William G. Tapply

Tiny trout and worms are the first step to a life of fly fishing. And more. I happened upon Porcupine Brook while exploring some promising woodcock cover last October. Burt, my Brittany, had wandered off, as he often does, and when I could no longer hear his bell—and he refused to come when I yelled at him—I had to go looking for him. I found him...

I thought I’d found a pond full of basking carp. Its surface lay flat and still under the blazing mid-morning Montana sun, and I spotted the big swirls and sloshes and boils from a hundred yards away when I was still bumping down the old farm road. Well, I thought, nothing wrong with carp. I parked under a cottonwood, tiptoed to the water’s edge, and...

I grew up casting deer-hair bugs for bass, both largemouths and smallmouths, in lakes, ponds, and rivers all over New England. It was my favorite kind of fishing—even better, I thought, than casting dry flies to rising trout, or trolling streamer flies for landlocked salmon, or fishing for any trophy that lived in the ocean. Nothing has happened in the...

An unexpected glimpse into the past sparks childhood memories. The other day, I was unpacking a carton of old books that my father left behind, and I paused at a nice Derrydale edition of A Tomato Can Chronicle by Edmond Ware Smith. I remembered how much I’d liked Smith’s fishing stories. The One-Eyed Poacher was my favorite fictional character when I...

A secret, shared stream represents four decades of memories. We usually rumble across the iron bridge, turn off the road, follow the bumpy ruts beside the field, and park Dad’s station wagon at the water’s edge to offload the canoe. But on this gray afternoon in January, we’ve come in my car, and we have to leave it beside the road and slog through...

TODAY'S NEW ENGLAND anglers enjoy a tremendous variety of options. Our coldwater streams and lakes abound with self-sustaining populations of European brown trout and western rainbows, often happily mingled with smallmouth bass and northern pike. Our warmwater ponds and lakes hold southern interlopers such as bluegills and largemouth bass. Our coastal...

“BASS-BUGGING,” wrote Ray Bergman, “is a type of fly-rod fishing that was born and raised right here in America. Considering that most fly fishing dates well back into English history, it’s a young sport, young enough that as a boy [Bergman was born in 1891] I was among the first to fish these big bugs in this way.” Actually, bass-bug fishing is...

THE ALARM IN STONEY CALHOUN'S HEAD jangled at 2:55, five minutes before the redundant wind-up clock beside his bed was scheduled to go off. Calhoun’s internal alarm hadn’t failed him yet, but he still didn’t quite trust it. He lay there for a minute, looking out the window at the woods and sky. The stars were bright up there beyond the pines, and...