The Day the Lake Went Mad
The gale-force winds and driving rain were bad enough, but then the island itself began to move.
The Dead Man on Wendigo Brook
What trout fisherman, plunged into despair by hyper-selective fish that refuse all his imitations, hasn’t wished for a “magic” fly? In this cautionary tale from the anthology Seasons of the Angler (1988), the author reminds us to be careful what we wish for . . .
The Ghost of Arthur Woody
Duncan Dobie tells of Arthur Woody, a visionary character for forest and wildlife restoration extraordinaire in the early 20th century mountain ranges of Northern GA. The sudden spring thunderstorm stopped almost as quickly as it had started. It blew...
The Erie Jinx
Even on the best damned walleye lake in America, sometimes you have to lower your standards a bit and catch what you can. The guy I’ll call X-Factor kept calling and leaving messages on my phone. Somebody told him that I planned to fish Lake Erie in September, and he...
A Day on the Dolphin: An Unexpected Adventure
There was urgency in his voice. My grandfather and Ed Brower went below deck. The Dolphin’s bilge pump had stopped working. Water was coming in. It’s a bright Saturday afternoon in Fairfield, Connecticut, just after 5:00; mid-April 1960. Daffodils bloom along the...
Putah Creek
The secluded waterway became the perfect setting for a lifetime of treasured memories.
The Ghost of Christmas Present
I parked in the cul-de-sac where the suburban world ended. Unhitching my rod from the roof of my pickup, I crossed the bridge over the thundering creek and walked past the pump housing that the cougar liked to lie upon in the midwinter sun. Once again, I had passed...
A Good Thing
SNOW AND RAIN tracked nearly horizontal, and tiny shards of ice bit into our faces when we turned into the wind as we stood overlooking the falls, a hundred feet below us on this cold Christmas Eve. “This is a good thing,” my brother declared. And so it was. Christmas...