about the...

Of all the rods I've reviewed, I spent the longest time with the Douglas DXF Gen2 before sitting down to write. Usually, rods get sent to me with a timeline (send it back in 5 weeks, for example) but the folks at Douglas were kind enough to send the DXF Gen2 with an open-ended return date. So I've milked my time with this rod because once the review is...

Driving a pickup to fly fish across the Mountain West isn't the wisest financial decision, but it's hard to beat the utility a solid truck offers. Until last Thanksgiving, I drove a little 2012 Toyota Tacoma. It had the inline-4 motor, a 5-speed transmission, and a 4:12 rear axle gear ratio. It got 20 miles to the gallon, and being a Toyota, was as durable...

Korkers released a new series of wading boots this year—the Wade Lite line. Included in the lineup are the Chrome Lite and Stealth Sneaker. The Chrome Lite is, without a doubt, the most impressive wading boot I've ever seen from Korkers. Longtime readers of my gear reviews will know I hold the Devil's Canyon boots in high regard. Those, to me, are the...

Before the Scott Session showed up on my doorstep, the only other Scott rod I had fished was a Radian. I loved that rod—even though I never owned one—and I was curious what direction Scott would take with its friendlier-priced Session (it retails for $675). Would the company opt to keep it in that familiar "fast-meets-feel" design family, or branch out...

When I think of a Winston, I think of my collection of pre-IM6 Fisher-rolled 2-piece graphite rods that are unquestionably the best dry fly sticks ever built. My mind is as far away from big flies and meat-eating trout as it's possible to get. A few months ago, however, while on a visit to the R.L. Winston Rod Co factory in Twin Bridges, Montana, longtime...

Before 2024 I'd never fished a Thomas & Thomas rod. I'd thrown them at fly fishing shows, and wiggled a few at fly shops, but I never had the chance to get one out on the water. Then the 9' 5-weight Avantt II showed up, and I spent the better part of two months with it as my primary stick. I don't think Thomas & Thomas could've made a better first...