An Angle On Art
- By: Bob White
Most sporting art, especially angling art, has a practical purpose or function. Painters, photographers and printmakers try to capture a moment in time and preserve memories. Sculptors recreate objects cherished by anglers, be they fish or fly. Rod makers, net makers, boat builders and fly tiers create the tools with which we pursue our passion.
The Quest For Cree
- By: Thomas Whiting
The cree cape is a vibrant tweed, splashed with tints of red, white and black. Finding the origin of the term “cree” is nearly as difficult as finding a quality cree. Apparently, the truncated word was, at times, applied to creel. Creel (or crele), a label given to a rare Old English game fowl, is a bicolor hackle with white and red bars. Today we call the creel color a ginger grizzly. Evidently, through time the cree became a tricolor, a creel with black bars. Cree is a coloration, rather than a breed of bird. A simple description has worked in fly-tying: A cree is a tricolored hackle, with red and black on a white ground.
Lose the Ego. Grab a Staff
- By: Jim Bean
There are plenty of fly fishers who plunge boldly into swift and treacherous rivers without the aid of a wading staff. Indeed, there is a widespread sentiment that only a weenie or an overly cautious old fart uses one. I may fit both categories. It’s true that I have less to lose at this age, but I am also more loath than ever to lose it.
Fishing for Home
- By: Laura Munson
When i moved to northwest Montana, I was obsessed with books about place. As a city person and writer it was my way to make friends with this wild country I was trying to call home. Harrison, Duncan, Bass, Hugo—writers who allowed the land to get under their skin. Who felt a mystic pull to lessons of the natural world. I wanted those lessons. That pull. So I asked a friend to take me into it. Way into it. She sized me up and agreed. I felt chosen.
Sensational Swimflies
- By: Stanton Klein
As a fly guy, one thing has always stood out to me—what freshwater fly fishers consider to be a large fly in comparison to gear guys who are setting big-fish records by throwing eight- to 12-inch swimbaits. It’s common knowledge that predatory fishes, given the opportunity, eat the biggest thing they can get their maws around. Why, I wondered, don’t more fly fishers take advantage of the big-fly/big-fish equation?
Writers, Take Notice!
The Robert Traver Fly-Fishing Writing Award is once again open for entries. Send your work of fiction or non-fiction by the June 1, 2012 deadline to: Traver Fly-Fishing Writing Award, Fly Rod & Reel Magazine, PO Box 370, Camden, ME 04843. We’re looking for: “A distinguished original essay or work of short fiction that embodies an implicit love of fly-fishing, respect for the sport and the natural world in which it takes place, and high literary values.” Send in a typed, double-space manuscript of no more than 3,500 words, along with an electronic copy on a disc. E-mail submissions won’t be accepted.
Printmaker John Koch
- By: Bob White
- Photography by: Bob White
I admire John Koch’s woodblock prints for the same reasons I like the man; they have an honest and rough-hewn quality that I find direct, straightforward and authentic.
The Five Seasons of May
- By: Geoff Moore
- Photography by: Geoff Moore
Refreshed after a long, ice-covered rest, British Columbia’s interior lakes wake as the light shifts from a cold blue of winter to warmer spring hues. Improving weather trends are fairly consistent, but it’s possible to experience a sampling of four seasons in a single day. If you are a fisherman and a hockey fan, it’s even possible to experience five seasons in a day, those being spring, summer, fall, winter, and the NHL playoffs. The downside of the fifth season is you may lose focus on priorities. For example, a night of hockey and merriment could result in a poorly executed angling plan, especially if you’re scheduled to be on the water a few hours after your celebration ends. We all know that a lack of clarity leads to precarious situations, and that’s exactly what happened to me.
The Wild Steelhead Coalition
- By: Greg Thomas
I think it takes a bit to get Jim Schmitz pissed off. For instance, I was recently interviewing Schmitz, vice president of the Seattle-based Wild Steelhead Coalition, when he realized that his house had just been robbed. He casually said, without hint of anger, “Hey, I should probably deal with this. Would it be OK if I give you a call later?”
But let me tell you this: If you bring up hatchery steelhead, Washington State’s 1974 Boldt Decision and the mismanagement of that state’s fisheries, you’ll see Schmitz’s hackles rise.
