I’m back from the Fly Fishing Retailer show with a notebook jammed with largely unreadable notes, a laptop filled with half-written posts, and great big backlog of actual paying work. In anothers, it’s pretty much normal over here.

Here’s a white, wriggly kind of news item that might make you think twice about ordering Idaho trout at a restaurant: 
University of Idaho and Idaho State University scientists are working on a new maggot-based feed capable of fattening rainbows for the dinner table, while simultaneously helping slash growing mounds of manure and fish entrails.

Woo-hoo! You […]

Choosing one product for my Monday “Smash & Grab Award” (the prize that goes to the product I most want to steal from the floor of the FFR show) isn’t easy.
There are always a few fly rods and reels that are grab-worthy, and for that matter, some interesting accessories too (not to mention a […]

Trade shows are billed as some kind of grand commercial nexus, but in truth, it’s more likely they exist to provide clients for masseurs and podiatrists.
Still, they are good for the odd fly fishing celebrity sighting (whatever the hell that means), and so far I’ve seen the usual mix of characters: Flip, Lefty, Tom (notice […]

Sure, my hotel is stuffy, far from the show, and contains absolutely no trout in the swimming pool, but at least they keep me smelling like a tropical drink.
UPDATE: I still smell good, but I’m not taking the laptop to the show today. There might be an update coming from the show computers, so check […]

You know those guys with enough cash to buy pretty much any fly fishing gear they want? Well, I’m one of the other guys, and it’s with that in mind that I’m creating the Trout Underground’s First Ever “Smash & Grab Awards.“
I award it to the product I’d most want to rip from the display case, […]

There’s a trout painting I can get behind, by Derek DeYoung of Canvasfish.com
I’m stealing a few bytes of bandwidth from the Hyatt, and typing furiously before the Underground’s aging laptop battery goes fins up.
The first morning of the FFR Retailer show has been interesting to say the least; I’ve scribbled 2/3 a notebook full of […]

Flying’s a lot more palatable when there’s a fly fishing trip waiting at the end, and since there isn’t one waiting this trip, I’ll let you know if a fly fishing trade show softens the blow of air travel.
Still, it will be nice to meet the bloggers I’ve been trading links with the last couple years, […]

Dave Roberts and Chris Raine get their asses handed to them by a steelhead on the Rogue.
We’re shocked. It seems the Rogue River — the sizable chunk of moving water I’ve floated dozens of times with bamboo fiend and best-man David Roberts — has been deemed “navigable” by the state of Oregon, so the […]

Poisoning streams loaded with perfectly catchable trout raises the blood pressure of some fly fishers, while others see it as a reasonable technique used to recover native cutthroat populations.
Next month, the South Fork of the Flathead River will be poisoned to make room for cutthroat restoration, and not everybody’s happy about it. Via the New West […]

I’ve seen a lot “roadkill/fly tyer” pieces floating around the Internet, but the best I’ve read so far can be found at our own Singlebarbed, who makes us wonder exactly what kind of drugs he was doing in college while the rest of us were… uhhh… OK, we were doing pretty much the same drugs, but […]

You knew it had to happen. Carp articles are popping up like mushrooms after a forest fire, and suddenly, every fly fisher will proudly tell you he fished for carp years ago - before it was cool. (Have I told you I fished for carp when I lived in the Bay Area — before it […]