Quick Brown Fox
A brown trout has no soul. Souls are reserved for the fisherman and his kind, along with the accountability that most assuredly accompanies a soul.
Thunder in Bear Canyon
We knew they were there. We’d first seen them a year ago this past September—a mama bear and her three cubs working the upper end of, appropriately enough, Bear Canyon. She was in superb shape, a real veteran and obviously a master at her craft, for each of her cubs...
Fishing with Pastor Ron
Pastor Ron is a Messenger of God and a Fisher of Men. So when he discovered that I was just an ordinary fisher of Trout, he expressed a certain degree of professional interest in finding out more about how we common folk spend our time. “Jesus always did love...
Last Waltz
Though I had known her for nearly two decades, I had never seen her like this. I had first come to her in autumn, myself still nearly a youth, her lovely, angular shoulders discreetly draped in purple and amber and varying shades of gold, glowing soft and warm as she...
A Cole Creek Diary
It tumbles off the east face of Big Back Mountain, leaping and flowing down its stony, laurel-lined course as it has for eons. Dad and I had fished its lower reaches when we’d first moved to Tennessee back in the early sixties, and many times we had talked about...
A True Tale of Faithfulness
We were hunting the legendary Lodge and Ranch at Chama in far northern New Mexico on that cool autumn evening, and when we hit Cañones Creek, we bore north. We reached the base of Cerro Venado Macho, or “Big Buck Hill,” and commenced climbing its steeply ascending...
A Good Thing
“The Falls Hole is the defining run in this stream that had defined our lives for so many years, and Dad had learned its every nuance in decades now long passed.” Snow and rain tracked nearly horizontal, and tiny shards of ice bit into our faces when we turned into...
Moments of Perfection
Covey rising, dogs holding point, one bird dead in the air as you swing on another. Might there ever be another moment so pure? Every time I head out for some far-flung destination like Quinhagak or Kinnakeet or Tierra Amarillo or the wilds of southern Georgia, it’s...
The Passage
July 14th, 4:16 a.m. Dear Tom, When I first laid eyes on the old rifle back in the fall of ’54 it was already pretty used up, at least on the outside. On the inside it was still in good working order. I guess Dad figured it was high time for his boy to fire a gun for...