Fly fishermen often don’t get excited about fish other than trout, but they should. On Maine’s Big Lake, twenty minutes of fishing found us putting a 20″ pickerel, a 14″ catfish, and a dozen smallmouth bass into the boat.

Fly fishing East Grand Lake from a Grand Lake canoe — on a grey, overcast day — should be cosmic. And it was, at least until I got greedy and the outboard motor died.

Fly fishing in overcast conditions — fishing the gray stuff — can lead to cosmic fishing. The fish don’t hold as tightly to cover, and that spells “fun” for stillwater fly fishers.

The old saw is that time spent fly fishing isn’t deducted from your lifespan. It’s a lie, of course.
Recently conducted studies (I wrote numbers on a piece of paper until I got one I liked) confirm that fishing extends your life 2.47 times the original fishing investment.
That means some of us should live to be […]

Given that Friday’s post was largely a paean to the big water capabilities of the Grand Laker, I should have predicted what happened Saturday; a clear, bluebird day turned dark and violent in a matter of minutes, and instead of a light breeze, we faced a wicked wind and big swells that grew in size […]

The Grand Lake Canoe still plys the waters of Grand Lake almost a century after its invention. Is there a better way to travel?

The Grand Lake Canoe doing what it does best…
Spend any time peering down driveways around the tiny town of Grand Lake Stream, and you’ll notice almost as many boats on trailers as […]

It’s a reminder of how lucky I am that – on the morning of my first wedding anniversary – I paddled out into the rain in a kayak and fished for smallmouth bass.
The L&T Nancy was still operating on West Coast time (sleeping), so just after dawn, I grabbed an ultralight spinning rod, shoved one […]

Fishing the local lake from a float tube is never a hard sell; you’re basically fishing from an inflatable easy chair for agressive smallmouth bass and the odd trout. Sure, it’s hard work and all, but there are benefits beyond the fish:

Dave Edmondson fishing “hard” from the equivalent of an easy chair.

We got on the […]

Float tubes are efficient - but not cool, fast, or even remotely sexy. This little gem (via GetOutdoors) promises to revolutionize stillwater fly fishing, and to make us aging, overweight fly fishers seem hot and desireable again in the eyes of the general public.
(Remember The Movie? Remember Brad Pitt in The Movie? Notice the look […]

After Friday’s cool weather and evening fish-fest on the Upper Sac, Saturday dawned clear and hot. The L&T Nancy and I stayed home long enough to see American Floyd Landis clinch the Tour de France, and then headed for the mountains.
Our destination was Upper Gray Rock Lake; a small mountain Brookie lake where - 1.5 […]

Earlier I posted about the alpine lakes, and my tendency to fish them too little and too late to really get in on the fun. This year I’ve made a better start, and Monday evening - with the L&T Nancy at a board meeting - I drove up to Gumboot Lake, threw the float tube […]

Let’s just get this out in the open: you never know what you’ll stumble across on a hot summer day on a public lake.
Saturday night I’d dragged my float tube to Lake Siskiyou looking for smallies, and while I found quite a few, I was also witness to the endless parade of humanity that irritates, […]