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As a boy growing up on the edge of a southwestern desert I took an early - and seemingly out-of-place - interest in hunting and fishing. A friend who was similarly afflicted and I would take our Red Ryder BB guns out into a weedy field and shoot grasshoppers. When the hoppers wouldn't hold still, we took up wing shooting. Ever tried to shoot a grasshopper on the wing with a BB gun? We'd waste an afternoon and a dime's worth of BB's for two or three grasshoppers apiece. That first BB gun was...
I got my first fly tying vise when I was about nine or 10 years old. It wasn't gift-wrapped, and it wasn't Christmas. It was handed to me by my Godfather, who with my dad was one of my heroes. A few weeks before he showed me a box of flies he tied and I was fascinated. I remember the warm half-smile on Paul's face when he gave me that vise. It had been his, and had fine jaws for tying small trout flies. I was awestruck. He knew, then, what would likely unfold, but he didn't know all of it. When...
Editor's note: We're revisiting some fall colors and sentiments this first week of December for the Fly Fishing Journal. We hope you enjoy a little throwback. This October I shall go fishing. I haven't done so yet, but I will soon. This is a statement of purpose, not the expression of an idle wish. There aren't many fishing days left. The changes in the weather as we enter October reminds me of that. While it is still a bit sunny, pleasantly chilly, or softly overcast but not too cold, there is...
Thanksgiving is never complete without my hearing the old hymn that begins with ”for the beauty of the earth.” I’ll play it on my tin whistle if I don’t hear it anywhere else. For the beauty of the earth, For the beauty of the skies, For the love which from our birth Over and around us lies. While our Civil War was at its height of desolation and carnage in 1863, a young Englishman named Folliott Sandford Pierpoint walked to the top of a hill above his village and saw leaves turning color and wildflowers dotting the meadow between him and the...
It's a good thing - more like a blessing - that the river is still fishable at this point in November. Especially this November. Maybe God knew we'd need a break, a time to refresh and restore our souls after this election, and so in His divine mercy he extended the days that are warm enough to fish for a couple of weeks after the polls closed. At least that's what I want to think. The river, which in past years has been iced over by now, is still in decent shape. The weather, some days, is surp...
When my physical therapist told me her husband had already arrowed an elk this archery season I was overjoyed for him but not necessarily surprised. His dad was an inveterate hunter, willing to track and stalk a trophy animal for miles and days if necessary to make the kill of a lifetime. I've known Drew since he was a kid and his old man's blood runs through his veins. And knowing that, I didn't ask his wife - while she was working the knots out of my shoulders - if he had saved the hide. The l...
When the day temps drop I don't feel like moving around too fast. My favorite winter sport, if you can call it that, is sitting indoors where it's warm and cozy and tying flies. So it's easy for me to sympathize with how a trout feels when it gets cold. They get sluggish and don't move around much as the water temps drop. A trout hanging under the shade of a midsummer foam line will break ranks to chase a minnow several feet in order to eat it. One such day I watched Chris Rockhold throw a sculp...
You can probably look out your window right now and tell more about the weather than I can as I write this. Same with river reports. I trust them almost half the time. We don't know exactly what the next couple of weeks will bring for weather. We could be looking at wind, rain and downed trees - always a hazard. If you're going out, be careful. The coming week calls for broken weather - clouds, rain showers, sunshine peeking through and temps in the mildly cool high 40s on down into the low...
Author's note: Some of you have asked, at various times, whether I'd reprint some favorite columns from previous years. For those of you who asked, and for those who missed it the first time around, here's an updated version of a favorite. Enjoy! Sunday afternoon found me with an almost desperate need to go fishing. I felt winter closing in, and in some ways it seemed as if summer didn't really happen as I approached Jan about going fishing. "I'll be ready to go by 2:30," Jan announces. That...
Sunday was one of those crisp, clear, Indian Summer days I had been longing for since the smoke cleared. Like a lot of people I feel robbed of summer. Now its counterpart, and always my favorite time of year, is here. Our neighbors recently invited us to pick MacIntosh apples from their trees. Jan picked the apples and will make a pie. The leaves on our trees turned color and just as soon started blowing off. For just a little while longer, everything is glorious and alive before the onset of...
You see them all summer long - those little sand-and-gravel cases on the downstream side of rocks in the shallows of the stream. They might have a little black head and legs sticking out and crawl slowly across the bottom. Spook them, cast a shadow over them, and they pull their heads in, lie still and seem to disappear. They crawl out of their cases and build new ones several times through the summer. Each case is glued together from the sand in the river bottom using a special UV-reflective...
My first meeting with Dave Inks was inconsequential. It was somewhere in the mid-seventies and my young family was attending a sportsman's show in California's Bay Area. A number of fly fishing greats would be there and I was eager to meet some of them. My young son Jay and I visited Randall Kauffman's booth, where Randall graciously signed a copy of his new book for Jay. A few minutes later we were in the Creative Sports booth, the first mega-fly shop, manufacturing and wholesale conglomerate i...
Early this evening the air was pleasant. The air quality index varied between moderate to good - stable enough for Jan to plan ahead, marinate some fresh veggies and chicken chunks for kebabs, throw them on the grill and plan a pleasant outdoor meal. Left in my hands, we'd have eaten cold tuna sandwiches indoors. It's a good thing she's more energetic and playful than I am these days. Smoke gets to me and I become a house-bound creature of dour habits when enough wildfire smoke hangs in the air...
These days we're having now, this little tweener season that I call late summer, is one of my favorite times. The heat of summer - and hopefully the fires and their shrouds of smoke - are winding down. Days are getting noticeably shorter and the nights are noticeably cooler. The kids are getting their last lick of vacation in before the start of school. It's 4H animal projects and county fair time, sweet corn fresh from somebody's garden or maybe a roadside stand time, and time to think about...
At first I hated fishing tricos. They were too much of a mystery - not much was written about them then and all I knew about them were things I didn't like. They were too small. There were no standard patterns - that I knew about, anyway - so I had to start from scratch. The trout kept sipping them off the surface with maddening regularity for hours every morning. And when the tricos were on, it was useless to fish with anything else. If I wanted to catch these fish, I'd have to learn more...
You see them everywhere - maybe not in blizzard numbers but usually at least a few - all summer long. They start while salmonflies are on the water in June and they last, most years, well into September, depending on how chilly the nights get. You'll often find more of them clinging to streamside willows and tall grass than you'll see on the water. When they're ready, you'll see the egg-layers flying almost haphazardly over the stream, then dropping to shed their cargo of eggs into rifled...
Jon is a great kid. When my grandson Silas invited Jon to join us on a fishing and camping trip I couldn't have been more pleased. Silas is a great kid, too. I knew they'd bring a sense of adventure, enthusiasm, laughter and just enough delightful mischief to keep each other busy. I wouldn't have to do much but direct traffic, pass out chores and enjoy my time with them. Jon and Silas are both 13, and have known each other since they were babies. Their moms are best friends and their children, J...
Anybody reading this column who is old enough to be a Gordon Lightfoot fan might recognize the title of this column from one of his songs. Like many of you, and without going into the reasons why, I could use a summertime dream about now and over the next few days I might get one. I'm taking a grandson and his friend camping and fishing. They're wonderful kids and at that barely-teen age when the world comes alive with things to wonder at while they're still young enough to see it all fresh,...
Our trout streams in western Montana or the Idaho Panhandle have a lot in common. Whether you fish the St. Joe in Idaho or the Blackfoot, Bitterroot, or Rock Creek in Montana, you'll find the same trout species, the same insect hatches, the same general topography, but with infinite local variations that can differ slightly as you move from one run to another on the same body of water, much less into a different watershed. It's theme and variation. Each stream has its own character, its own...
Last week, water temps in the upper Bitterroot crept into the low and mid-60s and the East Fork and West Fork held in that range. Insect hatches are abundant at those temperatures, trout of all species feed actively, the angler can have a great day and all can appear to be well. But that was last week. This week and for the foreseeable future, day temps in the 90s will push water temperatures skyward by mid-day. As I write, hoot-owl restrictions, no fishing from 2 p.m. until 10 p.m., have been...
"I'm not a quitter, grandpa!" Seven-year-old Chance was not about to give up. His older brother had caught a couple of trout on his own and his four-year-old younger brother had caught one too, with some undivided assistance from Grandpa Chuck. Now it was Chance's turn. He was standing on a narrow strip of gravel between a current seam on the West Fork of the Bitterroot and a strip of willows behind him. I had been watching from downstream. As his casts neared the point where some small fish...
There still might be some leftover "super hatches" here and there; I remember one year when there was still major salmonfly activity well into late July on the Blackfoot. And then there was the year that green drakes, which might be done by mid-June most places, persisted until after the Fourth of July on the Bitterroot. And I don't mean occasional sightings. When I fished both of these hatches, years apart, they were the major happening on these rivers. The "super hatches," as they're called, a...
It's not every day that a fly shop owner has a client take him on a guided float trip. My friend John was in the front seat of the boat, I was in the rear. John and I first met at the Portland Expo Sportsman's Show where I was doing seminars and demonstrations. We hit it off and over the years he fished out of my shop regularly, bringing groups of friends with him. He was the gracious host to our dinners after fishing or after show hours in Portland. I wasn't too surprised when he invited me to...
"Chuck, what are you doing?" We had just launched on a not-quite-treacherous stretch of water. It was too early in the day, and possibly too early in the season to expect much dry fly fishing with the salmonfly hatch. It could happen, we told ourselves. There were telltale nymph shucks on the rock near the high-water line and in the willows. We had seen some adults flying around. The ever-hopeful guy in the front seat started with a big salmonfly dry. He was busy fishing - hitting the...
Safety any time you're on the water begins with preparation. For the wading angler this means gearing up for safety (and comfort) before going out. Comfort, you say? If you're miserable it follows that you might put yourself in danger. Getting chilled in a sudden downpour might not lead to hypothermia, but why take the chance? Slick-soled sandals or running shoes instead of purpose-built wading footwear? I've done it and survived the falls, but I've outgrown that silliness and don't recommend...
