Editor’s Note: Shortly after this story was published in issue 16.2, on January 14, President Joe Biden officially designated the Sattitla Highlands National Monument, citing this region’s cultural, historic, scientific, water source, and recreational values as deserving of permanent protection as a national monument. Less than two hours northeast of Redding, CA, the arid landscape […]

The phrase “heading south” typically refers to a time when things begin to fail or take a turn for the worse. Euphemisms aside, the waters of the southeastern United States hold an unrivaled amount of freshwater biodiversity, including many species that can be caught with a fly rod. Despite Alabama’s designation as “America’s Amazon,” pursuing […]

First published in Volume 15, Issue 2 of The Flyfish Journal It is nearly impossible to predict what random piece of media will catch the public’s attention and end up going viral. A few years ago, a short film from the archives of Idaho Fish and Game made that strange leap from historic obscurity to […]

First published in Volume 15, Issue 1 of The Flyfish Journal The Nez Perce call the river yáwwinma, meaning place of cold water. Non-Indigenous people refer to it as Rapid River.  It’s the only stream Congress ever designated a Wild and Scenic river exclusively because of its water quality. Even in August anglers wet-wading its […]

First published in Volume 14, Issue 1 of The Flyfish Journal Wandering through the parched hills and canyons of Southern California, it’s hard to imagine that southern steelhead once thrived in this ecosystem. With a range of roughly 450 coastline miles from the Tijuana to the Santa Maria rivers, the historical population of southern steelhead, […]

Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang narrates the story of four dissident saboteurs who grow increasingly enraged by the industrial assaults on the desert Southwest throughout the 1960s and ’70s. To them, destruction took the form of development—road networks, strip mines, pipelines, power plants. While running the once free-flowing Colorado River, the Gang half-baked one […]

A wildfire sweeps through a canyon, burning all the vegetation in its path. No plant life means no insects, and no insects means no food source for the fish in the creek below. Then comes rain and snow that, unhindered by the erosion protection the plant life once provided, choke the stream with runoff full […]

The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, locally called the Ballard Locks in reference to the adjacent harbor and neighborhood, are one of Seattle’s most popular tourist destinations. They were built over 100 years ago and are now listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. Every summer visitors from across the globe arrive to watch Chinook, […]

The final environmental analysis for the proposed Pebble mine in the productive Bristol Bay region of Alaska released July 23, 2020 shows more than 191 miles of streams and 4,614 acres of wetlands would be impacted if phase one of the proposed Pebble mine advances, with 185 miles and 3,841 acres facing permanent impacts. One-hundred ninety-one miles is […]

“Who the hell eats herring?” That’s the question posed in Rene Gauthier’s Jordan River, BC living room. The room is full of conservationists, social media influencers and staff from Gauthier’s conservation-minded clothing company, ecologyst. Less than 300 yards from the living room, the Jordan River—destroyed by an ill-conceived mining project and now devoid of salmon—meets […]