Stories & Essays

Winter is a hard time of year for a lot of anglers. Between the holidays, bad weather, less daylight, and a lack of hatches, chasing fish is exponentially more difficult now than at other times of the year. However, winter fly fishing is completely worth it for those who brave the cold and can figure out where the trout are holding. Some of my biggest trout...

Tim Schulz has a great story over in Hatch Magazine about a fish he named Dave. Yes, he named a fish. It's named after Dave Delisi, the man who sold Tim a few rods at Sweetgrass years ago. Tim named the fish because he caught the same on on multiple occasions. It's a fun, lighthearted story that we've all probably experienced ourselves at times. I've...

I've always found the world of two-handed rods, and steelhead fishing in general, fascinating. I've never done it, but I've dabbled in trout spey a bit here in the Rockies. What I've been able to do, however, is read up on and learn as much as I can (without actually doing it) about two-handed casting. This recent story in Fly Fisherman Magazine by John...

How often do you find yourself on the water, throwing the same rigs in the same runs, probably for the same fish you caught last time? It's easy to get in a rut in fly fishing, especially if you don't live in an area with tons of public access and good fisheries. And what happens when that rut takes you to a familiar place, but the fish don't cooperate...

A few weeks ago, Alex Stulce and I were out fishing early one morning, hoping to find fish rising to a trico hatch. We parked the trucks and hiked a ways down the river, looking for a safe way down the sheer, rocky bank. This particular river flows at the bottom of a narrow canyon, and there's only a handful of spots with easy access to the water. To get to...

Since John Gierach's passing about a week ago, we've had plenty of wonderful stories shared about the impact he made on so many lives. Tim Schulz's story, over at Hatch Magazine, is worth the read. It's about a time when he got to fish with John Gierach on John Voelker's Frenchman's Pond. You might better recognize John Voelker by his pen name, Robert...

Dom Swentosky is back at it with a fantastic story over at Troutbitten, and it asks a simple question about your own fly fishing: who knows better than you? Specifically, Dom wants you to learn to rely on your own skills and experience, because that's where you grow the most as an angler. "And instead of looking elsewhere for the answers, I looked...

In a list of some of their more recent stories at Flyfish Journal, you'll find a short but sweet piece by Christopher Schaberg. It's about the confusion that sets in after not catching fish in a new place, especially after Schaberg felt he had the little sunfish pond figured out. After a move from New Orleans to St. Louis, he was relegated to city ponds...

Michael Corcoran, over at the website Texas Highways, recently released a great story about one of fly fishing's most prominent guides, Alvin Dedeaux. Dedeaux used to be a singer for a funk band called Bad Mutha Goose and the Brothers Grimm, but he left that lifestyle to become a fly fishing guide. You can read all about that journey here.

I reckon, if you've been fishing long enough, you have a fishing buddy who you haven't seen much of lately. In fact, you two might not even fish together anymore. That's the case for me, and it's the case for countless other anglers, as well. And it's that sense of loss that Dom Swentosky builds on in his latest story over at Troutbitten, about lost fishing...