By Tim Romano

Cicadas might be annoyingly loud, but I know they bring huge trout to the surface on rivers like the Green in Utah and the Colorado at Lees Ferry in shadow of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Bass also love them and I'm sure they suck them down all over the east coast. And now there's a way to see realtime info on when cicadas will start flying around—using data provided by you.

WNYC, a public radio station in New York, is promoting a crowdsourcing project call the Cicada Tracker, where people can create a temperature sensor and report their findings to the station when things start to warm up. WNYC will then map this data on the cicada hatch in the Northeast and share it online. [ Read Full Post ]

By Kirk Deeter

Aloha from the Garden Island of Kaua'i in the Hawaiian Islands. I'm on a much-anticipated family vacation, where my wife, Sarah, and son, Paul, and I are enjoying some spectacular scuba diving (along with my brother, Drew, who took this photograph of a sea turtle we encountered Saturday). When I'm not fishing, diving is my favorite pastime. I enjoy watching fish when I'm not actually casting at them, sometimes for reasons explained in one of last week's Fly Talk posts. I'll admit, however, that I much prefer the clear, warm tropical waters over the icy swirling currents of trout rivers.

Last night, I took my rod to cast off a point of lava rocks. I was casting a Clouser minnow at nothing in particular, and truth be told, I didn't catch anything. But I did see another giant green turtle swim up near the shoreline, poke its head above the surface to check me out for several minutes, then vanish under the foam.

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By Kirk Deeter

The "Going Deep" features I wrote for Field & Stream are some of my favorite stories I've ever written. I started with trout and that eventually led to bass and other species like pike and walleye.  The premise was simple: To truly understand fish, you have to "be the fish."  So I put on scuba gear, went below the surface, and watched what fish did as anglers were casting at them. The reason I like these stories so much is because I learned tons as I was producing them. We'd boil the information down into magazine feature packages, but there was always enough information to make a book...

Which is what my friend Geoff Mueller did in "What a Trout Sees: A Fly-Fishing Guide to Life Underwater." And I'd be jealous of Mueller for producing a book I wish I had done, but he did so in a way that I'm not sure I could have pulled off.
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By Tim Romano

I recently asked for your help saving my beloved Colorado River, now I need to tell you about a situation in the area known as the Thompson Divide just west of Aspen, CO. The home to some pristine Colorado River Cutthroat Trout watersheds, as well as one of the most productive elk habitats in the state, is under threat from oil and gas interests that want to drill in the area. As you can see on the map above, the industry is creeping closer and closer.

Our own governor says this is a bad idea, but really has no authority to stop it as the BLM (a federal agency) issues the permits to drill there.  

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By Tim Romano

You knew it had to happen sometime...

It seems the Harlem Shake has infiltrated almost everywhere in the blog-o-sphere. It has shown up in places like the University of Georgia Swim and Dive Team, on an airplane, and has even been credited with becoming a, "potent symbol of protest, revolt and defiance" in the Middle East. [ Read Full Post ]

By Tim Romano

A wee update of 22 new photos from the trip that Kirk and I took for sea run brown trout and doves in Argentina right after the new year.

We fished at Kau Tapen lodge and shot many many dove at La Dormida with the fine gentlemen from Nervous Waters. The trip was put together by friend and fly guru extraordinaire Oliver White. You may remember Oliver from Kirk's piece on Arapaimas in the jungle of Guyana. [ Read Full Post ]