The Drake

IN LATE JANUARY, the Colorado Court of Appeals gave a favorable ruling in Roger Hill’s decade-long fight for public access along a stretch of Colorado’s Arkansas River. The case stems from a 2012 incident in which Hill was run off a prime piece of wa

COLORADO’S RIVER laws might be in trouble. Roger Hill, the octogenarian trying to fulfill his dream of legally wade-fishing the Arkansas River, was at the Colorado Court of Appeals on January 27 and got good news about his case—Hill v Warsewa. Hill a

LONGFELLOW CREEK BEGINS just north of my home in Seattle and empties into the industrial no-mans-land of the Duwamish Waterway. Along its four-mile stretch, numerous roads cross or parallel Longfellow, and on every wet Northwest day, stormwater washe

MIGHTY WATERS, a wonderful movie released last year by Austin-based filmmaker Shannon Vandivier, tells the story of beloved Bimini-based guide and boat-builder Ansil Saunders, in particular how Saunders had taken Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. out for a

WHEN JOSEPH ROSANNO, the multimedia artist behind the Salmon School collaborative, arrived at the United Nations climate summit (COP26) in Glasgow late last year, he had one goal in mind: to help protect salmon and steelhead. Unlike others at the con

Hola, Trask! Q: We’re rescue pups from Mexico, recently muled up to Oregon by a nice couple named Greg and Katherine. Oregon is cool, but we heard about California’s Bill 1881—the “Dog and Cat Bill of Rights.” We don’t care about cats, but this law t

THE OLD SAYING SUGGESTS that night is darkest before the dawn. And in dull daily consciousness, much of life can feel like waiting for sunup. As my wife and I share a drink and a steak and navigate covid-era careers, the death-march of elder-care obl

MY SON’S FACE was barely visible with his hood pulled tight around his head. But from what I could tell, he looked as attentive as a 7-year-old could be. Ten minutes earlier, I’d suggested he pass on this fish. But to my surprise, he decided this blu

ANY DEDICATED FLY FISHER looks for tips on how to improve. Fortunately, there’s a long tradition of experts giving advice, as I was reminded while reading Raymond Carver’s final book, A New Path to the Waterfall (1989), where salmon, sturgeon, bass,

IN APPALACHIA, there’s no straight way to travel. Laurel hell grows thick, and the only way to navigate it is to put your feet in a streambed and follow every meander and oxbow of the creek. Native rhododendron, the true laurel in any laurel hell, al

CALIFORNIA’S LITTLE KERN golden trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss whitei) occupy a single watershed in the world—the Little Kern River and its tributaries, which flow through the southern Sierra Nevada mountain range, and are hugged by protected land of Seq

NOW I UNDERSTAND how Mugato in Zoolander felt. Everyone at the fly shop is picking out different hackle, feathers, and fur, and here I am at the fly counter grabbing fistfuls of pre-tied adams and caddis, feeling left out for not tying my own. Since

IT WAS A REMARKABLY COLD WINTER in the ragged foothills of the southern Appalachians. The dark days were consumed tying great volumes of flies, which meant that I had an abundant supply of woolly buggers and hare’s ears overflowing from the boxes now

SCIENTISTS NOW SAY that the last two decades of drought in the West are the worst in 1200 years. In my home near the San Francisco Bay, I can dismiss this notion when water still flows from my taps. But even in the city, paved and landscaped, tamed a

THE ABRUPT SOUND of a seven-foot wingspan catching an updraft exploded overhead in an alien whoosh, like a skydiver deploying his canopy. My chest instantly filled with some kind of foreign, inexplicable adrenaline. With my ass stuck firmly in the th

THERE WAS NO DOUBT it was a steelhead. Until it wasn’t. The grab had been so jolting, the head shakes so violent, that no consideration was given to the fish being anything but a steelhead. Yet there at my feet, in six inches of water, lay a brown sm

When anglers daydream of traveling 6,000 miles to fish Chilean Patagonia, it’s unlikely they conjure images of chasing small-stream brookies with a three-weight. Yet that’s precisely how I spent one of my favorite days at Rio Palena Lodge, wading up

Some 10,000 years ago, glaciers formed during the last Ice Age were retreating from the Upper Midwest. While portions of Wisconsin were scraped into the rolling landscape found across much of the state, a roughly 24,000-square-mile piece of land at t

It was slack tide when we broke out our waders, slipping into them on the edge of Dayville Road, the eagles and gulls perched above us, watching from the spruces as we strung up our rods and tied on silver flash flies. Not that the flies we picked wo

CAPE COD. MARTHA’S VINEYARD. THE HAMPTONS. If you live north of the Mason-Dixon and east of the Allegheny, these are places you’re likely to fish. They require a drive just long enough to feel like you’re getting away, yet short enough to prevent roa

I HAVE A LOVE-HATE relationship with spring. Warming temps are the “hate” part. My little slice of the Rocky Mountain West is ski country, and its winters deliver dozens of powder-packed days during most years. Few of those happen in April or May. In

JAMMED IN A DE HAVILAND BEAVER, the Alaska packhorse of bush planes, we circled the Ayakulik River before landing. My friend shouted, “Hey look, a moose,” pointing at a moving brown mass. “There are no moose on Kodiak Island,” our pilot reminded us.

I MUST TURN LEFT a hundred times a day. Driving, walking, spinning around in my office chair, playing with my dog, rolling over in bed, reaching for toilet paper. So the move should’ve come easy when it was needed. But it did not. A recent December p