“To PUT your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together” — Barry Lopez ONE Into the river is where I’m bound. TWO Every river has a language. Every river has a history. Every river is a teacher. THREE Four-hundred forty-four miles of water from New York to the […]

Years ago, my friend Jon Olien and I took our first trip to Oregon’s lower Grand Ronde after our mutual Spey-casting and steelhead guru bestowed his long-standing admiration—nay, adoration—for the storied Snake River tributary and its skyward-looking steelhead. After the usual stumbling that comes with the arrival to a new landscape, we came across the […]

“Oh no.” Rupert and I look at each other. It takes a moment, but then we realize the same thing Ben has.  “Oh shit,” Rupert says.  It’s 5 a.m. in Youghal, County Cork. The Irish dawn is breaking overhead. We’re tired; this is the third and last day of our trip, and we’re up early. […]

As a child, I was convinced the dock at our family’s lake house was the epicenter of all fish activity. My evidence was an arching mulberry tree that overhung the bank and dropped its dark-purple fruit into the water, coaxing fish to swarm in response—tiny sunfish darting busily around the rocks, bass lurking in the shade […]

Keaton McEvoy clenches a line between her teeth as she sets up her rod for some early spring fishing in the Presumpscot River north of Portland, ME. She pays no heed to the 25 mph wind gusts and the puppy whining in the crate of her SUV, nor to the gray slush on which she […]

They’re called a Norfolk Tumbler, a man named James is saying. He demonstrates with his hand. They can swivel from their hocks, see. That’s unusual for a dog. It’s why they’re so fast, even over rough ground. Had a good one a few years back. Then one night we’re out, she’s on a rabbit, and […]

I awaken to the perpetual roar of waves churning just outside the window. It’s dark, early, and the slightest twinge of a hangover pulses behind my right eye. Late in the night, I flung open the window to let the cold, misty late-October wind blow in off the lake from Canada. The bedroom is freezing, […]

Fog hangs low over a chilly summer morning ride up the White River outside Cotter, AR. Concealed within it is a flotilla of 20-foot-long johnboats with hopeful Midwesterners dunking grocery store shrimp cocktails off the gunnels, their trip’s success measured in how many dead rainbows lay in the cooler at the end of the day […]

The queen of Central Park was enormous, an aged creature from a long time ago. All the other carp got out of her way and kissed her ass. She was swimming along the darkened windows of the Boathouse restaurant, closed for the pandemic. I watched her dark yellow flanks sway from side to side and […]

In the “Desert of Wales,” he appeared like a tall drink of iced water. Even at 500 yards you could tell he knew how to fish. Striding toward the shore. Melding with the rain-parched tussocks in his beige chest waders. Oozing confidence. Master of his craft. He fished his way around the reservoir with a […]