I'm often the dissident. It’s not for defiance or bravado, and I’m not trying to prove anything. I just like going where most people don’t. And I like trying stuff that others won’t. Because when everyone is off doing one thing, I know I can have space by doing the...
Around the bend and upstream of the boulder field, there’s an old stone foundation that sits along the east bank of a strong side channel. It’s a relic of the logging boom around here, so the thick stones were cut and placed together two centuries ago. Water, earth...
I meet a lot of anglers who used to fish. Some of them were die hard, passionate and persistent, often for many years or even decades. But somehow and in some way they gave it up. Maybe fishing was pushed aside for other interests or responsibilities, or maybe they...
As anglers, we want to know where the fly is, and we want control over its path. But on the river, acquisition of these desires is fleeting. The water works against us. Currents grab the line and force the fly off on some unintended course — in the wrong direction and...
Fishing alone always granted me the serenity of simple thoughts, a soul laid bare to the open wilderness and a peace of mind. Then usually, that’s where I left it — somewhere alongside the rocks and flowing water . . .
Fishing the mountains always granted me the serenity of simple thoughts, a soul laid bare to the open wilderness and a peace of mind. Then usually, that’s where I left it — somewhere alongside the rocks and flowing water . . .
There are two sides to every fisherman: one that simply enjoys being on the water (hoping to catch a fish), and the other that desperately wants to know how to put more fish in the net. These two parts find an internal balance inside every angler I know . . .
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...
The small freestone stream where I learned to trout fish in Indiana county, Pennsylvania is posted against trespass. It has been for a couple decades now. So too is the wooded hollow with the broken splash dam where I chased brook trout as a young teenager. In fact,...
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...
Will climbed up the mountain path and out of the canyon. He walked through the back door and into the old sunroom to sit at his grandfather’s wooden desk. He paused in thought and then put pencil to paper.
When he’d finished, he looked up through the sunroom glass toward the fading orange October daylight. Will walked to the porch and felt the cool stone under his feet as he scanned the landscape of his life.
The rooster crowed before dawn . . .