Fishing For Dinosaurs: A Quest For Sturgeon
Hook into a 250-pound fish whose ancestors date back 100 million years and you begin to wonder if you’re reeling a dinosaur through a wormhole--as if you’re about to reveal a beast that doesn’t belong in our epoch. Such are first impressions when sturgeon fishing on...
Hybrid Striped Bass Fight Hard But Taste Delicious
Fishing with longtime striper and hybrid guide Chip Hamilton on South Carolina’s Lake Hartwell, we were primed to get our fishing strings stretched by these powerful fish. Getting three outdoor writers on the same boat, and all in accord on the singular objective of...
Frank Young: An Angler for the Ages
As a trout fisherman, Frank was simply the best I have ever been privileged to witness in action, and I’ve been astream with the likes of Gary Borger and Lee Wulff.
Why the Wye
An act of God combined with a dash of Grace creates a trout stream of royal proportion. Not far from the dirt path was a field thick with wide stalks of dark green, calf-high grass. To get a glimpse of the sun, wildflowers in nearly every hue—soft purple and blue,...
Murder
"If fishing interferes with your business, give up your business," any angler will tell you, citing instances of men who have lost health and even life through failure to take a little recreation, and reminding you that “the trout do not rise in Greenwood Cemetery,”...
Zane Grey – High Seas Prophet
So what can we say of Zane Grey, this dentist turned novelist turned outdoor writer? He was a dentist and photography and a storyteller. He was one hell of a baseball player. He was husband and father and perpetual wanderer and a hunter and fisherman who once held...
A Door in the Woods
Though it was now past dusk and the forest was dark and still, I could see that, yes, it definitely was a door, alone, in the middle of the woods. “Good boy, Rex, easy now. Whoa on the bird!” The gathering gloaming of the approaching evening made it rather difficult...
Fishing Premonitions
Though I continue to believe omens, signs or premonitions are total baloney, I did note some rather convincing portents while fishing the Wisconsin River one spring evening. Some people put a lot of faith in omens, signs, premonitions or whatever you choose to call...
Replacing Moonshine With Flyline
Arriving at Headwaters on the Soque farm in northeast Georgia is like stepping back into a world that has quietly eluded the encroachment of progress. It’s an easy 80 miles from Metro Atlanta, but it might as well be a thousand. When you arrive at the farm in...
All Writers Are Liars
All writers are liars, whether reef-fishing miles offshore on the Atlantic or fishing through a hole in the north country ice. The smokestack of the hulk gloomed from the depths, barely visible when the July sun ricocheted off the surface of the sea. Halfway to the...