Indholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2024 i The Drake

In an ongoing attempt to help reduce the pressure on trout streams, while also forcing my love of bass down our readers’ throats, I’ve spent years preaching the joy of “warmwater” fishing. While this is an authentic love of mine, from farm-pond largemouth to Beaver Island carp and smallmouth, I’m afraid some of my lobbying has been misplaced, or perhaps just incomplete. What I should have been emphasizing is flatwater or stillwater fishing: learning to love lakes. Stereotypes of lake fishing bring visions of wakeboarders, jetskiers, and banana-hammocked dudes blasting Kid Rock in the cove. (If you plan to fish big-lake coves, start several hours before the first kegstand.) Whenever possible, avoid large reservoirs altogether. Think canoeing the Boundary Waters, hiking to a high-alpine lake, or hitting any of the…

Q: Dear Trask, I’ve heard a lot this election season about a certain group called “Childless Cat Ladies.” As the proud pet of a Childless Dog Dude, I’m more than a little offended that we have apparently been left out and disregarded as an important voting bloc. What gives? —Leo the mastiff, from the award-winning Farmer’s Dog commercial, “The Referee.” A: Dear Leo, I hear ya barking, big dog! For the record, I’ve known many cool CCLs over the years, and it’s clearly the cats—being such lame fishing companions—that drag down the reputation for both of them. Nevertheless, you raise a fair point about the powerful yet underrepresented and disenfranchised vote of American dogs. (I’ve yet to see “no opposable thumbs” on any “barriers to voting” lists.) Hence, we need our childless…

It was a typical night on the river: locals with their lawn chairs and coolers; a pair of enlistees up from Anchorage with their girls and cans of beer; the German casting on the far bank, his lure singing, rod slashing a wide arc to fend off those who might edge in on his water. But the bear, a two-year-old grizzly, had not been seen since early afternoon—this according to an electrician from Maine who’d been camped on the river all week, telling everyone that the bear will be back, and pointing with his cigarette down the bank to strings of fish tied to rocks and roots, salmon half in the water, some still gulping and color draining from the rest. It had been a good run of silvers, but…

I have been fishing for trout since Richard Nixon stalked the halls of the White House, and I’ve been using flies since Jimmy Carter put solar panels on that building’s roof. Even an angler of middling skill such as myself will catch quite a few if he sticks to it for long enough, and I have, from parr-sided brookies in Massachusetts to garnet autumn cutthroats in the Colorado high country to five-pound slabs in Labrador. When I was an adolescent, Field & Stream and Outdoor Life were mainline avenues of escape from a suburban bedroom. Through them I absorbed the idealized representation of what was then called “the sporting life.” One day I came across a copy of Gray’s Sporting Journal, a much more elegant (you might say snobbish) representation…

The question is, which creek? West of town you have a half dozen to pick from, all appealing. Heading out, you floor it through bottomlands of withered corn and soybean, flying across flat-bottomed streams, then climb into sandstone hills with their somber oaks, barely red though October’s already here. You segue into limestone uplands of maple and cedar, the creeks steeper now and full of riffles and smallmouth, so you flip a coin and fish where it sends you. Nobody in the next state has ever heard of these waters, and not many in the next county. If they were trout streams, in the sense that stockers survived in them a few days or weeks before going belly up, cars would be jammed tight at every bridge, many of expensive…

The day starts: coffees and dogs on the dock. Swirls on the lake. More than usual. We glance at each other, eyebrows raise. We step to the dock’s edge, not saying a word. Then—in the middle of a swirl—a dark winged ant, still alive, struggles to free itself from the lake’s surface tension. The first ant vaporizes, then the next. Suddenly the lake’s surface erupts, nearly froths: the smallmouth are gorging. We turn, trip over the dogs, spill our coffee, and rush to tell the others. Plans for the day are instantly revamped. We jog to get the boat cushions, fly rods, and one more piece of Mom’s coffee cake. In ten minutes, my brother and his wife motor the little aluminum boat to the top of the lake; we…

A few years ago, I was in Missoula visiting my long-retired parents. They were in their mid-80s, so we mostly ran around town, hung out at the house, and found ways to keep our kids (their grandkids) entertained—going to the local science museum, or a half-day hike, even whitewater rafting down the Clark Fork through Alberton Gorge. We were in a flyfishing town, but these trips were about family, not fishing, especially since my dad was starting to work through the stages of Parkinson’s. While leafing through a handful of photo albums, I came across one with backpacking shots from trips my parents took in the Sierra Nevada the early 1960s, when they lived in California. I had a particular interest in these since I had just restarted backpacking in…

NICK LYONS, NATIONAL HERO Monte Burke’s article “Driving Force” (Summer ’24) about Nick Lyons, is a wonderful profile of a wonderful man. Kevin Reilly, Sante Fe, NM NOW IT’S HER TURN After seventeen years of hiking while watching my husband flyfish, I’ve now been flyfishing myself since 2017. Your “Put-In” Summer ’24 editorial is spot-on regarding dries. Fishing the surface is my favorite, my happy place. Just let me wade in and use a classic Royal Wulff, though I will occasionally tie on a beadhead nymph, going subsurface, if one must. During my seven years actually fishing, I’ve enjoyed your magazine so much as I continue to enjoy my time on the rivers. Thank you for all that you’ve written and continue to offer! Cindy DeShazo, Lee’s Summit, MO OUT…

I’m a night owl and a flyfisherman, which is unfortunate, since flyfishing skews almost exclusively to the early risers of the world, and morning people are assholes. They have no problem scheduling the start of a fishing trip right in the middle a night-owl’s sleep. “Be on the water at 4:30 a.m., sharp,” they say. What’s with the word “sharp” anyway? I’ve seen 4:30 a.m. more times than I care to admit, and there’s nothing sharp about it. Show up five minutes late for one of these early-riser trips, however, and you’ll be catching hell clear into the evening. Yet, if you keep one of these bozos up five minutes past their bedtime, they melt down like a toddler. You could’ve stayed up until 4 a.m. curing cancer and they’d…

The river was in excellent shape on this fine, misty September morning, with the surrounding forest slowly transitioning from summer’s bright greens to the reds, golds, and oranges of fall. My buddy and I had a short window to fish before careers and families called us back. We scrambled down a steep bank and crossed the river, feeling our way over a precarious chunk-rock bottom in water deep enough to challenge the top hem of our waders, before turning and making casts down and across. Working downstream, we peppered structure, depth, and flow with an assortment of patterns, and found the resident smallmouth to be cooperative, if not bold. The winning strategy proved to be baitfish patterns slow-rolled tight to cover, and we pulled around twenty fish by the time…

My father likes me slightly more than he dislikes carp. This is not to say that he doesn’t think well of me; simply that he holds strong feelings about both. As a kid listening to conversations between my father and grandfather, who are both from Wisconsin’s Fox Valley, between the walleye mecca of Lake Winnebago and the walleye mecca of Green Bay, I was able to draw the following fish-hierarchy conclusions: Walleye reigned king. Perch were second. Everything else was a distant third. Fish were for eating. This mindset ran deep through that side of the family. Limits taken were the only real measure of success, and if it wasn’t worth eating then it wasn’t worth catching. Conversely, carp were an insult, an easy scapegoat for the anthropogenic changes to…

I knew the sand was going to be a problem. Stepping onto it for the first time, I prayed that my guide, Kristján Rafnsson, would slow down, as he was hooked to a sea-run brown that was taking him—and therefore me, the cameraman—rapidly downstream. Except here, there is no true streambed: We are standing in the Vatnamót, known as the junction of junctions on the southeasternmost tip of Iceland, where the Fossaálar, Geirlandsá, and Hörgsá rivers meet the mighty Skaftá, a massive river of glacial origins. Black lava sand surrounds the Skaftá for miles until it meets the Vatnajökull Glacier, the largest in Iceland and the second largest in Europe. In between the Skaftá and the glacier is a vast estuary-like system, with clear water meeting glacial melt in what,…

The Boise River flows just beyond my office door, passing Fortune 500 companies and a cadre of office complexes and eateries. Along its banks is a twenty-five-mile greenbelt where hundreds of people walk, bike, jog, roller blade, and relax. This day was no exception. Warm temperatures and clear October skies had conspired to lure me and many others from our desks. Corporate warriors in suits had traded wingtips and stilettos for walking shoes. All sought a dose of nature as autumn wound down. Benches and riverbanks beckoned, but something was amiss. A dozen or more people huddled along the near bank, pointing toward midstream at a lone angler. It’s not unusual in this stretch of water to see someone in a dress shirt and waders; an angler who carried a…

If you’d prefer attending a Creed concert over reading about one more political topic right now, nobody would blame you. But for those who can’t get enough Beltway blather, there’s an idea buried deep in Project 2025—the Heritage Foundation-guided conservative blueprint for “deconstructing the administrative state”—that is worth noting: breaking up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Project 2025 claims that NOAA is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” which is “harmful to future U.S. prosperity.” The report suggests that NOAA monetize its weather-data collection and let the pros at for-profit companies like Accuweather make the forecasts. But these over-devotees to small government seem unaware that NOAA does much more than just predict the weather. Under the NOAA umbrella is the National Marine Fisheries…

Fans of the early-2000s political drama “The West Wing” may recall an episode in the show’s first season where Josh (Bradley Whitford, as Deputy Chief of Staff) tells President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) how he can use the Antiquities Act of 1906 to prevent a mine from being built in Montana: “You’re gonna establish Big Sky National Park!” Technically, the show had it a little wrong. The Antiquities Act does not allow a president to create a National Park. But it does grant the power to designate National Monuments, which provide the strongest protections available without an Act of Congress. President Biden has already added five new national monuments, expanded two others, and restored the million or so acres to Bears Ears (established by Obama) and Grand Staircase Escalante (established by…

The Other Drake Drake, the rapper and Raptors fan, has an apparel collaboration with Nike called Nocta. This fall, Nocta is coming out with a “flyfishing-inspired” clothing line called the Opal Collection. Drake himself isn’t a big fly angler, but his longtime crew member, Niko Carino, has been at it his entire life. “Niko’s a city guy, but he’s a fantastic angler,” says Miles Marquez, of Big Sky Anglers, who has guided Niko in Montana. “He is able to put a fly wherever it needs to be.” Collaborators on the project include Abel Reels and Thomas & Thomas rods. If you’re questioning the bright-orange jacket (as I was), then “you’ve never fished around Guelph in the fall.” —TB NOCTA.COM The Believer In David Coggins’s first book, The Optimist, he built…

Those who prefer fall fishing typically want to partake in a peaceful practice, connecting to the water and the fish at a time with fewer jetskiers and Instagramming paddleboarders in manbuns. These anglers aim for graceful, leisurely, practical fishing. Then there are those who chase false albacore. Every autumn, false albacore (albies, little tunny, Atlantic tuna) decimate baitfish up and down the East Coast, from Martha’s Vineyard to Cape Lookout. And for every blitzing band of albies there is a fly angler whose ass will be kicked by chasing them. Jerry Garcia once compared the Grateful Dead to licorice: “Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.” Albie anglers like licorice. Finding the fish is more than half the battle. Binoculars and birds are your…

One thing beginning fly anglers should be taught is the importance of knowing when to quit. In certain sports, sheer will and dogged determination are critical to success, but this can backfire in the case of tangled leaders. Every seasoned guide has witnessed this: The caster has missed a hookset or thrown a tailing loop into themselves or committed some other cardinal sin resulting in an infamous bird nest. Their rod is draped with a wet girdle bug, some split shot, a size-18 pheasant tail, and a strike indicator, all webbed together with dripping coils of crisscrossed fluorocarbon. Without fail, the new angler will ignore the line nippers hanging from his neck and instead set about trying to untangle the jumbled snarl while avoiding having to snip or re-tie any…

The Babine was lower last fall than it had been since 2006, possibly since 1998, that magical year when the Silver Hilton changed hands, fish were everywhere, and most of the catch records were broken. You could tell from the heli-ride in that conditions were good: visible rocks, excellent color, well-defined runs. We flew a sweeping arc upriver then circled back to land at the lodge. I hugged the staff and greeted the outgoing group from week two. Some I only know from these changeover days, and others I have fished with at other far-off lodges while hunting for bones and permit. Steelheaders form a special tribe where you are often only one or two degrees of separation from a person you met on another river. It’s fun running into…

There’s a photo on my fly-tying desk that’s pure Americana: a nine-year-old boy with copious freckles stands streamside in waders that are much too big for him, wearing his dad’s faded old fishing vest and a ballcap sitting slightly askew. Smiling broadly, he holds a fly rod in one hand while lifting a rainbow still dangling on the line. I took the photo, so I’m biased, but it’s objectively adorable. I see that picture every day, and am reminded of the time, fifteen years ago, when my oldest son Sam caught the “Michigan Grand Slam” on only his second time out with a fly rod. He’d already caught a few brookies and a tiny brown that morning. When he landed the rainbow, Sam’s uncle told him that he’d hit the…