Mourning the Miramichi
Three friends of mine were on the Northwest Miramichi at the beginning of August. They fished for five days and did not see an Atlantic salmon. Not an adult fish, a grilse, or a parr. For five days on a storied Atlantic salmon branch of the Miramichi they cast in...
People Like Us Never Grow Up
I do not mean to sound bitter about this, for perhaps it is not the fault of the wet-eared young... This piece is being written in a bug-ridden swamp on the banks of the sluggish yellow Tana River, in northeastern Kenya, where the big elephants bugle and the baboons...
Sporting Classics TV Season 7 Episode 2 Trailer
This week, Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey celebrates the best of land, sea and air on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains as elk, mule deer, pheasant and trout are all in play at Elk Creek Ranch. The series airs on prime-time on Thursday at 10pm ET, with...
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...
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...
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...