California Steelhead: The Fish of a Thousand Casts
A Little Background Oncorhynchus mykis - aka Steelhead - are a unique form of rainbow trout. Born in high country freshwater, they experience a physiological transformation within a year that allows them to survive in the ocean. They spend most of their lives there,...
Setting Sights on Nebraska’s Walleye
The walleye may be Nebraska’s most popular, albeit often hard-to-catch, game fish. It is known for not only having great-tasting fillets, but also for growing big and providing anglers a fishing challenge. Despite its reputation for being hard to catch, at certain...
South Carolina Stripers
The success of striped bass in our freshwater reservoirs represents one of the great modern-day stories of nature's ability to adapt. We got skunked that day, yet it remains one of my most vivid fishing memories. It was a warm spring morning in 1963. My dad had loaded...
Connecting Habitat Across New Jersey (CHANJ) featured in PBS Episode
The New Jersey Division of Fish & Wildlife is excited to share that CHANJ (Connecting Habitat Across New Jersey) is featured in a new episode of the PBS show EcoSense for Living. CHANJ is an effort to make the New Jersey landscape and roadways more permeable for...
The Anniversary Gift
She would leave him soon, and for this reason she had insisted that he fish the opener without her, the only gift she wanted for their anniversary. The first day of trout season usually filled him with excitement. Even as a man he felt like a boy awaiting Christmas...
The Rod to Remember
The old rod had a history far richer than any he ever imagined when he first bought it, so many lives ago. And now his own life was about to change. He hovered just inches above my face, urgently pounding me with questions that I desperately needed for him to answer...
‘Ol Settler of Deep Hole
No fish had ever exerted a greater influence on the thoughts, the imagination, the manners or the moral character of his pursuers. Uncle Eb was a born lover of fun. But he had a solemn way of fishing that was no credit to a cheerful man. It was the same when he played...
Salmon Or Striper?
Fishermen on Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula can not only roll the dice on landing an Atlantic salmon, but go after a high-odds striper as well. If you've ever cast a sinking line into a deep crystalline stream hoping to entice a 20-pound Atlantic salmon to snap up a wet...
A Day at Devil’s Dip
In many ways my Grandpa Joe was a boy trapped in an old man’s body. Full of tricks as a pet ’coon, tough as a seasoned hickory sapling and imbued with 70-plus years of wisdom accumulated by living close to the good earth of the Smokies, he possessed an unflagging...
Origin Of Catch-And-Release
While attending an outdoor writers conference in Johnson City, Tennessee, I spotted a tall, distinguished gentleman in the crowd whom I immediately recognized from TV and print. I introduced myself and within 30 seconds of our handshake, I felt as if this fishing icon...