By Colin Kearns

Lots of books come across my desk. Stories of survival. Manuals on “manly” activities. Hunting novels. Fishing memoirs. You get the picture. I get a lot of books. The ones I enjoy receiving most, though, are cookbooks. I’m not a very inventive cook. If I don’t have a recipe in front of me, I’m lost as far as ingredient quantities or cooking times. I need instructions. And I just love the character cookbooks acquire over time—with dog-eared recipes and stain-splattered pages—and how they look on a bookshelf. [ Read Full Post ]

By Kirk Deeter

If my dog eats the grip off my new $700 fly rod, will you buy me a new one?

That's basically how it's playing out now with many of those "lifetime guarantee" rods, whether you realize it or not. You're not exactly buying my replacement rod, but when you purchase warrantied rods, you are paying into an "insurance pool" of sorts. We all know nothing is really "free," especially not in fly fishing.

Let's break this down using basic math for the sake of explanation. Assume that an average of one in three rods gets broken in its lifetime. The retail price we pay for rods is therefore closer to the actual cost of 1.33 rods. You're kicking in an extra third. If you break your rod, that's money well spent. If you don't, you took one for the team.

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By Kirk Deeter

Now that Mr. Merwin has told you how nice the soon-to-be-released Cabela's CGt rods are, we're going to give you a chance to win one.

You know the drill. Submit your captions for this photo—of a few ladies rubbing shoulders with a stingray (look closely)—in the comments thread below, and the best one wins the prize. We'll pick the winner at the end of next week. Simple as that.  Good luck!
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By Kirk Deeter

Sometimes, the angler has to resist the forces of instinct.  Here's an example: You make an errant cast, maybe miss the strike of a fish, and you soon find your leader and tippet tangled around the end of your fly rod. So what do you do? You give that rod a few spins and shakes—as if a flick of the wrist will magically untangle the knotted mess.  We all do it, even though that's one of the dumbest moves we can make. Honestly, how often does a knot get better, rather than worse, when you try to untie it by shaking the rod? Maybe once in a hundred shakes?

The same is true with re-casting at fish. You make a nice presentation. The fly floats perfectly into the run. You see a fish move on the fly, maybe splash at it, but no dice. You've been refused. So what do most of us instinctively do at that point? Of course... we pick up the line and fire that fly right back at the fish. And when it doesn't eat the bug that time, we cast again, and again, and again. [ Read Full Post ]

By Kirk Deeter

After years of speculation and concern, fish biologists (and anglers) who have endeavored for decades to restore the native greenback cutthroat trout--Colorado's state fish, native to the South Platte River drainage--have learned the truth about the status of this iconic species. I'll start with the bad news.

All of those "greenback" cutthroats some of us have been catching in remote wilderness streams and lakes east of the Continental Divide aren't greenbacks after all. Based on the best available genetic science at the time, we thought they were, but they're not. They're actually either Colorado River strain cutthroats, which are native to the West Slope, or a more nebulous strain scientists are calling "lineage GB." I'll spare you the genetic details, but we now know for certain that they are not native to the rivers east of the Continental Divide.

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By John Merwin

A kayak is one answer to crowded trout streams. Last week, while camping and fishing in northern New Hampshire, I was discouraged to find three or four vehicles at every riverside access. So Mrs. Merwin and I loaded our kayaks in the truck and headed into the backcountry.

It was a great choice, despite--or perhaps because of--some rough woods roads we bumped along on our way to various remote ponds. Being able to soak up the September sun while casting for brook trout (which is what I’m doing in the photo) was pure pleasure. And best of all, there was nobody else around.
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