Posts from the “Fly Fishing” Category

Midnight From The Inside Out

Posted on January 23, 2013

In the winter on the full moon the shrimp run the inlets. On the incoming tide, the thing to do is go out in a boat with a handheld spotlight, flash the water until it reflects tiny red eyes floating by and scoop them with a long-handled dip net. Brendan had all the necessary accouterments and a 16-foot Whaler and he’d ask you to bring beer. By all accounts this was one of the saner activities that could be undertaken by kids in South Florida. The wind funneled in between the condominiums stacked aside the inlet and the humid air chilled to the 50s and felt ice cold. (Humans acclimated to 80 do not adjust well.) On the accelerating tide tiny flagellates riled and…

The Connetquot River Is Coming Back

Posted on January 11, 2013

Early on in my fly fishing pursuits I found myself releasing my 14th trout in two hours of fishing the Connetquot River. I felt good about this until a man walked by claiming to have caught 50. He’d grown bored, he said, and was going home early. Adding insult, he scooped a dip from his lower lip and flicked it into the water, where a trout rose to meet it. The Connetquot River has been described as Long Island’s blue ribbon trout stream, a once private fishing club turned into a pristine State Park with an on-site hatchery that stocked it with kamloops rainbows, brooks and browns. Some of the fish held over and reproduced, creating a small wild population, and some below the…

REVIEW: Where The Yellowstone Goes

Posted on December 19, 2012

Where the Yellowstone Goes starts not with trout but with chickens and irony. Then it jumps right into its premise–a 30 day float trip along the length of the Yellowstone, from the edge of the park to the Missouri River. The people are introduced and the reasons laid out, much like the nut graf in a magazine article, and then the focus shifts entirely onto the extended float down probably the most famous river in fly fishing. For the viewer it’s an enjoyable low-key ride filled with breathtaking landscape and, as the opening blip foreshadows, understated quirkiness. The movie is full of interesting people and you’re invited into their conversations in a way that seems like eavesdropping. Or, it’s akin to stepping up to…

Fat Little Trout Type Thing

Posted on December 13, 2012

A package arrived that held inside a pair of heavy duty waterproof boat boots. Opening the cardboard flaps unleashed the odor of fresh neoprene that soon overwhelmed the room and I stuck them in the garage. The last time I inhaled that much polymerized 2-chlorobutadiene occurred when I bought my first pair of waders. My roommate told me to wear the gravel guards on my elbows and I didn’t believe him then but he still tells it like I did. It took me a long time to catch a trout. I don’t think about trout very often now but that’s mostly a matter of geography. I live on an island with hundreds of miles of striper coastline and three imperfect trout streams. One of…

Five Ways To Improve Your Hero Shots

Posted on November 30, 2012

1. Run them through an app like ColorMania to make them all cool with bricks or steel or to give your grip and grin a grungy or old-timey feel. 2. Eat mushrooms*, return in 40 minutes for up to six hours of intense photo enjoyment. 3. Recognize strength in numbers; collect them all in a classy leather-bound flip book to present to your friends on social occasions. They will be impressed. 4. Craft a heartfelt and literary essay to accompany the photo, thus disguising the fact that you really just wanted people to know you caught a big-ass honking fish. 5. Choose not to take the picture, denying its right to existence except in the parallel universe where you completed the act of taking…

Hardbound on Black Friday

Posted on November 20, 2012

  This is me selling my book to you and yourn. It’s been out for over a year now and there are two times a year where it feels appropriate to remind people of it–Father’s Day and Christmas. Being as most retail establishments have been playing carols since Labor Day and on Friday people will lose their collective purchasing minds, it’s time for a little promotional material. Read the reviews of The Blitz: Fly Fishing the Atlantic Migration on this page, and consider it as a gift for those in your life who would dig it. Thank you and Happy Holidays.

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