My buddy Daniel is coming up to Alaska this summer and wants to trick trout with flies, but he’s never done it before. I told him there is no better place to learn than the 49th state, particularly a submerged log on the Thorne River that’s an underwater metropolis for trout. I stood there last…
By Tony Floor What is it about big salmon? I mean big salmon in the 25-50 pound class that brings an angler to the pinnicle of happiness. As reported in this column, I’ve invested around a half century chasing chinook and coho salmon in Pacific Northwest waters, not including Vancouver Island and SE Alaska. I…
By Tony Floor I was looking back in time, a few days ago, to previous March columns and not surprising to me, the common theme in those writings was my focus on the “banks” in the eastern Strait of Juan de Fuca. Clearly, from a saltwater salmon angler’s perspective, it is a time of the…
BY ROBERT STRONG. “How tough could it be?” I said to myself as I slid my credit card across the counter to the girl at the fly shop. After all I’ve been fly fishing since the age of 13 and I can double haul a large Wooly Bugger with the best of em. Every Summer…
The fly-fishing section of the International Sportsman’s Expo in Sacramento was an entire building complete with casting pond and corner stage for presentations by experts. Since my buddy Nate was too overwhelmed to ask questions about upgrading his eight-weight fly-rod, I assisted. I asked a Sage rep what he had under $200. Impossible, so he…
When I was eight, I put a filet of salmon in the microwave. My bewildered parents frantically removed the fish and opened the kitchen windows. Thus began my adventure in cooking, more precisely articulated using scientific jargon than culinary. In college I experimented with pasta sauce made from Italian dressing, ketchup and assorted spices I…
BY JEFF LUND I think I am over the New Years Eve thing. Not that I wanted 2010 to be a Ground Hog year or that I don’t look forward to pinning back the months on the Alaska calendar mom gave me for Christmas, but the spectacle of the thing, the excuse for debauchery before…
BY TONY FLOOR The calendar doesn’t lie. Without remorse, 2010 is history and hello, like it or not, meet 2011. I sense time is moving faster now and I’m barely hanging on as there is so much to do on and off the water. It was only a month ago in this writing, I drew…
BY JEFF LUND I’m a seven last-casts type of guy. I set certain conditions that hopefully will qualify as excuses to stay riverside, or contrastingly provide reasonable closure. Sometimes the criteria is demanding, last cast unless I hook one or get a bite’. Others, less optimistic, ‘okay, last cast unless I see a fish’. Either…
By JEFF LUND Frightened or appalled by the prospect of walking up an escalator that dared to stop working, the lady stepped aside and allowed the guy with a frayed deltoid ligament on his left ankle and the other guy with a chewed up meniscus to hike up the stuck steps. Ah, the mall. It’s…