Fly Rod & Reel

I’ve been thinking about a steelhead trip sometime in the near future, maybe even this weekend. And since I plan on swinging up fish, I’ll be tying on Pick Yer Pockets and Intruders.

There are two questions I'm consistently asked, the first being, "Do you know who you look like..." and I always answer, "yes," before they finish with, "Brett Favre." The second is, "Where is your favorite place to fish?"

One of the loudest detractors of hatchery-raised steelhead is the Seattle, Wash., based Wild Steelhead Coalition. They take the best biological data and make strong arguments in favor of wild steelhead in the West’s best rivers.

Kelly Galloup lives in Montana's Madison Valley and owns Slide Inn fly shop on the banks of the Madison River.

All kinds of deformities in trout caused by selenium released from the Smoky Canyon Mine. The photo is from Simplot’s research. Same deformities were found in many ripe female brown trout captured in Sage Creek and spawned in a lab situation. Dr. Joseph Skorupa reviewed Simplot’s research and dismissed it as bogus.  The link to his peer-reviewed report appears below.

By Max Werner

A few months ago, a fellow Utahan chided me for revealing the names of the rivers I fish. Apparently, he was afraid that people would visit them and further strain the resource. My initial reaction to his reprimand was irritation: Where did he get off telling me what I should say and what I shouldn’t? Didn’t he understand the importance of using the right word or, in this case, the right name when describing a place and the experience of that place? But I also felt like I had made an irreparable mistake, which is of course

the worst kind. I wanted some perspective, so on our early morning, inaugural drive to the Junco River, I shared my mixed feelings with my friend Banjo, who is one of the most sensitive, moral, and level headed people I know.

DENVER –– More than 100 river advocates holding signs and chanting slogans gathered in front of the Environmental Protection Agency building in downtown Denver Thursday to ask federal regulators to protect the Upper Colorado River system from proposed water diversions to the Front Range.

I remember the Bitterroot Valley's major fires in 2000 and 2003 and what that did to the attitudes of anglers—basically, it beat them down and many thought that the Bitterroot and its all important tributary streams would be destroyed, along with those native cutthroat and bull trout, and its non-native browns and rainbows.

But that wasn't the case, and I began documenting that in 2004, just a year after the fires, when I interviewedChuck Stranahan, a river protector and the owner of Stranahan's Flies and Guides in Hamilton, Montana. In addition, I interviewed the river's chief biologist, Chris Clancy and each of them, even early on, said the river was going to benefit from the blaze. Here are a few quotes from that interview: