When I was 14, my family moved from the wilds of western Maine to the very metropolitan Cortland, New York. If you’re an outdoorsman or fisherman, you might think that this was a big step in the wrong direction (in some ways it was) but I didn’t see it that way. Maine had offered just […]
Read more "Fish All the Places"I sat at the Ihop yesterday wondering whether my blueberry pancake portion would be as large as advertised and scratching new mosquito bites. At 10:30 AM, I’d squeezed in between the breakfast and lunch crowd and found plenty of seats available among the modest brunch crowd of senior citizens with their wide, roving bespectacled eyes. […]
Read more "Nothing Complicated"Too often we think of adventure as waiting for us somewhere across the continent and miss out on the opportunity for adventure that waits all around us every day. Yesterday evening a get-together with my dad didn’t work out so I rapidly concocted a back-up plan. Water conditions, I thought, would be […]
Read more "Little Adventures"I took my snow boot liners out for washing and the boots themselves went in the shower. The sled’s about to be locked away in the basement. This week the tip-ups and jig lines will be worked over in preparation for next season. All in all, I’m just saying that the ice fishing season has […]
Read more "Reflections on Ice"Well, here’s a topic I could write on and on about indefinitely. I’ll try to keep it short. I’ve never understood the term “rough fish” nor do I like it. We’ve been refining a pretty good system of fish nomenclature over the last couple of hundred years in the western world and this […]
Read more "Fishing’s Rough and Resilient Future"I stumbled downhill through the persistent snow that still blanketed the forest floor here on the lake’s south slope. It wasn’t really easy to get the big sled down here without a trail but that’s what keeps this spot mine alone all winter long. I had little light left and I would reach […]
Read more "Serenity Now"Over the last couple of years, I’ve done almost all my fly fishing with an English fellow, Nigel. We’ve shared the same waters but almost always attack those waters from different angles. I charge in, throwing the largest streamers I think might fit between the jaws of a fat brown while Nigel […]
Read more "Invasive Ideas"On the first day of November I was on the Black River in northern New York, trying to catch a Chinook salmon, the largest type of trout or salmon (salmonid) on the North American Continent. I’d failed here before to actually get one in though I’ve hooked many in previous years. I just have […]
Read more "A Problem and an Opportunity along the Lake Shore"It’s rained quite a bit this summer and Pittsburgh, as representative of western Pennsylvania, has received 14 inches above normal rainfall for this time of the year. Local rivers were flooding (some extremely) yesterday morning and many Pittsburghers couldn’t make it to work. Few people were going fishing. It put my plans on […]
Read more "Seize the (very wet) Day!"“Watch out for spiders!” Susan warned as I left to go ice fishing a few days ago. She knows the history of arachnids that sneak into camp and into sleeping bags when least expected. Yes, even in mid-winter. But it was particularly cold today, the high only reaching about 20. I wasn’t […]
Read more "The Spiders of January"
the dying fish 