I’ve still got his old wicker creel. It’s a companion piece to his well-used L.L. Bean bamboo fly rod, along with the scarred Medalist reel. The three were the only fishing gear he owned. He kept an extra leader in an ordinary envelope in a pocket of his shirt and his flies in a small …...

Let’s talk for a minute about old things, things that show they’ve been used and used truly well in the places where the stories about them came from. Stories which tell of scattergun hunting for pheasants in broad, golden fields, and casting flashy streamers for steelhead in remote Canadian rivers, and more – last spring …...

He was a tall guy with a handsome face, a full head of brown hair and sky-blue eyes. In the early years of adulthood, he played sports. Too light of frame to be a football player, he naturally took to basketball in high school and junior college, and later played baseball in the city league …...

There are moments on the water we’ll never forget. Perhaps that’s why we really go there. To have an experience we’ve never seen, or felt, or heard before. It might be the river itself, rugged and remote. Or the valley carpeted in tall grass the river slithers through. Or the very hush of the dark …...

It was early morning of the fifth day, the air was still, no chittering of birds at sunrise, and at the same time the atmosphere seemed to be filled with something. It felt like tension. The light was different too, seemingly devoid of vibrancy, of life – there were no edges to things, it was …...

Part One. Several years ago, after our seventh year in a row to the Northern waters for steelhead, my fishing partner and I talked about doing something different. “Maybe we should try the salt,” Bunkie said. “Chase some bones, “ he added. We’d both done some flats casting, separately. Enjoyed it. But concluded it wasn’t...

There’s a river up there he loved to fish so much it could have had his name on it. It doesn’t, but it should. He knew every run, every riffle, every rock where the fish held. And he had named some of the water. One particular stretch he named, ‘Good Times’ – a place he …...

I was standing in the Iao Stream, a pristine place of solace and contemplation, undamaged by the fire, miles from the desolation. I was consoling myself and remembering the High Sierra rivers I had fished as a young man. The Hawaiian word for water is ‘wai.’ Water is the life blood of her people. During …...

The place had changed past recognition in the years since I first saw it. Back then it had been a cattle ranch, with the Upper Truckee running through the broad valley at the south end of Lake Tahoe. Now it was an airport. But when my dad took me fly fishing for the first time …...

The Air Canada commuter banked into the sun and slid out of the sky to touch down at Massett Field in the south of the Queen Charlotte Islands. They off-loaded our bags and pole cases right out of the plane, and we piled into the rented beater we had reserved – a twelve-year-old GMC Suburban. …...