No one ever added a thumbs up emoji to a picture of you compiling monthly reports or swilling your fourth cup of terrible office coffee. These things are simply what bridges the gaps between our opportunities to do the things that we actually want to be doing.
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Deer Hair Emergers
Photo by Sam Larson
3AM, Counting Flies
It’s 3AM, and I’m lying awake working Pheasant Tail nymphs from bare hook to whip finish in my head.
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Photo by Sam Larson
Fly Philosophy
I am an informal fly tyer. I have stolen heavily from a great number of people and resources and smashed all those tricks, tips, preferences, and shortcuts into what I’d call my personal style.
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Photo by Jeff Stutsman
Greenbacks, Part 3
From my right I heard Jeff swearing softly. I waved at him and offered the universal, “What’s wrong?” sign with raised hands and hunched shoulders. He shook his head and pointed out towards the middle of the lake. The circle of a rise spread and faded. A second rise, ten feet further out into the lake, spread fresh ripples and I could just see the strike on the surface.
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Photo by Sam Larson
Greenbacks, Part 2
Jeff and I settled into searching for greenbacks. We stood on top of the cutbank near the top of the trail, the only place where our backcasts were clear, or a few feet off-shore to quarter our casts along the banks, tracing a drop off where we hoped cruising greenbacks congregated.
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Photo by Jeff Stutsman
Greenbacks, Part 1
The trail to Zimmerman Lake was rough. Late-melting snow was piled thigh deep across the trail, and we were stuck post-holeing through long sections of water-logged slush.
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Photo by Sam Larson
Dead
The rainbow trout wouldn’t start swimming again.
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Gas Station Coffee
That last sip of gas station coffee goes down smooth. It’s almost entirely hazelnut flavored creamer at this point, and little more than lukewarm, but I am loving it.
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Fishing along the Boulder Creek Path
Photo by Sam Larson
Fishing in Town
There’s no real gray area about fishing in town. You tend to either love it (well, maybe be ok with it. Love is a strong term), or you hate it. It’s a difficult position to find yourself in, knowing that you may have great fishing in town but that the surroundings definitely won’t be the pristine river environment that you prefer on the weekends.
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Photo by Jeff Stutsman
Hampstead's Knockabout
The honest truth about this fly is that I stole the pattern from Jeff, who either invented it or modified it, I can’t remember. I contributed almost nothing to the development of this pattern, except for the name, the erroneous pedigree, and the verbal abuse I offered up to Jeff whenever he was catching fish on it and I wasn’t.
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Photo by Jeff Stutsman
Casting Call
When I picked up a Western rod again I told myself that I’d be willing to settle for bare competence.
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Walker Ranch Trailhead
Photo by Sam Larson
Raincoat
When I was a kid I used to put on my raincoat and matching yellow plastic pants and go sit on the front porch when it rained. Every thunderstorm would find me sitting on the milkbox looking out at the falling rain. It made me feel alone, tough and self-reliant, to know that I was out of doors while everyone else stayed inside and watched the rain stream down their windows.
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Photo by Jeff Stutsman
Peak Rotary Vise
My first fly tying vise came from a kit. It was terrible. I bought it, even knowing that I would hate it, because at the time, when my life felt like it was falling apart and things around me were lacking in sense, I needed something to grab ahold of. I’ve always fallen back on using my hands to get through the hard times.
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Photo by Jeffrey Stutsman
A Winter's Tie
I cultivate a fly tying lifestyle of carefully curated panic. Last year’s trip to Steamboat Springs, when I was supposed to be on the road at 5am? I was up at three, in a stone-cold panic, tying as many foam beetles as I could before I had to leave. Last minute trips to the fly shop for essential materials are a matter of course, and hot-blooded tying sessions the night before I leave, or in the pre-dawn gloom, are almost a requisite part of any trip.
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Sage
I remember the way the swell of cork nestled perfectly into my left hand. I remember giving the rod that was going to become My Rod a pointless, ceremonial wiggle to see how it would cast. And I’m sure I squirrelled up my face so the salesman would recognize me as a savvy angler. Later I would learn how utterly perfect it felt when the line loaded that thing just right; it was my first brush with magic.
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Photo by Sam Larson
Medicine Bow
By the time I return to the cabin I am dead tired. It’s all I can do to get my boots and waders off, gulp down some food, and then collapse into the bed, a mess of sweat, mosquito bites, and sunscreen. I caught fish despite myself, and a full day’s worth of jumping brookies fills my head, individual fish blurring into a long montage of strikes and releases.
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The Wind River Range
You’d found an unconvincing, fifteen-year-old report that there were golden trout in the lake, so after dinner, you hike down to the shoreline where you see intermittent rises blinking like radar pings.
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Salvation at Joe Wright
“Just wait,” another angler called without looking away from their indicator. “In another two hours there’ll be forty-five, maybe fifty people standing here.” And so it goes on Joe Wright Reservoir, where the inlet is off-limits until July 1st, and the grayling spawn draws crowds of anglers eager to stand shoulder-to-shoulder while a veritable herd of fish stampedes upstream, deep in the throes of piscine lust.
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Silver Creek
It’s the kind of place where, if you start early enough—bringing well-bagged peanut butter sandwiches and full water bottles—you won’t have to leave the water until it’s almost too dark to find the cabin again. On days like this, a small group of anglers can catch so many trout between them that good-natured competition quickly gives way to gleeful confusion.
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Photo by Sam Larson
BWO
Streamlined and minimalist, my Blue-Winged Olives are impressionistic, a sketchy rendering of the barest outlines of an insect: hackle, body, and tail with no fisherman-pleasing upright wing to complicate the pattern.
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