When Winston was out here last summer we hit the East on the morning before he had to fly out in the afternoon.  As a nice hatch came off, he urged me to break out the 2-weight and give it a shot.

Didn’t catch anything, but it was a good way to end the trip.

Photo by Winston Cundiff.

Tags: Pic of the Day

The damnedest thing happened yesterday.  I was helping a customer at the store, and he looked at me and said “You’re Jake McGlothlin, right?”.  It surprised the hell out of me.  Turns out he has been a loyal Chi Wulff fan for a long time, and is looking forward to Swing the Fly as well.  Big shout out to Dwight here in Bozeman.

That definitely made my day.

Fly fishing blogging is an interesting beast.  Ask anybody in the game and I doubt they will say they are in it for the fame and fortune.  I’m certainly not.  That being said, it feels damn good to be noticed and hear someone say they enjoy your work.

And it is work.  A lot of thought, planning and effort goes into a fly fishing blog.  But it’s worth it.  You guys make it worth it.  It’s a pretty damn interesting group that reads this blog, and I hope it always stays that way.

I hope I get the opportunity to meet more of you guys in the future.

Tags: Chi Wulff

Thrift is not for Sissies from Chris Walley on Vimeo.

Tags: Fish Stories

Salmon of the Tongass (courtesy of americansalmonforest.org)

There are pockets of wild places here in the Lower 48—pockets of mountain peaks and backcountry lakes, deserts and wild rivers. In a big patch of central Idaho, there are no roads, just mountains and trees and boulders and sky. A map of the Wind Rivers Range shows a thousand blue specks of backcountry lakes. In some of those lakes, there are golden trout so beautiful that it hurts.

But down here in the Lower 48 such places are the exception rather than the rule. Down here, we’ve got a lot of buildings and roads and people.

Alaska is home to roughly 700,000 people. That is less than one-fifth the population of Los Angeles, less than half the population of Idaho. It is near the population of Vermont.

In square miles, Alaska is 65 times larger than Vermont.

Alaska is nearly four times the size of Montana and twice the size of Texas.  Alaska’s population density is 1.2 people per square mile. The country’s average population density is more than 87 people per square mile.

I would argue that a lack of people is a requirement for wildness—at least for the wildness that most of us prefer. There is another kind of wildness that I think is inherent in people. It manifests itself as greed and arrogance and in a dozen other ways. It is a wildness that cares only for itself. It is the type of wildness we are looking to escape from when we go to Alaska.

***

I don’t know a lot about the Tongass National Forest. I know what I read on TU’s site and on the links that accompanied this writing contest. But that’s not much.

I do know that I dream of most often of places I know little about. I don’t know much about Kamchatka or the outer realms of Patagonia or even the South Island of New Zealand. For me, these places are shrouded in a mystery that makes them seem both dangerous and incredible. There are not enough of those places left. The Tongass seems like such a place. It’s a temperate rainforest the size of West Virginia. It has more salmon, more trout, and more bears living together than any pocket of wildness down here in the Lower 48. It’s a place ruled by wildness.

Here in Idaho we’ve got a river we call the Salmon and a lake we call Redfish. We’ve got tales of rivers red with fish. We’ve got a history of salmon. But the salmon in Idaho are, for the most part, history. And all the wildness, the history—even the money they could bring—is gone with them.

I’ve fished our Salmon River and some of its trout-laden tributaries. I’ve seen two Salmon in those streams. The first was in a side channel of the main stem. The fish was swimming quietly a thousand miles from the ocean, dying slowly—one dignified piece of gray flesh at a time.

The other fish was miles into the backcountry, resting in a deep pool on a tributary that once teemed with salmon. High up on the trail my brother and I could see the dark missile shape—incredibly outsized for the small stream and easy to see in the clean water—holding five or six feet below the surface behind a massive boulder. We spent a week on that stream fishing for trout. We never saw another salmon.

In their own way, those fish are symbolic of the salmon’s tale once civilization gets involved. Both fish were clinging to exceptions of wildness and just barely hanging on. So when I think about those two fish and then think about Alaska and schools of salmon that turn rivers red, I can’t help but think that places like the Tongass—places where wildness is the rule rather than the exception—are worth protecting.

This is my submission to the Trout Unlimited 2013 Blogger Tour sponsored by Fishpond, Tenkara USA and RIO, and hosted by the Outdoor Blogger Network.

This piece was derived from a piece I wrote several years ago, in case you are interested in the writing process (and my own thought process, which seems unlikely). 

See Jess’s entry here.

Tags: Water Worth Saving

North Country Dreamland from LakeSuperiorPhoto on Vimeo.

Tags: Videography

Spring Creek Reds from Lowcountry Journal (Doug Roland) on Vimeo.

Tags: Salt

Friend of Chi Wulff Sam Snyder resurrected his blog a couple of days ago and posted an important piece on Bristol Bay.

Sam hit the nail on the head on a number of issues.

The clock is ticking on Bristol Bay; as of this morning there are only 11 days left in the EPA comment period. There’s lots of chatter about it in the fly fishing community. Bristol Bay fatigue is running high. Your comments really do count.

From Sam’s post -

Let me be crystal clear these are not simply some fluffy attempt to make you feel important, engaged or have a say.  YOU DO HAVE A SAY. People are not just churning out this media, flooding the airwaves so we can feel good about ourselves, we are trying to motivate you to get off your ass.

So, get off your ass. Shit, you can even win trips to Bristol Bay. What more do you need?
Your comments count. Every single one of them.

Why am I pissed off? Remember when I ranted last year about how if you don’t engage in conservation you have no right to be out on the stream. Well I still stand by that rant. And it seems folks can’t take a few minutes to tell a federal agency to do their job and Stop Pebble Mine.

How do I know? Because comments are public record and anyone can keep tabs on how many comments are coming in and where they are from. And to date -  only about 6000 sportsmen have commented. That is TERRIBLE.

Let’s do the math – there are 60 Million anglers in the United States. There are roughly 5-6 Million fly fishers. There are 150,000 members of Trout Unlimited (the disparity in this number is another topic that pisses me off), but yet only about 6000 anglers and sportsmen have written to EPA. That is something like .01% of American anglers. Are you kidding me?

You have time to post pictures of your awesome fish on Facebook, but you don’t have time to personalize and sign a pre-drafted petition to EPA?

I spent a big chunk of time thinking about this issue yesterday driving from the South Sound to Craig yesterday and then on to Bozeman (about 14 hours behind the wheel).

In a perverted way of sorts, the math that Sam marvels at makes sense when taken in the context of an evolving view of American government, a paltry 24% of Americans are satisfied with the state of their Nation today; a whopping 16% (less than 1 in 6) approve of the way our esteemed Congress is performing their job.

Escalating scandalous behavior seems the norm in Washington these days; while on one hand it’s damned entertaining, on the other hand I sense a level of frustration with government and its processes that I’ve never seen before among fisher and professional friends.

Does that frustration drive apathy, even when it comes to things near and dear like the Battle over Bristol Bay?

My guess is that is truly does for some, though perhaps we sportsmen really are just self-absorbed bastards (and bitches to include the fairer sex) too busy chattering on social media, catching the latest blockbuster and watching whatever playoffs are on to spend five minutes filling out a comment form.

That said, I prefer to remain a naive bastard, appreciating (and joining) the hardworking men and women out there like Sam, the movers and shakers in TU, the Native Fish Society, the Wild Steelhead Coalition and others who are still fighting the good fights for waterways, fish and fisheries.

Some will say we’re jousting at windmills. Don’t let the naysayers fool you.

TU has basically done the work for you – click here for a Bristol Bay EPA comment form teed up and ready to go.

Or go straight to the EPA’s Bristol Bay landing page here.

Tags: Water Worth Saving

Tags: Events

Playin’ a Player–Dry Fly Steelheading from Fly Fishing Fantasies on Vimeo.

Tags: Steelhead

It’s Saturday night, and I am sitting in front of my iMac, realizing I’m due back in the shop in less than nine hours. I just got in about thirty minutes ago.

The days, they fly by.

Today was one of Craig’s biggest days of the year, the annual Craig Caddis Fest, a fundraiser for the local fire department.

They talk of Craig being a fly fishing town. I guess when the big event of the year is named after a bug highly sought after by trout (and therefore fishermen), the rumors are true.

Festivities kicked off around 2:00 this afternoon, and the band was still rolling when I pulled out of town. There was a parade, complete with several drift boats, and a beaten up old tractor with two gentlemen who looked like they had emerged from the deep South.

Or maybe just Wolf Creek.

The bar-be-que cook-off proved to be one oft he more popular features of Caddis Fest, and both the Simms crew and our own Headhunters team parked in front of the shop. Mark’s tri-tip sliders were a hit, as was evidenced by the large line outside building for the evening. In all fairness, the Simms guys made a pretty mean fajita as well.

And, miracle of miracles, and espresso truck rolled into town just for the event. Complete with a folk singer on the top of the trailer.

What the hell, it’s Craig.

I met Uncle Joe of Joe’s bar today, and he joined the parade, riding in a classy old, yellow rig and tossing out candy to eager kids (and some adults). The urchins of the Missouri were out in full swing, moving amidst the rapidly-becoming-soused adults with ease.

On the business end of things, parking shuttle rigs was rather like a twisted game in Craig today. The parking at the ramp fills rapidly these days, leaving us to stick shuttle rigs wherever we can – along the railroad tracks to scattered throughout town. Between dodging toddlers in the streets, other boats on the road and the herd of dogs that seems to inhabit the town, it was an entertaining shuttle day.

Waders and full fishing kit will not earn you a second glance in this crowd, but a tie or a suit coat will draw stares. When a rain shower moved through, savvy locals donned their waders and rain jackets and kept on cooking. And drinking. And fishing.

You know the routine.

Tags: Dispatches from Craig

Italian Wilderness Fly Fishing from FLY FISHING ADVENTURES on Vimeo.

Tags: Fish Stories

Contacts in the neighborhood say to bring the rain gear.

Read the official Caddis Festival page here.

Tags: Events

Beautiful Places Park One: Cross Harbour from Conch Salad TV on Vimeo.

Tags: Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Found this guy crawling on the bank tonight. Get ready for a few hours of good fishing followed by several days of overweight trout refusing to get out of bed.

Tags: Pic of the Day

The biggest on the planet with more Spey expertise gathered in one place than ever seen before.

Be a part of history this weekend.

More here.

Tags: Two-Handed