Innholdsfortegnelse for October/November/December 2025 i Fly Fisherman

On his TV show The Hunt for Big Fish, the great Larry Dahlberg made the following observation about the four stages of a fisherman’s thinking: Stage one: “I want to catch a fish.” Stage two: “I want to catch a lot of fish.” Stage three: “I want to catch a really big fish.” Stage four: “I want to catch that fish the way I want to.” Dahlberg, who is one of the best all-around fishermen of all time and also a skilled fly fisher and fly tier, is absolutely right. In fact, the reason anyone even picks up a fly rod in the first place is that the method matters. Fly fishing is not the easiest way to catch fish—and often not the most effective—but once you master the method,…

“How could I have never fished this?” I asked our 33-year-old guide Mickey Cunliffe. “It’s a bit of a sleeper area,” he replied. “Very popular locally, but thankfully the area doesn’t have a national reputation that would draw hordes of fly anglers, at least in the fall.” After just one day on the upper Connecticut River in far northern New Hampshire, I wondered how these stretches of blue ribbon trout and salmon water have escaped the limelight. By all rights, they shouldn’t have, since the upper Connecticut turned out to be the most productive watershed I’ve ever fished in northern New England. And although it enjoys a statewide reputation, it’s lightly treaded by visiting anglers. This water had been under my nose for decades, unrecognized for its excellent fishing and…

The Nipigon Corridor is a connected series of waters with an important, but little-known story in the history of fly fishing. While many of us know that the long-standing world-record brook trout was caught in the Nipigon River, many are also aware of that fishery’s decline in the 20th century. But a slow and steady recovery has been taking place. Trophy brook trout are again being caught here regularly—and there are other distractions such as lake trout, northern pike, rainbow trout and steelhead, and salmon. The start of the Corridor is Lake Nipigon, a huge body of water that measures 40 miles by 60 miles. Lake Nipigon feeds the Nipigon River, the largest tributary of Lake Superior. The Nipigon River flows 32 miles from Lake Nipigon into Nipigon Bay on…

French Broad River Your August-September 2025 issue carried an excellent article on the French Broad River and the impacts of Hurricane Helene last year. It’s hard to believe a year has gone by. The author’s descriptions of the river and the watershed thoroughly document both the obvious changes and the more subtle ones, like the natural river bottom structure. Familiar stretches of the river are now unknown. Places you once knew so well—just no longer there. It reminds me of the 1976 flood in Big Thompson Canyon, Colorado, which claimed the lives of 144 people. The Mills River, a significant tributary of the French Broad near Mills River, North Carolina, was also badly damaged—although on a smaller scale. I work four days a week at the local hardware store, and…

Casting is a means to an end. It’s really about fishing. Fixed instructions about starting and stopping points, casting planes, directions, stroke lengths, and rod paths may sometimes be good advice, but they can also make some casts difficult or even impossible to make when you’re faced with certain real-life fishing challenges. In my previous articles in this series, I’ve discussed important aspects of acceleration, hand/rod rotation, leverage involving arm and body, and critical rod/line angles. Although space limits the number of situations and the kinds of casts I can address, and the detail I can include, I’ll provide here a few examples that illustrate how to adapt those physical principles to the requirements of various situations you’ll encounter on the water. Each of these, and a dozen others, could…

I wish that when I had started down the rabbit hole of Spey and swing fishing for steelhead, that someone would have mapped out the basic principles and strategies for me. Instead, I learned the hard way, which was also the slow way, the low-catch-rate way, and often the frustrating way. Over the decades I have pissed away more opportunities than I care to admit, because I didn’t always understand my objectives, how to best accomplish them, or the key principles that govern basic steelhead behavior. Had I known then what I know now, my guess is that my life total of these remarkable fish would easily be double what it is today. So, while some of the following is not new to anglers who are highly experienced at swinging…

One often-overlooked hardship of war is the challenge of transitioning back to civilian life. Service members involved in combat situations live in a high-adrenaline, fight-or-flight, lizard-brain state of mind on an extended basis, which can seriously affect anyone. Even those without particularly traumatic experiences can feel a void when working a 9-to-5 behind a computer screen after living 24-7 in a war zone. Too often, this void is filled with drugs and alcohol in an attempt to replace the dopamine, endorphins, and norepinephrine that coursed through their brains. Anxiety and depression can take hold, leading to considering the unthinkable. But the veteran community is strong. The intense bonds formed while serving carry over into civilian life, and these brothers and sisters look out for each other. Which is why there…

Excerpted from Pheasant Tail Simplicity: Recipes and Techniques for Successful Fly Fishing. Reprinted with permission by Patagonia. What we have learned from years of fishing with long, flexible Tenkara rods, and with some minor modifications to the flies, is a method that is one of the most effective ways to catch fish. It is especially well suited to the beginner fly angler. We described this method in our book Simple Fly Fishing. But since our goal here is to keep the flies simple and allow us to focus on our skills, let’s take it to the next level. Soft-hackle wet flies—or spiders, as they’re called in the United Kingdom—are among the oldest artificial flies, going back to at least the sixteenth century. They are elegant, use natural materials, and are…