TYING FOR SPRINGTo be completely honest, I often put the fly rod down and throw a spinnerbait when the water is higher than usual, and with any...
FIRST CAST MUSKYI got to the put-in earlier than I needed to. Christmas brought with it a blast of arctic air that nearly had the river on its knees....
MISTLETOE HUNTINGOut of habit, I suppose, my feet found the quiet spots. The spots hard, bare, frozen, and/or vacant of the crisp, tattletale leaves of...
FOGGY MORNING CANNIBALISMThe big rivers are blown out. Hurricane rain from whoever-we’re-up-to-now flooded the watershed, and it’s looking like slow mornings and...
THE CAST & BLAST--RULES OF THE RIVERIf October is a month of transition, November is the month when we embrace the new season. Squirrels have been legal game for two months....
WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE TREES?The world is changing. Summer is clearly in the rearview, and you can see it leaving in the trees. It happens to some earlier than...
FORAGING WILD CHANTERELLESIt took a little over two hours of four-wheel driving, over and through mountains, into National Forest and, eventually, wilderness area,...
THE CHUCK STORIES: JIM AND THE RAFTSThe story I’d like to try to tell begins in the late 80s, though it doesn’t really. It really starts before that, with a wild boy in...
A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITYMusky are curious critters. If you follow this column, you know that I spend what probably amounts to an unhealthy amount of time...
"BAD CONDITIONS"Fish enough, and keep track of the weather and conditions, and certain patterns begin to emerge. Like, for example, when it’s worth going...