Travel
"As the helicopter cleared the ridge between peaks, the aerial view of the South Island river basin laid out before me was breathtaking. It was as if we were entering a lost world—one with only mountains, native beech forest and incredibly beautiful streams for as far as the eye could see. A few minutes later, we were flying up the narrow valley of a tributary stream off the main river."
"I cast my fly behind the boat and started stripping only to find that the short right rod was bending double and everyone else occupied."
If we were going to hit the hatch of the Pteronarcys californica, I knew I’d need the power to get that salmonfly into the legendary holes of the Gunnison River...Apparently, my fiberglass beauty had been replaced by graphite many years ago, and my beloved Powell is more akin to a bamboo rod than what is used today.
When you consider that a week-long trip to Montana might have a total value of $2,500, after factoring in transportation and lodging costs, and deposits with guides, a $100 to $200 insurance policy is cheap protection for your vacation in case things go awry. And things do go awry, just ask the experts.
- Photography by: Brian Grossenbacher
Hunting dorado in Argentina.
The best of the Northern Rockies...
The only place along our route where the creek has not been hemmed in by homes and fences...
FOR MOST OF A DECADE I REFUSED to bring a fly rod on the annual elk hunt. That’s because my friends Ed, DeWitt and I hunt too conveniently in the headwaters of the Frying Pan River in western Colorado, about a forty-minute drive upstream from the Gold Medal water below Ruedi Dam. We’re there
Whenever folks ask me where I live, I adopt my best body-builder pose, arm curled tight, and point just below my wrist on the inside of my forearm. My anatomical reference is to Wellfleet, on outer Cape Cod. Everyone laughs, but the biggest cackles come from Michiganders because they know what it's like to chart geography on a body part. (Michigan is known as the Mitten because of its resemblance to the hand shoe.) But, then again, they may just find humor in the fact that I need to hit the gym and grunt out a few hundred more bicep curls.But no gym time for me now because it's fall on the Cape and that's fishing time. Vacation crowds leave in droves around Labor Day, and we anglers have the entire sandbar to ourselves. There are few vehicles waiting at red lights and beach parking lots are virtually empty (and non-permit parking is generally allowed). Vehicles with bike racks disappear and are replaced by rigs with rod racks. By Columbus Day, the restaurants are closed, and it becomes increasingly difficult to get a cup of coffee or some junk food to chow on in between midnight fishing trips.
The 2008 Robert Traver Fly-Fishing Writing Award 2nd Place Story:
"Last summer I invited death to go fishing on the Weber River. On the way there we listened to Morning Edition on NPR. The stories were sadly familiar: A suicide bomber killed himself and 40 other men, women and children in a market in Baghdad; two American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb that had been stuffed into the chest of a dead dog; the body of a missing college girl was found inside her car in a river near her home town."
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