Category Archives: Stories

“Are you going to fish the White River?” Tell any fly fisher you are headed to Arkansas and you will immediately hear all about floating a nymph under a bobber to monster brown trout down that river. Yawn. Sounds like watching an amateur golf tournament on TV. Sure, there will be some memorable shots, butContinue reading “Arkansas”

“Mama, I’m freezin’ (mama, I’m freezin’), I wanna go to the su-un (to the sun)These icy winter breezes (winter breezes) are chillin’ all my fun (all my fun)”. Yes, Village People. F’ing yes! When I was doing what I could in high school to fit in and attract “babes”, I was expected by my friends,Continue reading “Key West Salt”

By the time the lonely wild boar wandered into the clearing under the high tech deer feeder, I had neglected my lookout post and was talking in sort of hushed tones to my lifelong hunting buddies about range management or high school girlfriends. I can’t recall now, but it was important, I promise you. DespiteContinue reading “Elusive Hill Country Hogs”

There is a problem with our fly fishing community. In our beloved Colorado especially. When you talk to a skier about the ski season, they are quick to point out exactly how many days they have skied that year, and then what their average tends to be. It’s odd actually. Like guys bumping chests beforeContinue reading “Counting Days”

This morning, I looked down at my beat-to-hell tennis shoes. I had purchased them in early spring to be sported as hip, casual office attire. Although at forty-one, being hip is failing me miserably. These sweet “kicks” saw the office a only few times before the Stay-At-Home order relegated them to being my everyday shoes.Continue reading “No Better Time Than Now”

Hello friends of Planet Earth. Put September 12th on your calendar! Confluences & Influences with Denver Trout Unlimited, Adams County Parks & Rec., The Greenway Foundation, Prodigy Coffeehouse, Rep Your Water, Thrivent Financial, Blue Quill Angler, Trouts, Fishpond, NAPA, and many local businesses are organizing a cleanup of Clear Creek as well as a smallContinue reading “A Cleaner Clear (Stream/Pond Cleanup)”

If you are a fly fisherman in any sense of its madness, you love summer heat for so many reasons. Throwing stupid big dry flies to gluttonous trout and burbling poppers to a bass or two on your lunch break, and not bundling up like Randy in A Christmas Story. The most glorious aspect though,Continue reading “Wet Wading”

Last summer I did what millions of people have done while on their way to somewhere beautiful. I drove through Kansas. With a marathon ten hours of chewing up blacktop, I had time to observe the small variations in the Great Plains landscape. When named “Great”, that word had a different meaning than our modernContinue reading “Pearl Jam and Kansas Porn”

As adults we are aware that trust is earned and taken absolutely seriously, but as a parent, there is something inside us that can’t help but test this trust with our children. This may be our worst attribute as adults. This trusting little person has depended on us its whole life and knows nothing elseContinue reading “The Blackfoot Attack”

We were focused on our streamers when the wind kicked up. In a few seconds the rain stung our faces like fire ants, blowing in sideways across the river. The spring thunderstorm exploded in the clouds above us and the lightning smashed into cottonwoods all around our small boat. The battering wind slammed us helplesslyContinue reading “Pissing in the Wind”

His palms were crisscrossed with deep weathered lines like the cow trails leading to water. These gnarled hands of my grandfather.  Scarred, wrinkled, and thick.  Sparse grey hairs here and there.  The palms calloused from opening and closing cedar post gates for seven decades.  Smooth from the lasso that streaked through them like lightning whenContinue reading “Hands”

Every time my better half and I finally tuck our three girls into their sleeping bags for the night, we step out of the tent with a sigh and pour ourselves a whiskey cocktail then drop exhausted into our camp chairs.  We gaze up at the stars struggling against the fading light in the west. Continue reading “Jesus and Tarpon”

The old lady pulled up next to me in her shiny BMW as I sauntered down the neighborhood street fully wadered and 5 weight poking out behind me like a magpie’s tail feathers. “Hey there!” she said as she idled to a stop. “Howdy”, said I. “You catch any fish today?” I nodded and repliedContinue reading “Silver Creek”

We had been hydrating with Coors Light all morning. To save money on boats, we had crammed four of us into a three-man drift boat coordinating back casts to avoid getting tangled. It mostly worked but we were cramped. The sun was out over Montana’s famed Bighorn River and we were rowing our Cottonwood CampContinue reading “A-Hole on the River”

The alarm at 4:40 a.m. was not warranted. I was already awake, and had been for an hour so I turned it off before it could wake sleeping beauty. For some reason sleep is hard to come by the night before a fishing excursion and I knew I’d pay for it that afternoon. But thereContinue reading “The Arsenal”

“We, all of us, are what happens when a primordial mixture of hydrogen and helium evolves for so long that it begins to ask where it came from.” Dr. Jill Tarter quoted this pearl of intergalactic wisdom and it is something that pops into my head every time I read the news or get lostContinue reading “Living Simply, Simply Living”