News

Whether you live in the Northeast or not, there are three rivers you simply can’t leave off your historical fly-fishing bucket list: the Beaverkill, Ausable, and Battenkill. Each of these rivers has played host to countless fly-fishing legends, from Theodore Gordon to Lee and  Joan Wulff, to modern legends like Tom Rosenbauer. In fact, many of the most...

"In the dazzling light, under the brilliant blue sky, every detail of the magnificent forest was vivid to the eye: the great trees, the network of bush ropes, the caverns of greenery, where thick-leaved vines covered all things else." -Theodore Roosevelt, Through the Brazilian Wilderness (1914) Two weeks ago, I led a group of Americans into a section of...

This week’s Tying Tuesday features three very different patterns for fishing different parts of the water column. If you enjoy fishing dry-dropper tandem rigs, Davie McPhail's hi-vis caddisfly imitation makes both a great indicator and a tasty meal for trout looking to smack insects off the surface. Next, Matt O'Neal of Savage Flies teaches you to tie a...

One of the country's rarest trout subspecies is making a remarkable comeback in southeastern Colorado. As Chris Hunt reports in Hatch magazine, the Hayden Creek cutthroat was nearly wiped out by wildfire in 2016, but biologists have made a startling discovery: A native cutthroat trout found only in the Arkansas River drainage of southern Colorado, and once...

After five years and 2,823 posts here at MidCurrent, it's time for me to turn the reins over to someone new. I started with MidCurrent back in 2020, before the pandemic. Marshall Cutchin, publisher emeritus and then-owner of MidCurrent, hired me as the News Editor. I was in charge of finding and sharing the goings-on of the fly fishing world. When you...

Destination travel is all the rage right now. Instagram is filled with pictures and videos of anglers in far-flung locales, chasing exotic fish on 12-weight rods, and generally having the time of their life. I'll admit, a bit of jealousy creeps in when I see those posts. I'd love to be somewhere warm right now. Instead, I'm thawing out from a deep freeze...

Even though fly fishing is a global sport, I think many of us—myself included—forget how much of an impact it has on other people. It's not just the North American market that dominates fly fishing. In fact, a recent story from The Times in London claims that "fishing, and in particular fly fishing" is Britain's favorite sport and a "new youthful...

This week's Tying Tuesday features one of my all-time favorite flies, a new smallmouth pattern that'll work well for trout, and some tips on picking and sizing dry-fly hackle. With spring creeping ever closer, I reckon most of us could use the refresher on the Klinkhåmer, and picking and sizing hackle. Davie McPhail's videos—and flies—are some of the...

Back in the 1990s, salmon and steelhead returning to the Columbia River Basin averaged just over one million fish per year, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. That includes all five species of Pacific salmon, and steelhead. The current 10-year rolling average is 2.3 million fish per year, which is certainly better than almost 30 years ago, but still...

Years ago, when I first learned to tie flies, my dad showed me a caddis pattern that he said his father—my grandpa—invented. This particular fly is a mashup of what a tier today would label as an Adams and an elk-hair caddis, complete with the wing. It has the Adams tail, but the flat, stubby body of the caddis. You can hackle this fly with whatever you...