Search Month: March 2022

What do you believe in? What can you fish hard enough and long enough to effectively convince a sluggish trout that it’s hungry? That’s the fisherman’s confidence. And it beats out the hatch chart, the guide’s advice and last week’s river stories every time . . .

Season Three begins with a round-table discussion about fishermen’s secrets and what happens when we give up the most sensitive of them — spot burning.

Secrets are part of the legacy of fishing. Exploring and locating places that are special to each of us is part of what keeps us coming back. We like to think that we’ve discovered something that is uncommon or unknown. And we learn that sharing information with the wrong people or in the wrong way can easily destroy a secret by making the uncommon, common.

It’s time for the fish commission to truly protect, preserve and enhance our wild trout streams, whether that is easy, or whether it’s hard. Stop stocking over all Class A wild trout stream sections.

It’s the right thing to do. And sometimes, that’s where government policy should start . . .

Snags happen. I’ve fished with people who see every hang up as a failure — every lost fly as a mistake. But inevitably, that mindset breeds an overcautious angler, too careful and just hoping for some good luck.

Hang ups are not a failure. For a good angler, they’re a calculated risk — an occasional consequence after assessing probability against skill, opportunity against loss. We all hang up the fly sometimes. So what.

Now let’s talk about how to pop that underwater snag loose . . .