When you work the Pusher, imagine the wings flexing and pulsing as you hand twist retrieve and pulse the rod tip on a three count. See the fly in your mind's eye and make it come alive in the dark. Then hold on tight . . .

Continue reading Troutbitten Fly Box — The Harvey Pusher Night Fly (with VIDEO) at Troutbitten.

When you work the Pusher, imagine the wings flexing and pulsing as you hand twist retrieve and pulse the rod tip on a three count. See the fly in your mind's eye and make it come alive in the dark. Then hold on tight . . .

Continue reading Troutbitten Fly Box — The Harvey Pusher Night Fly (with VIDEO) at Troutbitten.

I’m not a big fan of summer.

It’s the heat. Thing is, you can’t really get away from it. If you want to be outside in all seasons (and I do) you have to somehow make friends with or tolerate the weather. Against the cold of winter, you can add layers to fend off most discomfort, but in the summer heat, once the shirt is off and the flip flops are on, your done — that’s as cool as you're gonna get. So there’s no option but to mow the grass, play baseball and have the family picnic in a thick, wet blanket of summer heat. People still tell me that I’ll get used to it. I doubt it.

The same people also tell me how much they love summers. I don’t believe them. I think they like the idea of it, and they like the parties, the parades, the fireworks, the longer daylight hours and the lax work schedules. But the actual season? The weather? Nah. Bitching about the heat (like I’m doing here) seems like another common summer recreation from the list, and I see a clear majority looking for the next air conditioner, cold lake or swimming pool.

Continue reading Hell-Hot Sun and the Strawberry Moon at Troutbitten.

** Note: This January 2015 post is rewritten and revisited here. So many of our favorite waters are accompanied by railroad tracks, and walking the familiar but odd stride required by the spacing of the wooden ties has become instinctive to me.  The tracks are a welcome companion and a clear route away from tangled streamside brush and briers. […]

Continue reading Night Shift — Tracks at Troutbitten.

Night fishing requires some sacrifice. High catch rates are exchanged for a couple fish large enough to fill out the net — a hopeful bargain. Visual excitement is traded for an adrenaline rush, sustained by roaming among the unseen. And sleeping hours are swapped for calm, reclusive minutes apart from the otherwise resting world. River […]

Continue reading Back in Black — The Night Shift at Troutbitten.

Night fishing isn’t for everyone. And for that I’m thankful, because the prime attraction for me is solitude. I like the exquisite loneliness of the dark. Mix in the edgy spark of fear every so often, and an unusual feeling hangs on the black curtains limiting your perimeter. Night fishing delivers a constant and calm […]

Continue reading Of Mice and Fishermen at Troutbitten.

— This is the companion chapter to The Shallows Above, published a few days ago. … I’ve done this nighttime thunderstorm thing before. Two summers ago, on a dark night in July, I was surprised by another thunderstorm. And once again, it was one of the most memorable nights I’ve had. Everywhere, the fish were moving. […]

Continue reading The Shallows Below at Troutbitten.

The thunderstorm came from nowhere. I’m not much for weather reports, and I hadn’t checked. I’d simply walked out of my garage and looked at some clouds in the sky at dusk. No moon, either. So it would be a dark night with only patches of starlight between the clouds: my favorite kind of sky […]

Continue reading The Shallows Above at Troutbitten.

  The other day, my friend, Austin, mentioned something about me being a calculated fisherman. I guess I come off that way. The truth is, my planning and plotting and theory building mostly happens while I’m not fishing. When I’m on the water, a lot of that calculation gets tossed away. It’s left on the […]

Continue reading Calculated Fun at Troutbitten.

I think I’ve night fished often enough now to make some conclusions — not many, but a few basic determinations that allow me to have confidence in laying out a few principles. Here’s one: night fishing around here is hard. It takes dogged persistence over many seasons to get anywhere with it. If you get […]

Continue reading Night Shift — This River and the Other River at Troutbitten.