“It’s called fishing, not catching.” —Ancient proverb   There is a Norman Rockwell painting of a boy asleep on the banks of an unseen river. He rests his left arm on a dog, perhaps a corgi, and at his right hand is a bamboo fishing pole with soup-can reel, string and bobber. He wears a […]

In his fingers Dwight Hwang feels every scale, every fin and every contour of the dead koi lying on the table in front of him. Sooty ink penetrates the tissue-thin paper he presses against the fish’s body. He knows from experience how much pressure to apply and from feel when it’s time to remove the […]

Flyfishing guides are a tight-knit community, quick to come to each other’s aid. But they’re also a proud and stubborn bunch, slow to ask for help. The flyfishing industry is beginning to recognize the need for a safety net for guides, with brands and nonprofit organizations stepping in to help. They argue that experienced guides […]

Fish fall from the sky, thick as the raindrops of a July thunderstorm.  The fingerling trout flutter down, landing gently on the surface of one of the hundreds of high alpine lakes of Utah’s Uinta Mountains. The plane that dropped them climbs and banks off toward its next target. It’s a far cry from the […]

First Law of Fish Fish in the river shall remain in the river unless acted upon by an outside force. Force of nature. Failure of dam. Flood. Famine. Kingfishers. Fortune favors the bold, but bold fish find hooks driven home. Talons in back, flopping through sky. Cold fish, warm fish, cod fish, fried fish, god […]

It was a frigid morning on the upper Colorado River, with thick clouds piled up against the west slope of the Rockies and an icy fog over the water, sealing in the cold night air like a lid. It was the last week in October, but everything about it felt like January. The big paved […]

The volume of a single rooster’s crow averages 90 decibels, about the same as a barking dog. So when I enter one of the barns at renowned hackle producer Whiting Farms where more than 3,000 roosters are kept in stack upon stack of looming microwave-sized cages, the sound is deafening. Every rooster in the place […]

September on Idaho’s legendary Snake River is prime time—it’s not a matter of what patterns will work, so much as how you want to fish. Hoppers and leech patterns are a standby, while dry-fly purists can cast a size-18 dun during the afternoon hatch. The variety of fishing styles are endless, the fish are voracious […]

My first flight in a floatplane was sometime in the late 1970s. I don’t remember the exact year, but I remember the plane. It was a de Havilland Twin Otter—a big, loud workhorse of an aircraft that carried 10 fishermen, all our gear, a week’s worth of groceries and supplies and a 55-gallon drum of […]