The Erie Jinx

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...
The Ghost of Arthur Woody

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...
Quick Brown Fox

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.

The Intruder

The Intruder

And then, one day, there he was — a guy was standing by MY lake, and what the…he had a fly rod in his hand!  It wasn’t much as waters go — probably a couple acres at best.  I’d passed by it many times always on the way to somewhere else.  It lay a few hundred yards...
Fishing with Pastor Ron

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...
Fishing for Muskie in Lake Chautauqua

Fishing for Muskie in Lake Chautauqua

They say it’s the fish of ten-thousand casts. Maybe so. I truly believed that for many years and still won’t argue with those odds. Twice before I had traveled all the way from Georgia to Canada to do battle with the great muskellunge only to fish for days with nary a...