By Keith McCafferty

For the tourists who buy conch shells in the crushed-coral lot of the Southernmost Hotel, where U.S. 1 runs out of land after its 2,000-mile descent of the eastern seaboard, Key West is a party town—the end of the road in the sense that senior prom is the end of high school. It is a place where letting go begins with a beer in the Half Shell Raw Bar, pauses to take in the sunset at Mallory Square, then finds its stride in a neon careen down Duval Street to Sloppy Joe’s, where Hemingway told tales and hitched his pants with anchor rope. Anything might happen from here on out. Something surely will.

For others, Key West is the end of the road in the way that the darkest bar is the end of the day. It is where shattered lives exhaust their final hours, where fortune-tellers manufacture hope for the hopeless for a $10 bill, where men who can’t recall when it all went wrong lean in 2 a.m. shadows among six-toed cats that are scarcely more than shadows themselves. [ Read Full Post ]

By Kirk Deeter

Ask anyone who fishes with me, and they'll tell you that I am usually very smart about sun exposure. I wear hats. I wear long sleeves. I slather on sunscreen. I know the stakes, and have had many friends fall victim to the harmful effects of the sun.

But all it takes is one goof, and you can pay the price. I'm proof of that. [ Read Full Post ]

By Tim Romano

My friend over at Western Resource Advocates, whose mission "is to protect the West’s land, air, and water," sent me a rap song performed by Jorge Figueroa, one of their water policy analysts. With beats by Tristan Giallani, the rap utilizes a poem written by Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory J. Hobbs about the Colorado River and its in-stream flow law.

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By David Draper

We’ve been on an extended run of reader-submitted Food Fight photos and it continues this week with two fishy pics. So let’s skip the filler and go right to the meat of the matter. Cast your votes for the fish dish you’d most like to tuck into right now. [ Read Full Post ]

By Kirk Deeter

For starters, I have to admit that I'm stealing this idea from my friend Brennan Sang, who posed that question on Facebook a few days ago, prompting a string of responses I find very interesting. 

I wanted to throw it out there for the Fly Talk nation, because fishing, to me, is as much about the people with whom you share the experience as it is about the fish themselves. It strikes me that so many people respond to this question by saying that they'd like to fish one more time with a family member or friend who has passed away. I feel the same way. [ Read Full Post ]

By Joe Cermele

I so badly want to tell you that the huge steelhead bending my rod in the photo at left was landed. Unfortunately, I cannot. Nor can I tell you the four other steelhead hooked during the same session were landed. Luckily for L.L. Bean, I wasn't field testing one of their nets in Pulaski, NY, this past weekend. Equally lucky for Bean, my horrible landing ratio was a product of the need for 4-pound tippet, a crowded river, and making dumb decisions at critical points in the fight...not the performance of new Quest Large Arbor reel I was using.

L.L. Bean's Quest fly reels have been around for a while, marketed as introductory reels for  beginner fly fishermen. The original Quests are made of a composite resin. This year, Bean upped the ante with the Quest Large Arbor series, which have spools and housings made of die-cast aluminum, and some extra beef in the sealed disc drags. The model I got to play with was the #2, and it sells for only $45.

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