A life-size catfish statue?! I’m posting this and running for the hills (very, very quickly).
Technorati Tags: catfish, statue

While the tech wizards at SBC scratched their heads over my dead DSL service ALL DAY LONG, I spent my Internet-free time pulling together gear for this weekend’s backpacking trip to the Lassen backcountry.
This, I think, will be fun.
You gotta sneak up on ‘em…
High altitude trout are best approached with a guerrilla mindset, but one […]

A leading Montana Fly Fishing Blogger recently posted a “suspicious” [ahem] October Caddis pattern suggestion on the Underground - the third such questionable pattern suggestion from a Montana-based Undergrounder in 18 months.
Clearly, it’s time someone in the outdoor media stood up and asked the question that others don’t have the guts to ask:
Are all Montana […]

The battered, beaten Klamath River’s salmon and steelhead runs received some good news this week when a judge backed a push requiring Pacificorp to install fish ladders instead of the less-costly (and likely fruitless) trucking plan proposed by the utility.
This decision comes on the heels of a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) decision that sided […]

If I was the King of Missoula, I’d set everyone free to go fishing for a day (though because I was King, I’d go fishing the day before).
And how does one get to be King? Bloodline? Royal proclamation? Violent, bloody coup?
Nope.
All it takes are 300-500 words.

The New West Magazine Contest
The exceptional New West Magazine (an […]

Recently, I’ve thrown a lot of good fly fishing blogs at the Underground’s readers. But how could anyone keep up with all those sites?
Technology is our friend.
Visiting more than a couple blogs on a daily basis is irritating work. Some blogs are updated daily (or more), while others go weeks between posts. And some […]

Alert Reader Sully (the Underground’s Montana Correspondent and Minister of Funny Walks) sent me this link to the New York Times, which details the hoopla surrounding the first Atlantic Salmon season in Maine since recreational fishing was banned seven years ago.
(He also suggested the character in the picture had watched my instructional casting video, a […]

The full impact of steelhead fishing tends to land on you after several days in a drift boat; you’re either sore and wired from wrestling with steelies who grew big and strong in the ocean, or you’re just sore from casting where there apparently aren’t any damned fish.

A Rogue Steelie from a few years ago.
Steelies […]

Fall on the Upper Sacramento isn’t all 7x and #22 BWOs (thank god). Ahead of us lie the October Caddis, and all those pocket water trout don’t suddenly disappear, leaving empty stretches of river behind.
After my last midriver trip to the Purgatory of Fussy (and Missed) Fish, Dave Edmondson and I stayed upriver. We hiked […]

If you’ve never seen a wheelchair-bound granny fire a fully-automatic assault gun, then today’s your lucky day.Technorati Tags: automatic weapon, granny, gun

I’ve invested a little time looking for new blogs (witness the recent bounty of UK winners), and found this a wonderful Japanese site on a tip from Fly Fishing in Yellowstone.

It’s titled Terry’s FlyFish Bar (us english-only folks can read the translated version here). Like most automated translations, the results are more comical than readable, […]

I reported (two posts down) that the restoration efforts on the Batten Kill were going to proceed without state stocking of rainbow trout (further stressing an already pressured fish population in marginal habitat).
If you’re not current on this story, several organizations (including Trout Unlimited and Orvis) were funding habitat restoration efforts on the river when […]