There is that moment when you are fishing with a friend, when you approach a very promising spot together—who is going to take the first cast? As I have been learning about trout fishing in the streams of my still-new home of Missouri, my friend and guide Steve will almost always do the gracious thing: […]

This year the holiday gift giving season is really easy for fly anglers. Don’t waste your time thinking too much about it: You should buy your fishing buddy, your dad, your partner or spouse, and/or your co-workers who fish Steve Duda’s and Dave Karczynski’s new books—River Songs and Calling After Water, respectively. Both are exceptional, […]

Often after I go on a fishing trip, when something exciting happened or when I catch a new species, I’ll email my fishing buddy several states away, Greg Keeler, to tell him the news:   Greg! I went to Huzzah Creek yesterday and caught a bunch of longear sunfish for the first time! Their bellies […]

I have never loved the novella “A River Runs Through It.” (Though I do like the movie adaptation of Norman Maclean’s classic novella of flyfishing and family.) Maybe it’s because I was first and foremost a Midwestern bass angler, and I came to Western trout fishing later in my life. But most of my flyfishing […]

If you’re a long-time reader of The Flyfish Journal, you’re likely familiar with several of the stories included in Steve Duda’s debut essay collection, River Songs: Moments of Wild Wonder in Fly Fishing. Many of the essays collected here appeared both before and during Duda’s seven-year tenure as the Journal’s editor. Among my favorites—which have […]

The premise of Steve Ramirez’s new book, Casting Homeward, is deceptively simple: Ramirez goes to visit various flyfishing friends at their “homewaters,” or the places they know by heart, and he fishes there, with these friends. Each trip-qua-chapter follows a familiar arc: he arrives, meets his friend and they share a local beer or wine […]

“Instead of insight, maybe all we get is the strength to wander for a while. An inheritance of wonder, and nothing more.” ~William Least Heat Moon Summertime. If ever there was a time to bail out from the world, it’s this season. Even if only with a great read in your hands. Decades ago, Audrey […]

Good writing offers the reader a vicarious experience. When that experience involves fishing water I’ve never fished, that for me is possibly the most enjoyable kind of reading. Malachy Tallack’s essay collection, Illuminated by Water (Pegasus Books, 2022), fits the bill perfectly. These essays on fish and fishing are mostly set in Tallack’s home of […]

Recently, I took a trip to Missoula to give a talk at the University of Montana. My hosts put me up at the Doubletree Edgewater, right on the river—guest rooms literally steps away from the currents of the Clark Fork. It had been many years since I spent time next to a western river, and […]

WHENEVER I NOTICE A NEW BOOK about flyfishing, I’m always curious to see how the author balances writing about fishing with the necessity for it all to somehow be art. If you flyfish and you’ve ever had someone say to you, “Ohhhhh, flyfishing: it’s so artistic!” then you know what I mean. There’s a strange […]