By the J. Stockard Team

Building a convincing nymph, hellgrammite, squid, crab, frog, or crayfish usually means solving three separate fly-tying challenges: getting the body’s structure correct, creating lifelike movement (in the water) and matching the color of the naturals the fish are keying on.

Traditional methods often require different materials and techniques to achieve each of these goals. Semperfli’s ABC (Andy’s Bugs and Creatures) range simplifies much of that work by combining the body profile and segmentation into a single pre-shaped component. It’s not for everybody, but it certainly helps simplify the tying process.

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I’m including three types of carp in this series: common carp, mirror carp and grass carp. Common carp are by far the most, well, common species anglers encounter in American lakes and rivers. Mirror carp are a subspecies of common carp, so named because their scales are oblong and shiny, akin to small mirrors. While they are genetically slightly different from common carp, and vary dramatically in appearance, they generally share the same biology, habits and so forth. The techniques an angler uses to chase mirror carp are by and large the same as those used to catch common carp with flies. It’s the same game.

Grass carp, on the other hand, are strictly vegetarian, and thus provide a much more limited (and challenging) opportunity to catch with flies. But they are no less wonderful fighters, and frequently will jump after being hooked. Grass carp perhaps represent the “pinnacle” of challenge for a carp angler. I’ve written more specifically on grass carp later in this series. (Perhaps as if to suggest, “Now that you’ve got a handle on the common carp challenge, if you really want to frustrate yourself, here’s how to chase grass carp.”) For now, assume that what you’re reading is based on common carp and grass carp.

The common carp (Cyprinus carpio of the family Cyprinidae) is native to the Caspian Sea region of south-central Asia, though various subspecies are thought to have evolved in other geographic areas, from the Danube River in Europe to southeast Asia. They have been transplanted (sometimes illegally) throughout the world. In fact, they are considered among the world’s top 100 invasive species, according to the Global Invasive Species Database.

Carp earned this dubious distinction because they can live almost anywhere. Why is it that the goldfish (a type of carp) lives in the fishbowls of so many young children? Exactly, because they’re hard to kill. You don’t need to meticulously balance the pH levels in the aquarium, add a bubble wand to oxygenate the water, or keep that water in a narrow temperature range. The fishbowl just needs to have water that’s one thing–wet–for a goldfish to be able to survive in it.

It’s basically the same deal with common carp in the wild.

Carp prefer fairly temperate waters (in the 60s and 70s Fahrenheit), but they can tolerate a wide range of temperatures and water conditions. They can survive in lakes that freeze in winter, as well as in rivers and sloughs that can warm to over 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Only when waters approach the 100-degree mark will carp die–and that’s long after most other freshwater fish species would be long gone.

Carp can survive in moving currents (rivers) as well as in calm, even stagnant, ponds. The carp’s ability to survive and reproduce in relatively confined spaces is one attribute that has made it desirable for fish farming operations for centuries.

A carp’s lifespan is among the longest of any fish. Some carp have been documented to have lived for 50 years or longer, though the average lifespan of the average carp, of course, depends on water conditions, the presence of predators, food availability and other factors.

Carp “breathe” primarily with their gills, naturally, but they also have the ability to gulp air by breaching the surface and literally sucking in air with their mouths (not unlike tarpon). This is another factor that helps them persist in stagnant, less oxygenated waters.

They are also prolific breeders. The optimal water temperatures for carp to spawn are in the mid-60s Fahrenheit (not less than 62 degrees), and a typical adult female can spawn three or four times in a given year, laying as many as 300,000 eggs each time.

This chapter is excerpted from The Orvis Guide to Fly Fishing for Carp: Tips and Tricks for the Determined Angler (2013).

Also, check out KD’s new book: A Fishable Feast: Fly Fishing and Eating Your Way Around the World–out this year and published by Rizzoli in New York. (order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million.) If you want a personalized copy with an inscription from me for yourself or a gift recipient–e.g. “to Susie, the greatest fly angler ever to grace the rivers of the Americas”–sure, I’m game. Just visit kirkdeeter.com to order and tell me what you want me to write.

By John Juracek

Hebgen Lake ranks as one of the world’s greatest dry fly lakes. Actually, it’s probably the greatest, but that’s a discussion for another time. Suffice it to say that from ice-out around the end of April until late October, barring gale-force winds and possessing just a modicum of local knowledge, you can find trout surface feeding every day. Plenty of them, without fail. Rainbows and browns both, averaging 17-18 inches. Pretty good stuff.

But in the four decades that I’ve known the lake, serious Hebgen anglers have always had a slightly uneasy feeling about the rainbow portion of the fishery. As good as it is–and as much fun as it is–we’ve always been left to wonder: to what degree is this fabulous fishing a function of stocked trout?

For years the state of Montana stocked fingerling rainbows in Hebgen Lake, a fact not widely known among visiting anglers (all browns are wild). The numbers of fish planted varied dramatically over the years. I can’t locate the stocking records offhand, but I recall anywhere from around 50,000 fish per year to as many as 200,000 per year. Now, neither I nor anyone I know has ever caught a rainbow from Hebgen that looked or acted in any way “artificial.” Not a big surprise, considering that by the time a fingerling grows large enough to surface feed on aquatic insects, for all intents and purposes it is wild. Despite not having any sensation that we’ve been catching stockers, many of us have wanted to know for our own edification the contribution these planted fish make to the fishery. So, too, has Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (though I’m pretty sure the heart of their interest lies in the economics of raising and planting fish)–and with help from Montana State University, they decided to study this matter.

Every body of water has a unique chemical makeup. That chemistry is mirrored in the inner ear bones (otoliths) of fish that were hatched there. By comparing the chemical signatures of sampled otoliths to the signatures of Hebgen’s tributaries and the hatchery waters where stocked fingerlings originated from, it’s possible to assign a place of origin to a fish with a pretty high degree of confidence. According to the results of the study, it appears that approximately 84% of Hebgen rainbows have wild origins. Hatcheries accounted for 13%. The remainder couldn’t be assigned accurately. (If you’re given to science, I’ve glossed over a lot of fascinating details here. The study results can be found on the Montana FWP website.)

And from which tributaries, exactly, did the wild rainbows come? Here the study isn’t as definitive as serious anglers might wish for, but that’s okay. Its purpose wasn’t to break down the contribution of each individual tributary to the fishery as a whole. But the study was able to segregate most of its sampled fish into two tributary groups. One group was comprised of Grayling Creek and Duck Creek; the other included the Madison River, South Fork of the Madison, Firehole River, Gibbon River and Cougar Creek. (If the Cougar Creek placement seems odd–it’s actually a tributary of Duck Creek–the study recognized this aberration and deemed it a spatial anomaly.) The Madison River group produced the most rainbows, in a roughly 3:1 ratio to the other. Without knowing more specific details, that seems reasonable enough.

As of 2017, the state of Montana has ceased stocking rainbow trout in Hebgen Lake. Hebgen is viewed as an important fishery for the state, and reductions in catch due to a cessation of stocking is something they’re sure to hear about. So far, not much to report on this front. There are still plenty of rainbow trout rising. Most likely with no concern at all for where they began their lives.

John Juracek is a fly fisherman, writer and photographer from West Yellowstone, Montana. For twenty-some years he was a partner at Blue Ribbon Flies, a local fly shop, and is currently the head casting instructor at the School of Trout and Anglers Academy. His writing credits include Yellowstone: Photographs of an Angling Landscape, Fly Patterns of Yellowstone, Fishing Yellowstone Hatches and Fly Patterns of Yellowstone, Volume Two.

He is considered one of the sport’s expert fly casters and instructors and offers casting lessons for $100/hour at jjuracek@gmail.com or (406) 640-2828.

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In Gunnison, Colorado, a repurposed car dealership serves as the gateway to a fly angler’s oasis more than 7,700 feet high in the Rocky Mountains. In its early days, curious customers could still spy leftover vehicles languishing in storage beneath Gunnison Sports, where fishing guide Cody Rowe serves as a retail sales associate manager.

Anglers journey to Gunnison from across the Mountain West and beyond to ply nearby waters like the Gunnison, Taylor and East Rivers, as well as the regions high mountain lakes. By July, snowmelt runoff has largely subsided, leaving clear waters that support healthy populations of wild trout that gorge on stoneflies, green drakes, yellow sallies, as well as grasshoppers, beetles and ants.

At lower elevations, rainbow and brown trout populate cold water streams lined by grassy banks and meadows. Brook trout and cutthroats flourish in thinner streams higher up, towards the aspen-lined peaks that form a bowl around the 6,500-person town. On nearby Blue Mesa Reservoir, the largest reservoir in the Centennial State, anglers try their luck for lake trout, yellow perch and Kokanee salmon.

“There are endless possibilities of what to fish for and where to fish,” says Rowe. “There’s another reservoir about 45 minutes away that’s also filled with trout but is really a draw for northern pike.”

This month, Rowe is flying far from this high-altitude trout angler’s haven to spend a week inside a convention center not far from the marshy, tarpon and redfish-laden waters of the Everglades. That’s where, for one week each July, the epicenter of the fishing world revolves around ICAST–the largest trade show in sportfishing.

Now approaching its 80th anniversary, ICAST and its predecessors have served as a rallying point for tackle manufacturers, tackle buyers and conservation organizations for generations. Its aisles and exhibits fill nearly four football fields worth of flor space inside Orlando’s Orange County Convention Center, and a cornucopia of associated events sprawl out across Central Florida throughout the week. Though the show has made its name as a go-to place to see product debuts and access exclusive discounts on tackle, ICAST also doubles as the premier networking event in the sportfishing industry.

The show annually draws more than 13,000 attendees from every U.S. state and more than 70 nations. For Rowe, a die-hard Rocky Mountain fly angler, it’s enough to draw him out of the mountains and into a different kind of angling paradise.

Recently, ICAST has placed an increased emphasis on delivering value for fly dealers. In 2023, the show debuted the ICAST Fly Shop to simulate a premier fly outfitter filled with all-new products at a focal point on the show floor. In both 2023 and 2024, ICAST further enhanced its fly fishing spotlight by adding new fly product categories to its New Product Showcase Best of Category Awards. And in 2025, ICAST became an official stop for the Fly Fishing Film Tour.

This dedicated push was designed to make anglers like Rowe and the customer base of shops like Gunnison Sports feel at home in Orlando for a week each summer alongside manufacturers specializing in tackle for largemouth, tuna, or crappie.

“I’m pretty excited,” says Rowe. “I’ve been to some shows before. But I don’t think that’s even going to compare to the scale of ICAST.”

Though the ICAST show floor is officially open for three days–Wednesday through Friday–ancillary events like charity golf scrambles (Lunkers and Bunkers), a pro-am bass fishing tournament (ICAST Cup) and the ever-present temptation of Orlando area restaurants and the Gulf Coast flats fishing scene make a trip to ICAST a week-long affair.

Rowe is one of a handful of retailers who won a free trip to ICAST courtesy of the American Sportfishing Association, and he’ll have an all-access pass to any ICAST-related events he wants to participate in.

Rowe says the greatest benefit may be connecting with peers across the sportfishing industry. “I want to see if there are certain things that shops have done that we haven’t thought about to potentially bring back to Gunnison and grow our business. So, I’m looking forward to breakout seminars, the education, and also all of the new products. We are in a small mountain town that is kind of sheltered. So, for us, it’s a chance to see new brands, see what other retailers are doing that might work for our business, meet new vendors we’ve never thought about carrying and see products that we haven’t even thought about before.”

ICAST 2026 is scheduled for July 12-17, 2026. While online registration has now closed, on-site registration will be available throughout the show at the Orange County Convention Center. For daily updates, follow ICAST on social media or visit ICASTFishing.org.

A couple of years ago my good friends, who shall remain faceless and nameless, took a little trip to float a river just north of the Colorado border in Wyoming.

Before the trip, I was told they talked about the fact that they’d somehow misplaced the spare oar for the (single) boat on this adventure from a previous trip.

They chatted about getting another, but in the end, nothing was done about it, because they decided this was a fairly “mellow” river where not much could go wrong.

Somewhere through the middle of the float, the bow and stern anglers were switching rods in a bit of fast water and, by accident, the rower somehow popped the oar out. As it slid under the boat, they debated (apparently for far too long) about jumping in and grabbing the oar, or to see if it would float back to them.

The short story transpired this way: as the oar drifted further and further away, the composite shaft filled with water and sank quite a distance upstream. They never saw it again. The real bummer was they had oar tethers in the boat too, but since there was no whitewater, they decided they weren’t necessary.

Without a spare, they tried to fashion a stick that would work as an oar–it didn’t. They ultimately ended up missing their intended take-out because of the missing oar, strong winds and a serious current. When they finally made their way to shore, they were quite a distance from the take-out and decided the smartest thing to do was leave the boat and hike out.

Around six miles later they finally made it to their car. The next day they borrowed two oars, which in total made three (now you’re using your heads, boys!), hiked back to the boat and floated to the next take-out below.

What a waste of a day.

Moral of the story? Always carry a spare oar on your boat no matter how mundane the waters seem.

In addition, I would always carry oar straps, just in case–as well a spare oar tower and oarlock in your repair kit. Many people think that’s overkill and just for serious whitewater, but I’ve personally seen an oarlock’s pin sheared, and the whole oar, counter balance, plus the oarlock sink in what was incredibly slow moving water. The rower simply pinned the blade in between two rocks while the boat was perpendicular to the current. Boom, the day was over.

Always think about boat safety and what could go wrong before, during and after your lazy, summer float.

In the late 1800s, two fish species were brought from Germany to America. Back then, the first fish was considered a prize. They adorned the ponds of European palaces, and were considered among the most “worthy” and treasured species on the planet, primarily for their heartiness.

They were brought to America with the great hope that they could become a viable food source for a growing nation–the answer to a major challenge at a time when native fish stocks had already been depleted in many areas, and refrigerated shipment wasn’t possible.

Julius A. Poppe brought five of these fish to California in 1872, and within four years, they had proliferated into a successful fish-farming operation. Then, in 1877, the U.S. Fish Commission initiated a major effort to cultivate these fish throughout the country. The first government shipment from Europe was deemed so valuable that the fish were guarded around the clock after they had been planted in Druid Hill ponds near Baltimore, and efforts to transport and plant these fish in other carefully selected waters throughout the country were carried out with painstaking precision.

The second fish–also a prized species–was introduced into the Baldwin River in Michigan in April 1884. This fish was held in high esteem more for its “sporting” characteristics than any widespread commercial potential. But this fish couldn’t just be dumped anywhere. Comparatively speaking, this fish was fragile, requiring relatively cool, clean waters with ample natural food sources (like insects and other aquatic invertebrates) in order to survive, let alone reproduce.

Flash forward to the present day, and the contrast of where these two fish species–the common carp (fish one) and the brown trout (fish two)–ended up in terms of “social status” in the eyes of anglers is remarkable. The carp took hold in American waters immediately, and within a few decades, had multiplied with such success in a wide range of waters that by the turn of the 20th Century, they were already considered a nuisance species.

Brown trout, on the other hand, are revered to this day as the very foundation of fly-fishing culture in America, despite the fact that browns aren’t “native” to any American waters (or the rivers in countries throughout the world like Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, where they were also introduced). Anglers also sometimes overlook the fact that the brown trout essentially “kicked out” some native trout species from various watersheds by outcompeting them–eating them and their food, and reproducing more efficiently than, say, brook trout in Michigan or certain cutthroat trout species in the American West.

Still, one of the most effective grassroots conservation organizations in the United States, Trout Unlimited, of which I am proudly a member (partly because I learned to fly fish on the Baldwin River and am still very much enamored of brown trout) was established in 1959, not far from where those brown trout were first planted. TU’s mission, while primarily focused on native salmonid species, still supports significant efforts to preserve and protect those cold, clean waters where the relatively fragile Salmo trutta swim. Brown trout will never be native fish, but anglers have adopted the reverent euphemism “wild fish” to describe their beloved browns–at least those that weren’t reared in a fish hatchery.

Carp, on the other hand, well they’re considered “invasive species,” which is perhaps a by-product of their own genetic superiority. There is no “Carp Unlimited” because this über-fish doesn’t need any help. The carp has suffered the same stigma of the working class, blue-collar human immigrants who worked the docks, cleared the fields and built the transcontinental railroad, while the brown trout fell into favor with the genteel, sporting elite. The carp is a draft horse, while the brown trout is a thoroughbred.

And no doubt, in some places, carp are making a harsh impact on rivers and lakes. The threat that Asian carp (a name that envelops many species, like silver carp and bighead carp) pose to the Great Lakes is one of the most significant pending environmental catastrophes of our time. Yes, there are many situations where carp species of all sorts should be eradicated if at all possible, in order to preserve American fisheries.

But to call the common carp “invasive” while holding the brown trout in high esteem is a bit unfair. They’re both immigrants.

This chapter is excerpted from The Orvis Guide to Fly Fishing for Carp: Tips and Tricks for the Determined Angler (2013).

Also, check out KD’s new book: A Fishable Feast: Fly Fishing and Eating Your Way Around the World–out this year and published by Rizzoli in New York. (order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million.) If you want a personalized copy with an inscription from me for yourself or a gift recipient–e.g. “to Susie, the greatest fly angler ever to grace the rivers of the Americas”–sure, I’m game. Just visit kirkdeeter.com to order and tell me what you want me to write.

By John Juracek

For quite some years, the classic books of fly fishing have been skating on thin ice. Very thin ice. It appears now–at least from where I stand–that the ice has given way.

With luck, a couple titles may flounder for a while, but the bulk of them are sinking unceremoniously to depths from which only the most intrepid of future anglers might dredge them. Yes, the classics are pretty much gone. I’m taking it hard.

Try finding a classic on the shelf of a fly shop or bookstore today. It’s nearly impossible. Explanations for their absence run to: “They don’t sell.” “No one is interested.” “No one has time to read anymore.” “Old information.” “It’s all on the Internet.”

Heck, it’s not easy today to find a single fly shop employee or guide that has read a classic. Doubly so (or more) if they’re under the age of thirty-five. But it’s not only folks in the fishing business. Anglers of all ages and stripes have been eschewing the classics for a long time. I can think of several reasons why they shouldn’t.

As with any genre of writing, the classics of fly fishing represent the best of what has been thought and said on the subject. The ideas contained in them are good enough to believe in. The essential truths they reveal are ones which, to this day, we profitably fish by. It’s that simple. No disrespect towards current authors, but those who penned the classics were more knowledgeable, more thoughtful, more articulate. They showed us the way, and did it beautifully.

Along with their technical insights, the classics provide something else of at least equal value. They provide the philosophical foundations by which we define our engagement with the sport. That is to say, in addition to showing us how to catch fish, they also present a system of values and beliefs by which we can fish. Values that have proven meaningful enough over the long term to serve as models and guides for entire angling careers. (My own fishing has been satisfyingly directed by the classics for fifty-plus years and counting.)

The classics also help us understand our origins and how we got to where we are today. I think that’s good stuff, and knowing something about the history of what I do adds infinite enjoyment to my days astream.

If you’ve never read a fly fishing classic, try one now–while a few remain afloat.

Looking for a place to start? Consider Nymph Fishing for Chalkstream Trout by G.E.M. Skues and A Modern Dry Fly Code by Vince Marinaro.

John Juracek is a fly fisherman, writer and photographer from West Yellowstone, Montana. For twenty-some years he was a partner at Blue Ribbon Flies, a local fly shop, and is currently the head casting instructor at the School of Trout and Anglers Academy. His writing credits include Yellowstone: Photographs of an Angling Landscape, Fly Patterns of Yellowstone, Fishing Yellowstone Hatches and Fly Patterns of Yellowstone, Volume Two.

He is considered one of the sport’s expert fly casters and instructors and offers casting lessons for $100/hour at jjuracek@gmail.com or (406) 640-2828.

I have so many questions for Jeff Colvin, but I do not want to interrupt his process. I just sit quietly in the corner of his room at a Holiday Inn Express in Denver with a notebook and watch him pace back and forth at the foot of the bed.

He’s been up since 6 a.m., figuring out his wardrobe and, with go-time fast approaching, he’s stuck on the hat. According to Colvin, it’s the most important part of his outfit because it’s the most visible. If he goes with the Scientific Anglers mesh back, he worries he could lose eyeballs from anyone at RIO or Cortland. But, if he opts for the Howler Brothers snapback, he fears his core fans will assume he’s gone unnoticed this season by any major brands that produce technical fly gear. His blood pressure is rising.

Across the street at the Denver Mart, the doors of The Fly Fishing Show have just opened and gobs of winter-weary anglers are flooding in, eager to grab information about lodges they’ll never visit and pay full retail price for everything they buy. This event is Colvin’s Super Bowl. He has been traveling the country since November visiting every fly expo from Massachusetts to California with one goal–dazzle as many spectators at the rectangular casting pond as humanly possible.

For all intent and purposes, this is Colvin’s sport and as far as he’s concerned, he’s playing at a professional level. He’s not a guide, certified casting instructor, writer, or influencer. He’s just a 35-year-old financial adviser from Ohio who is addicted to casting fly rods in front of strangers. As I shadowed him for months on the long road to Denver during the 2025/2026 season, I never expected the loops being thrown my direction to be so loose and confusing.

Roll Out the Validation

“Pretty roll cast.”

Those three little words changed the trajectory of Colvin’s life, he explained the first time we met at a repurposed Cincinnati carpet factory that now sells $40 gourmet burgers and makes you sit on low wooden crates to eat them. He’ll never know the name or even the face of the man who lofted the compliment, but the power it injected into his fly-fishing soul has been driving him since that fateful day in 2016.

“I was only 25 at the time,” he said as he wiped black garlic-rose water aioli out of his handlebar mustache. “I was legitimately at the show to buy a new rod, and back then I didn’t have a lot of cash, so I really wanted to make sure I was spending wisely. I grabbed this Loomis and timidly took it to the pond. I was nervous, so I just started roll casting and out of the corner of my ear I heard it. I don’t know, man. It was like attaining Nirvana. I looked down to the end of that hula hoop filled pool and realized this is where I was meant to be.”

By the end of that day, Colvin had tested almost every rod in the building, looking for another hit of that sweet casting skill validation. Over the last decade he’s had his hands on thousands of rods. But when I asked him which one stood out the most, I was shocked by his answer.

“None really come to mind,” he said. “To be honest, it’s like if you know how to cast well, then you can do it with a $50 rod or a $2,000 rod. It makes no difference. The truth is ninety-nine percent of my competitors at these shows aren’t paying attention to the rod. And they’re certainly not going to buy one. They just want to cast in front of people. They just want to be seen, you know?”

It made an iota of sense at the time, but a month later at the Lancaster Fly Fishing Show I was perplexed. This was the first chance I’d gotten to see Colvin perform live, and after making some poor kid at the Sage booth track down a reel loaded with 2-weight line, because he insisted on testing the lightest rod in the company’s arsenal, I wasn’t convinced Colvin was being seen at all.

As he cast, I circled the pond and eavesdropped. Never once did I hear a single passerby comment on Colvin’s ability. In fact, I barely saw an eye shift in his direction. At one point, a man approached me along the pond barrier. I assumed he was coming to watch Colvin, but he just wanted to know if I knew which booth had the buy-one-get-one deal on egg yarn.

Yet, to my surprise, when Colvin left the pond, he was thrilled.

“They were feeling that,” he told me. “You don’t see a lot of guys out here with a 2-weight. Small rods get the looks. It’s like ‘let me show you what a $500 rod designed to dapple shit in front of a dumb wild brook trout four feet away could do on a bonefish flat,’ right?”

As Colvin wandered off to track down a 15-weight rod and reel for his next performance, I felt like I was missing something.

If he wasn’t being fawned over by the spectators, maybe he was getting showered with the recognition he craved by the fly rod makers.

Show Stoppers

Over the next month and a half, I accompanied Colvin to the Atlanta Fly Fishing Show, Marlboro Fly Fishing Show in Massachusetts and Edison Fly Fishing Show in New Jersey. Along the way, I learned his system. The best time to cast is from one hour after the show opens until approximately 1 p.m. After that, crowds begin to taper off and celebrities are wrapped up with seminars, making it less likely they’ll see Colvin doing his thing. The biggest highlight for him at all three events was when Tom Rosenbauer briskly walked by talking loudly on his cell phone as Colvin was double hauling.

I spent most of my time interviewing people at rod company booths about Colvin, only to learn nobody really knew him. Most commonly I’d just get, “Who?” Occasionally, I’d hear, “Oh, that guy.” In Atlanta, when I described who he is and what he does to the young man at the Thomas & Thomas booth, he said, “No clue who you’re talking about. You’re describing thousands of dudes we see at these shows during the winter. Every five seconds I’m walking another guy in Free Fly joggers over to that pond with a rod he won’t buy, so he can flail it around while his girlfriend films for his Instagram stories.”

The more time I spent with Colvin, the less I understood about what he was doing.

To my eye, this was all thankless. Between plane tickets and hotel rooms and the price of the terrible pulled pork sandwiches served at the shows, he was spending a lot of money. As we walked into the Denver Fly Fishing Show, I could sense his nervous anticipation, but I couldn’t figure out why this event would be so different, and for the first few hours, it wasn’t.

Throngs of people passed by during Colvin’s sessions, paying him no mind whatsoever. But then around noon it happened. I caught a look of disbelief from Colvin as he nodded his head to the right to draw my attention to an older man wearing a visor staring directly at him. I’d later find out it was Andy Mill, who, with arms crossed and a blank gaze, watched every stroke Colvin made. After about 20 seconds, another man approached Mill, handed him a foot long hot dog and soda, and they both quickly walked away.

Colvin was beside himself, nearly in tears. He raced out of the building to call his wife.

“Andy Mill, babe!” he yelled into the phone as he tried to catch his breath. “Andy goddamn Mill just stood there and watched me cast. Honestly, it was incredible…”

I congratulated Colvin because it seemed appropriate and then asked where he goes from here. Clearly, I had been present for a lifetime achievement.

“I don’t really know,” an elated Colvin answered. “Short of Lefty Kreh getting resurrected from the dead and standing there watching me dump the new Helios 4 down to the backing, I don’t think I’ll ever experience anything like that again.”

By the J. Stockard Team

The first time most people pick up a spool of fly-tying thread, they expect the hard part to be the tying. Instead, it’s the shopping. A wall of little spools, each one stamped with a number (6/0, 8/0, 70, 140) and no obvious clue what any of it means or which one belongs on the hook in front of you. Worse, the numbers seem to argue with each other. It looks like a code that everyone else was handed at birth.

Yet, it mostly isn’t–there are basically two systems on the wall of spools, with a few specialty labels around the edges, and once a beginner can tell them apart, the whole exercise stops being so intimidating.

Here is what each number is actually saying.

Read more

One other “why carp” point to make has to do with the issues of access and angling pressure.

The popularity of fly fishing, especially fly fishing for trout, has had a negative impact on our fisheries. Without getting into a political debate, we might all acknowledge that the more people there are who fly fish, the more pressure that puts on certain rivers and lakes.

It’s good to have a larger constituency of people who care about trout and rivers. And where stream access laws allow people to own and control waters, fly fishing for trout has become a pay-to-play situation in some spots. (Believe me, there are still thousands of miles and acres of streams and lakes for the public to enjoy, which is what makes fishing in America the envy of anglers around the world.) Still, not everyone has the money to join the private fishing club, or pay for a guide trip. And not everyone has the funds to jet off to a tropical paradise for some flats fishing.

Carp are the “everyman” fish, and you can make an exotic adventure, and develop your fly-fishing skills, almost anywhere–from the river running through downtown, to the ponds of a municipal golf course, natural lakes, manmade reservoirs, spillways below dams and on and on.

Are there situations where carp threaten the habitat and compete with other game fish, such as trout? Absolutely. In some places, there are too many carp. Which is all the more reason to fish for them.

It’s one realm where the fly anglers, and the bait fishermen and the bowfishing folks can all get along.

Carp are more than able to handle any pressures we put on them. There are plenty to go around. And plenty to learn and enjoy by chasing carp.

This chapter is excerpted from The Orvis Guide to Fly Fishing for Carp: Tips and Tricks for the Determined Angler (2013).

Also, check out KD’s new book: A Fishable Feast: Fly Fishing and Eating Your Way Around the World–out this year and published by Rizzoli in New York. (order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million.) If you want a personalized copy with an inscription from me for yourself or a gift recipient–e.g. “to Susie, the greatest fly angler ever to grace the rivers of the Americas”–sure, I’m game. Just visit kirkdeeter.com to order and tell me what you want me to write.

It’s the final night at Angler’s Alibi on the banks of the Alagnak River in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Tonight is the night that I make my speech. If all goes well, we’ll have fourteen new anglers signed on to support the Save Bristol Bay movement in opposition to the Pebble Mine.

Dinner has concluded, and dessert is being plated. I tap my glass and stand up to speak. After giving this pitch a few times, I’ve got it down. But this week is different. It’s the Fourth of July, which means I have a new angle to lean into–being patriotic. I proudly state that “not only is standing up for Bristol Bay protections the right thing to do as an angler, but it’s the right thing to do as an American.” The new angle lands, and we’ve got fourteen new supporters.

To this day, I remember that moment. It was the first time in my life that I felt like I could positively impact the future of this country. The first time I was a patriot.

To be a patriotic angler, it doesn’t take much. All you have to do is show up for your fishery.

In my view, that involves educating the next generation, advocating for the protection of public lands and standing up for conservation issues that impact our waterways. It’s about making your voice heard, so future generations can enjoy the resources we often take for granted. The problem recently, however, is that even when we’ve emphatically made our voices heard, we’ve been sold out or undermined by the very politicians and big business who claim to represent us.

Connor is a 22-year-old angler from Wisconsin, and believes that “being a fly fisherman inherently means you’re patriotic. Patriotism used to mean that to a lot more people. It’s sad to see how far we’ve gotten away from that idea.”

Sean, who was born and raised in Fort Collins and learned to fly fish from his grandmother, put it like this, “I want to see hunting and fishing continue to be used as tools for conservation. I want to see traditions that have been passed down for generations preserved and strengthened.”

Connor, Sean and I are just the latest iteration of a core group of anglers unified by a desire to be stewards of our fisheries. A 2012 poll found that hunters and anglers skew conservatively–42% Republican, 32% Independent, 18% Democrat. But more importantly, 84% want the federal government to prioritize conservation and public lands management, regardless of party.

In an era where we can’t agree on anything, we somehow agree on this, and should lean into it. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service reports that there are 44.6 million voting-age hunters and anglers. That’s an army of advocates who have barely begun to use their power.

Whit Fosburgh, past president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, described the ideologically diverse and increasingly fragile fishing and hunting conservation coalition this way in a recent article (Scientific American): “The problem is that our community hasn’t been necessarily well represented by our elected leaders.” The reason, he explains, is that the hunting and fishing community has not held politicians accountable when they vote against its interests. “Our community is to blame for it.”

“Our community is to blame for it.” That hurts, but he’s right. All too frequently, hunters and anglers allow themselves to be trampled on by politicians who claim to be outdoor enthusiasts, but at the end of the day, couldn’t care less about us.

A prime example is the soon-to-be ex-representative of Montana’s 1st Congressional District, Ryan Zinke. After campaigning on the backs of the outdoor community, Zinke folded like a paper airplane on the topic of public lands and the rights of hunters and anglers, while he was the Secretary of the Interior. Most notably, Zinke pushed President Trump to significantly reduce the size of both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. This sent shockwaves across the outdoor community after Zinke described himself as the “Teddy Roosevelt conservationist,” and who rode into Washington on a horse his first day in office…

There are 45 million of us who believe in public lands, the right to fish and prioritizing conservation. We have power, command respect and can demand action.

“Don’t tell me you’re a hunter or angler and then vote to sell the ground out from under me. We read the bills. We watch the votes. And we’ve got long memories,” says Anthony, a Gen Z Colorado native who’s hunted and fished the state his whole life.

To properly activate the power of 45 million anglers is no easy task, but as true fly-fishing patriots, it’s our responsibility to make it happen.

What does that look like? It’s going to be different for every one of us, but I bet you already know where to start. For me, it was standing up at a dinner table in Bristol Bay and asking fourteen of my fellow anglers to sign a postcard.

If you don’t know where to start, begin by getting involved with groups like Trout Unlimited (TU), Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (BHA), or the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP). They will let you know when your voice is needed, and they’ll give you the tools you need to take action when the moment is right. For example, in April of this year, the Senate voted to repeal the 20-year mining ban protecting 225,000 acres of the Superior National Forest watershed upstream of the Boundary Waters. TU is taking a stand against this, and you can make your voice heard here.

The new definition of patriotism in the outdoors and fly fishing is no longer covered in the fleeting mirage of an American Flag or “God Bless America” bumper stickers. It’s showing up to make a public comment, adhering to Keep Fish Wet principles, taking a veteran fishing, educating the next generation on our sport, participating in community events that leave the river better than we found it and so much more.

It’s recognizing that we love this country, we love the resources held within its borders and we’re willing to do what it takes to protect them.

What did I miss? Where did I go wrong? Let me know in the comments.

Also, if you’re a next-generation angler, we’d love to hear from you. Shoot me an email @ watsoncliff23@gmail.com to share your thoughts and join our WhatsApp group.

Cliff Watson grew up in Wisconsin and now roams the Western U.S. like many other displaced Midwesterners. He has fished commercially in Alaska, hitchhiked with a fly rod through South America and developed some thoughts along the way. He writes about fishing, culture and the human experience. Give his Substack, Kudos, a follow. You’ll be glad you did.

By John Juracek

When we see bold, splashy rises, our initial thought should be that the food item responsible is either large and/or mobile (caddisflies, stoneflies).

Calm, quiet rises usually result from smaller, less mobile food items being taken (mayflies, midges, cripples). While there are never any guarantees in reading riseforms, these concepts are a good place to start in figuring out what a fish may be feeding on.

But there’s an important caveat, and it has to do with current speed and depth of water.

If fish are rising in relatively fast water and coming from down deep to do so, splashy rises can result, even if the food item isn’t large and active. The splashiness is a consequence of the fish taking the food and turning down quickly to get back to the slower water near the bottom.

I’ve seen this in stretches of fast and deep water, where size #16 Pale Morning Dun mayflies are being taken–insects neither particularly large, nor especially mobile.

Attention to details like this can make a difference in your fishing, and it’s also rewarding to simply understand more about what’s taking place around us on the water.

John Juracek is a fly fisherman, writer and photographer from West Yellowstone, Montana. For twenty-some years he was a partner at Blue Ribbon Flies, a local fly shop, and is currently the head casting instructor at the School of Trout and Anglers Academy. His writing credits include Yellowstone: Photographs of an Angling Landscape, Fly Patterns of Yellowstone, Fishing Yellowstone Hatches and Fly Patterns of Yellowstone, Volume Two.

He is considered one of the sport’s expert fly casters and instructors and offers casting lessons for $100/hour at jjuracek@gmail.com or (406) 640-2828.

Every fly-fishing guide has a process, at least the good ones do. That probably goes for writers, marketing directors and business owners as well.

Because the ability to consistently map out a novel set of returns (fish in the net, page views, consumer connections) in a world of ever-changing variables (weather, water, technology, consumer behavior) is what generally separates the dabblers from the professionals.

Back in the day when I was a young guide for Tim Heng at the Taylor Creek Fly Shop in Basalt, Colorado, Kea Hause was the best fishing guide in the valley. There were many other fine guides–Tony Fotopulos, “Big” Steve Avery, John High, Curly, Kris Suplee, Johnny Thunder, the list goes on and on–but Kea was atop the A-list.

And what probably made Kea the best was his uncanny ability to both think in the moment (the now) and beyond the moment (the future) as he rowed down the river–he was analyzing and processing the conditions during the practice of fishing, not at lunch or later over a beer. He used to call it “typewriter vision,” a unique talent that allowed him to keep one eye on the client, and one on the next run.

When we interviewed him for Castwork, he summed up his on-water philosophy this way, “To be honest, there’s an inner voice… call it God, call it nature, call it gut instinct. You have to quiet your mind and your will to the point where you can receive instruction from that voice. I’ve learned to be flexible and listen to what the river tells me. When you have an open mind, you are in a better position to receive luck, energy, whatever.”

Essentially, he had configured his fishing practice to be an intuitive conversation with the world around him, and the river, specifically–two living organisms building real-time knowledge as they informed each other.

Donald Schön, a philosopher and MIT professor during the 70s, called this practice “reflection-in-action”–the ability to think about what you are doing while you are doing it. Before his research work and writings, the academic world basically treated learning like a textbook formula: you study opaque theory in a classroom, then apply it later to the real world.

But Schön argued (The Reflective Practitioner) 1 that real life doesn’t work this way. He noticed that the most successful professionals–particuarly artists, architects, designers and musicians–rely on a messy, intuitive form of intelligence that happens during the act of creation.

True intelligence is being created in the moment through interaction, observation and experimentation. 2 There’s always time to analyze and reflect on your experience later (the post-mortem), but the real work is being done in the moment.

The “Swampy Lowland”

Schön wrote about the “swampy lowland” of real practice versus the “high, hard ground” of theory. Up on the high ground, fishing or business challenges are clean and simple to solve with books, AI queries and “how-to” videos; down in the swamp, solutions are muddier and messier, requiring a much more utilitarian approach. Broken trailers and websites are often MacGyvered on the fly with what you have at your disposal.

He would argue that in the real world, weather, water and fish behavior are never fixed values and overly pedantic approaches generally struggle when conditions change.

Expertise isn’t having your fly rod rigged before you hit the water; it’s your ability to experiment and pivot when carefully mapped out plans fall apart. In this light, “mistakes” are not actually failures–they are opportunities to learn. And the best practitioners can ride the daily ebbs and flows of experience like a wave.

A-list fly-fishing guides are constantly exploring, building theories on the water (and often breaking them) and manufacturing solutions alongside their clients. For the writer and artist, the process of creation is the thinking. Stories aren’t cooked up the night before, then written down in the morning–you write them into existence, in the moment. And for the founder or business owner, spending months on AI-generated, 5-year business plans can only get you so far, before the market and tariffs shift, algorithms change, or customer retention strategies become dated and obsolete.

In this world view, the faster you fail, the faster you can adjust and learn. “Move fast and break things” in the parlance of early software development. 3

As a business strategy, founders should end every week by looking at the messiest challenges they had to overcome, and instead of asking, “How did our plans get messed up?” they should ask, “What did this problem teach us about how our business operates?” Then take those insights and plug them into next week’s operations. (A fishing guide might do this daily.)

At the philosophy’s core, you’re not trying to (completely) solve a problem before you push out into the current. You simply want to take action, experiment, quickly iterate, then learn from your mistakes. Eventually, navigating unpredictable, real-world situations will become second nature.

Looking for a Driveby

Kelly Galloup from the Madison River’s Slide Inn is famous for talking about how he’ll only go “five minutes with a fly color” (without any fish activity), before switching it out, and making a significant color change, i.e. not a subtle transition, like olive to a lighter brown, but a more dramatic one, like white to black. 4

White → Black → Tan → Olive → Yellow → Chartreuse

These aren’t random (color) guesses–it’s a rapid, real-time experiment intended to elicit information.

If you can figure out what fly color the fish are attracted to today–and not spend four-to-eight hours doing so–then you can begin to analyze and iterate any second-order challenges: the retrieve, action, fly size, materials, silhouette etc.

For Galloup, anglers who get stuck in the habit of explaining away their fishless outings are simply putting “Band-Aids on their egos”: It’s not us. It’s the wind. It’s the direction of the wind. It’s the sky. It’s the barometric pressure. But what did you do to change the outcome? If you were a competitive fisherman, you wouldn’t sit stagnant. If there was a $100,000 paycheck at the end of that, you wouldn’t sit around making excuses for one color or one style of fly, right? You would move through it.

The philosophy is identical to Schön’s: fail fast, so you can learn fast, while also explicitly rejecting any stale, inflexible “how-to” axioms like, bright day, bright fly; dark day, dark fly. For generations, anglers’ learning curves have been crippled by these kinds of shallow and preconceived notions.

A better strategy would be to simply show up at the river or saltwater flat and let the weather and fish dictate the day’s strategy. Sit on the bank and observe the birds and water for ten minutes before you get started, and you might just stumble onto a few clues everyone else has ignored.

As Kea was fond of pointing out, “I never wake up in the morning with an agenda, no set plan. I have hunches and ideas, but I don’t make final decisions until it is time to cast.” – Andrew Steketee

Ombraz Azzurro Armless Sunglasses

Ombraz has introduced a new pair of armless fishing frames: the Azzurro. They are a “water-first” full coverage performance sunglass built with ZEISS’s (premier German manufacturer) most advanced optics.

“On the water, you’re dealing with glare from every angle, sweat, salt, spray, hats, wind and long hours of exposure. The Azzurro takes the things Ombraz already does differently–no arms, no hinges, no side pressure, no slipping, no falling off–and adds the wrap coverage and lens performance needed for moving around water.” says Jensen Brehm, Ombraz co-founder.

The ZEISS lens collection: polarized grey with blue mirror (bright water), polarized grey with green mirror (bright sun), polarized rose with copper mirror (high contrast) and polarized yellow with green mirror (variable light).

We’ll be testing their brown prescription lenses in a few weeks, with and without mirrors. The Azzurros are priced at $195.

Recent News

• John Simms, founder of Simms Fishing Products, passes at 89. “Simms’ career was marked by constant reinvention. Beyond fishing and avalanche safety, he launched rafting ventures and, later in life, became a large-scale metal sculptor whose work reflected a fascination with geometry and natural forms. As Big Life Magazine observed, there was a ‘generative quality’ to Simms–paired with a deep generosity–driving him to improve the experiences of others in the pursuits he loved.”

• What Fly Fishing Taught Me About Building a Brand from Fast Company. “I have watched brilliant founders fall in love with a brand positioning for the same reason an angler falls in love with a fly: because it worked somewhere else, because it feels right, or because they simply like it. But comfort is not a strategy. The positioning that feels safe is almost always the one that sounds like everyone else in the category. ‘We’re the AI-powered platform for…’ is the brand equivalent of throwing the same Woolly Bugger that every other angler is throwing. The brands that break through, match the moment the audience is living in.”

• From AFFTA: Why Fly Fishing Brands and Retailers Should Be on Substack. “People are hungry for intentional, slower-paced feeds. In a world of three-second reels and algorithmic outrage, a well-crafted 800-word piece that lands in someone’s inbox, from a brand or writer they chose to follow, is an increasingly rare thing. That scarcity is an opportunity. Partner with the writers already there. Substack has a thriving fly fishing ecosystem. Reel Pure Radio and Flylab are good examples of what’s possible when the writing takes the culture seriously. Denim brand Still Here partnered with five Substack creators for a product launch, giving each creator full creative agency, and saw 75%+ open rates and sold out on launch day, with 80–90% of click-throughs originating from Substack email. The fly fishing trade equivalent is straightforward: find the writers your customers are already reading and build something with them.” AFFTA also takes a dive into the Reddit content salt mines, and what, if any, value is there for specialty retailers.

• Kyle Frost is now at AllTrails and he has some interesting data on the dropped reservations at U.S. National Parks. “The parks are going to be busy whether we worry about it or not. So if you’re headed to Yosemite, Rainier, or anywhere busy this summer, a few things that make the day better for you and everyone behind you: Show up ready. Download your maps before you lose signal, because service drops at many trailheads. Check recent conditions and the forecast so you’re not the person who needed help that a stretched ranger had to provide. Pack out a little more than you packed in, and be prepared to pivot; there are plenty of worthwhile options in and near these parks. Go when others don’t. The data is clear that weekends and mid-day are peak times. A weekday trip, or an early start, is the single biggest difference-maker, and the hikers already doing it are often the ones writing the most positive reviews. Check what time of day a trail tends to peak before you commit to a plan. Be kind. Rangers and gateway-town staff are short-handed and catching grief for decisions made outside the park boundaries. A little patience goes a long way right now.”

• Where is product discovery headed? Dan Coe from The Brand Report on the ever increasing (sell-through and relevance) challenges for brands and specialty retailers: Place Was Never Just Place. “In outdoor, Place is collapsing back into Promotion. Distribution used to be something a brand earned once and then let do the talking. Now it is something a brand has to earn again and again, across a dozen fragmented, lower-trust surfaces–specialty floors, experiential stages, creator feeds, podcasts that get cited in answer boxes, and the recommendation engines doing the narrowing. The macro is moving the same direction underneath. Meta CPMs are running 20% higher year over year. DTC customer acquisition costs are up 25–40% across most apparel and outdoor categories. Google search traffic to publishers is down on the order of a third in a single year and still falling. The two surfaces a generation of outdoor brands built their growth model on–wholesale credibility plus paid digital reach–are both narrowing at the same time, and the new surface (LLM recommendation) is gated by editorial signal most outdoor brands aren’t generating yet. The new rack is an answer box listing five products for an exact trip a customer is planning next weekend.” Specialty retailers are going to have to do something they’ve never done before: start hiring incredibly competent and novel thinking marketing teams, not just people spinning up Shopify sites.

• The wait is worth it. From Andrew Luter: The brands with the longest waitlists aren’t the ones trying hardest to grow. “There’s also something about friction that the slow goods companies understand intuitively. Modern commerce is designed to eliminate inconvenience. Everything is available immediately. Anything can be delivered overnight. And yet some of our most meaningful experiences involve waiting. Camping permits. Powder mornings. A permit tag after years of failed draws. Nobody tells stories about two-day shipping. People tell stories about finally getting a Melly. About the rod they waited three months for and have fished for twenty years. About a Dehen sweater that still fits the same way it did in 1987. In high school, I once waited for months for a hand-made Burton snowboard to come out of a little factory in Vermont. When it finally arrived, personally signed by Jake, it had an almost totemic presence. Nothing like anything I could feel running down to Evo and grabbing one off the shelf today. Friction and scarcity don’t just build demand–they build meaning. The waiting creates a relationship with the thing.”

• Colorado Parks and Wildlife has been hard at work, salvaging Antero Reservoir’s fish as the lake is drained for drought mitigation. “Amid the draining and closure of popular fishing spot Antero Reservoir, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has been hard at work to salvage the lake’s fish. According to a report from the agency, their aquatic biologists in conjunction with Denver Water staff pulled more than 1,000 trout out of Antero Reservoir on Friday, heavily relying on the use of electrofishing. This technique involves sending a controlled electrical current through the water that temporarily stuns the fish, making them easy to capture while not harming the animals. Per a report from CPW, 981 rainbow, brown, and cutthroat trout that were caught via this means were relocated to Eleven Mile Reservoir. Some other fish that were captured were released into the South Fork South Platte River.” Sad to see for a (formerly incredible) CO stillwater fishery.

• From the Wild Steelhead Coalition: The Ocean Just Went Dark Off Our Coast and the steelhead will pay the price. “The Coastal Endurance Array, part of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative, is being pulled out of the water. It is one of four of five arrays the administration has decided to dismantle, stripping monitoring infrastructure from the East Coast, the Pacific Northwest, and Alaska in a single stroke. For those of us who fight for wild steelhead, this is not an abstract budget line. It is a light going out over the exact water our fish depend on to survive. As the fisher-led Alaska Marine Community Coalition put it, when the data flows go dark, ‘decision-making happens with wider uncertainty,’ and that uncertainty ‘falls hardest on the people with the smallest margin for error.’ For us, that means wild steelhead, a fish already pushed to the edge across much of its range, and the rural communities, tribal nations, guides, and small businesses whose lives are braided into the runs.” It’s becoming increasingly obvious this administration is not tied to science or scientific research in any meaningful way, unless it’s a tool to manipulate, or remove altogether, when the political winds encourage you to stymie political or conservation opposition. What a great fantasy land to live in, where viewpoints or scientific data that don’t support your narrative and agenda can simply be removed from the public zeitgeist.

• Ocean monitoring (teardown) update: The Trump administration has backed off its controversial plan to dismantle the Ocean Observatories Initiative. The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced it will pause efforts to take apart the network and will continue with planned maintenance. The reversal comes immediately after intense, bipartisan backlash and a swift, unanimous vote in the U.S. Senate to block the decommissioning–a bill co-sponsored by Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) passed the Senate by a unanimous vote to legally protect the sensors.

• On the public lands war front: The Public Land Water Access Association (PLWA) has joined with Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (BHA) to challenge the “unlawfulness” of corner crossings in Montana. “Across Montana, more than 870,000 acres of public land are corner locked. In the eyes of MT FWP, this means the public cannot legally access these lands. We want to be clear, while PLWA has a fundamental disagreement over the interpretation and application of Montana law regarding the legality of corner crossing, this is not an attack on the agency itself. In fact, PLWA continues to work productively with MT FWP on other public access issues all across the state. After generations of legal grayness, PLWA and Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (BHA) have joined forces to seek clarity through Montana courts. Together, on behalf of our collective memberships, and for all Montanans, we filed a lawsuit challenging MT FWP’s new agency guidance to seek confirmation that corner crossing in Montana is lawful.” Although the Montana law is not settled on this legal confrontation (a landmark federal appeals court ruling in 2025 legalized corner crossing in Wyoming and five other states, but that decision came out of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals–Montana sits in the 9th Circuit, meaning the Wyoming ruling does not legally bind Montana), the amount of time and resource (state, federal and non-profit legal defenses) being allocated in 2026 to fight these kinds of public lands wars is starting to border on the absurd (probably tens of millions in active courtroom litigation over access rights). All for land that the taxpayers already own…

• And more: Jim Pattiz of More Than Just Parks reports on Mike Lee (R-UT) and the latest public lands disaster: Mike Lee Moves to Kill the Roadless Rule Permanently–Lee’s “immediate nullification” would erase the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule and a “permanent ban” would prohibit the Forest Service from ever issuing similar roadless area protections in the future. “The amendment is titled, with the bluntness of a ransom note, ‘Roadless Rule Nullification.’ According to the text obtained by E&E News, it erases the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule outright, stripping protection from millions of acres of national forest across thirty-seven states. To understand why Lee did it this way–the rider, the leak, the silence–you have to understand the numbers he’s up against, because they may be the most lopsided in the history of American public policy. When the Forest Service built the Roadless Rule a quarter century ago, it ran one of the most exhaustive public processes in the history of federal rulemaking: more than 600 public meetings across the country and about 1.6 million written comments, the largest response any federal agency had ever recorded for any proposed regulation, before or since. Over 90 percent of those comments favored the rule, and most of the supporters wanted the protections made stronger. The agency itself, in the final rule, pointed to ‘the sheer volume of comments received’ as ‘compelling evidence’ that the public had spoken and been heard.’” Back in reality, Wes Siler doesn’t think it will ever get the votes in the senate and survive the Filibuster. The legislative maneuver feels predictably brazen, but also increasingly desperate.

• Use and fight for your public lands. A post election dispatch from Ryan Busse: YOLOing with Roosevelt and Abbey. “Last week, after losing an election here in Montana, I spent a couple of days fly fishing with my son, Badge. ‘Magical’ only hints at how good these moments are now after having missed so many on the campaign trail. The whole thing was refreshing, common, and accessible in a uniquely Montana kind of way. No expensive boats, guides, fancy lodges, or long travel. Just a spur-of-the-moment trip on public land that’s open to all. Both Badge and I have spent a lot of time lately fighting for Montana, have endured much stress at the attacks on what we hold dear, and probably not spent enough time enjoying it, and so for us, it was a good to channel Ed Abbey’s advice from Desert Solitaire, his iconic 1968 work in praise of wilderness: ‘It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here.’”

Fly-fishing Media

Founder Tim Romano joins Joe Cermele on the Cut & Retie podcast. “Tim beams in to tell us about his favorite alpaca mousing sweater, we wrap ourselves in wet bed sheets and take a drive with the mayor of Gunnison Canyon, cry about the lack of water in the West and rejoice over the film Spring Breakers.”

• From Field Mag: Steven Weinberg Talks Upstate Fly Fishing and Painting Trout. “There’s no shortage of fly-fishing books out there. Some focus on beginner education–rod weights explained, casting basics–while others dive into specific strategies like dry fly presentation or how to use entomology to sharpen an angler’s hatch-matching prowess. New York-based writer, artist, and angler Steven Weinberg takes a colorful approach to the subject in his latest title, The Fly Fishing Book: An Artful Guide to Angling, out 5 May 2026, which combines the artists signature water color illustration style with useful fly fishing tips covering gear, casting, fish species, fly patterns and more…”

• Fly-fishing sales representative Kurt Krueger (Skwala, Sage, RIO, Redington, Tibor, Fishpond) on the House of Fly Podcast. “Just like everybody, I learned to fly fish the hard way. I didn’t have anybody to show me even how to put a leader on a fly line…” And later, everyone needs a chance: how did you start working in the outdoor industry? “I started working for $10 an hour, but it was for the right guy.”

• Social media “hooks,” not utility. From Prof G Markets: how influencers hijacked the consumer economy. What does it mean for brands to build products with the intention of going viral? “I worry that we’re just creating all of these BS products (like buckets of coffee) because we want to go viral…” Finally, someone is getting the point of social media.

• Near Father’s Day: Andy and Nicky Mill building some tarpon hunting memories–dad’s are where it’s at.

Gear Buzz

On-water performance: some basic equipment maintenance we often ignore (and shouldn’t) is fly line care (cleaning, conditioning, adding slickness etc.), particularly with the prices of today’s fly lines. This is a super simple way to improve your casting distance and accuracy. There are a number of relatively inexpensive line cleaning/maintenance starter packs from Glide (line dressing), Loon (line up kit) and others. We’ve used Glide and Mucilin (line & fly dressing) for years and they all work great. The brands may not matter a whole lot–it’s more about being diligent and working these practices into your seasonal equipment regimen (even daily if you’re a guide or more serious angler).

• From Flylab founder Kirk Deeter: The Five Questions You Should Ask About Fly-fishing Product Reviews. “First, did a human being write the review? You think I’m kidding, but you’d be amazed by the amount of stuff that’s being cranked out via AI, even on some websites you’d recognize. Look for personal touches in the write-up of any product, e.g. where was it fished, by whom and for how long? How did it work compared to other products, especially those from the past. Look for boots-in-water context that AI cannot fake.”

• Joe Rotter from Red’s Fly Shop on the evolution of trout spey. “Joe recommends starting with an eleven-foot four-weight rod, a Skagit head no longer than sixteen feet and three tips: a floater, an intermediate and a light sink tip. That will cover everything from swinging wets for rainbows and cutthroat to hucking streamers for browns and bass. Skip the heavy fast-sinking stuff at first. It’s harder to cast and snags up. ‘Snagging is the mortal enemy of success. Fish over their heads. Find out if they’re willing to come up before you try to go down and get them.’” Check out his spey school part one.

• Francesca Krempa interviews the founders of Soča, a new women’s fly-fishing apparel brand. Founder Ellie Pitney: “Orvis, Patagonia, Miss Mayfly all make size-inclusive waders that really fill the gap of ‘hard goods,’ but we felt the biggest gap was in soft goods like apparel. The three pieces we’re starting with may look plain at first glance, but they’re really thoughtful. For example, the button-up shirt is designed off a blouse, with feminine details in the cut, trim, and the cuffs. There are tons of other button-downs up there, but ours is really tailored for women.”

• Is it raining or hailing? From Backpacker: The Best Rain Jackets for Hiking and Backpacking (2026). On the Patagonia Torrentshell 3L Rain Jacket: “This rain jacket is a true three-layer shell–impressive at a sub-$200 price point–with a 50-denier, 100-percent recycled nylon ripstop face fabric and Patagonia’s proprietary PFC-free PU membrane. Tester Cody Memmel, a tough-to-please Colorado-based fly fisherman, climber, and hiker, was particularly impressed with its hydrophobic chops: ‘This shell was one of the more storm-worthy jackets I have ever worn,’ he said, appreciative of the ability to cinch down the hood, hem, and wrists, as well as the double-guttered front zipper. ‘The H₂No membrane was stellar and it had no issues shedding water or pea-sized hail.’”

• From Outside: The Best Water Shoes for River Hikes, Slot Canyons and Rowdy Rapids. The Astral Brewer 3.0’s stand out: “Testers named the Astral Brewer 3.0 the best water sneaker for the second year running, and for good reason. This shoe has stood the test of time among river guides, weekend paddlers, and anyone who needs a closed-toe option that handles serious water without looking like technical gear.”

• From Field Mag: Eleven Best Film Cameras For Photographers of Any Experience. “Two things are characteristic of the Leica M6’s fame–Leica lenses, and durability (i.e. superior build quality). The Carl Zeiss Leica M mount lenses are arguably some of the best glass ever made. Functionally, all camera operations on the M6 are purely mechanical and manually operated–save for the light meter which takes easily sourced batteries and won’t affect camera function if inoperable. From the shutter function to the film advance and rewind, no automatic functions or modes exist on the M6, meaning it’ll work for as long as the mechanics are maintained.”

• Where the real product innovation is happening in the outdoor space: Were You Born in a Barn? from Andrew Luter. “Proximity is the product. You cannot design a better wader if you’ve never stood in a cold river for six hours. You cannot improve a sandal’s strap system if you’ve never guided clients through the Gunnison Gorge with wet feet all day. The founders of these companies weren’t customers. They were users–often professional users–of the products they eventually built. The feedback loop between the problem and the solution was measured in feet, not miles. Startup Colorado puts it plainly: ‘Living and operating from a rural region–directly adjacent to the landscapes that inspire the products–is an experience that informs more than a lunch run or weekend retreat.’”

• Protecting Cold-Water Trout Fisheries in the Northern Rockies with TroutCast. “TroutCast is an interactive tool that helps users explore the projected impacts of drought on valuable trout fisheries in the northern Rocky Mountains. As climate change accelerates the frequency and severity of droughts, TroutCast helps resource managers and the public stay ahead of the curve with data-driven insights and forecasts. By improving drought planning and water management, TroutCast empowers communities to make informed decisions that safeguard trout populations, sustain fishing opportunities, and protect the ecological health of our most valued freshwater resources.”

• From the House of Fly: the Most Interesting Rods You Probably Haven’t Cast. On the Fly Project Saga Two-hand Rods: “I was out on the water with the Saga recently, and I must admit to smiling and giggling multiple times. I was swinging with my now OG 4114 sample rod on the Missouri River below Cascade. I enjoyed encounters with browns and rainbows while swinging a brace of soft hackle flies on my favorite Saga with our Ballistic scandi line. The Saga was the perfect tool for casting and swinging #14 and #16 flies, and cushioning 4X tippet while battling feisty 16-22” trout.” The Scott Session 9-foot 6-weight fly rod: “During summer in north Idaho there are hatches of PMDs and caddis and the fish key in on these, as well as hoppers. We started the day by throwing steamers against the banks and hit the drop-offs, looking for big bull trout and large rainbows. The Session threw mid-size streamers with ease. It had plenty of backbone to handle our weighted bunny leeches, as well as land some medium-size bull trout. Once the PMDs started popping, we quickly switched leaders and threw on some dries. I was amazed at how smooth and accurate the Session was. Not only could it launch streamers, but it still had the feel of a dry-fly rod. Long, smooth casts with soft landings were no problem for the Session.”

• Steve Sullivan, the co-founder Cloudveil (1997) and Stio (2011), talks about the wins, losses and key insights of running an outdoor apparel business: 1. not “losing control” of the business 2. working with “good people” and 3. building the business in an “operationally sustainable manner.” An informative listen for young entrepreneurs that covers DTC and wholesale markets, the DTC versus wholesale product feedback loop (the delta is enormous) and the ongoing challenge of tariffs.

Boating News from SCS

Small Craft Sales interviews Jordana Barrack on her launch of the Poudre River Fund, a new effort focused on protecting and enhancing one of Colorado’s most beloved rivers. For people hearing about it for the first time, what exactly is a River Fund? “Technically, a River Fund is a community-governed pot of funds that are designated for a set of goals related to the needs of a watershed. Through our work at Mighty Arrow, we were seeing other river funds pop up around the western U.S. River funds are managed in similar ways to endowments. The money is actively invested in public equities and bonds, similar to your retirement accounts. Each year, there is a look back period to determine what the average earnings were for the fund. That then determines the re-granting budget that the fund gets to activate for projects in the watershed. For example, on average a fund might earn 4.5%. If the fund has $10 million in its fund, then 4.5% in earnings could yield $450,000 for the year to invest in river health projects. Then it does that every year, year over year, and that money really starts to add up to significant impact for a river and its community.”

• The WoodenBoat Show returns to Mystic Seaport Museum June 26 to 28. Three days of wooden boats, tools, varnish, sharp transoms, questionable hat choices and people who can say “lapstrake” without blinking. The show includes classic boats, traditional boats, demonstrations, speakers and the “I Built/Restored It Myself” exhibit. Go for the boats. Stay because someone will probably explain why they own 400 clamps.

• Flint Riverkeeper is hosting the Lower Flint Paddle on Saturday, July 25. The group meets at Punks Landing at 9 a.m., then shuttles cars and gear upstream to Radium Springs Landing, also known as Marine Ditch. From there, it’s a 9-mile paddle back down to Punks. The trip is rain or shine, unless severe weather is in the forecast or the river is too high. Flint Riverkeeper members paddle free. Non-members pay $45, which includes a membership. Kayak, paddle and PFD rentals are available for another $15. More info here.

• Water Education Colorado has a sobering piece on the emergency drawdown from Flaming Gorge Reservoir. The release is meant to help Lake Powell, but it is hammering Flaming Gorge and the businesses that depend on that reservoir.

• Drought.gov’s June 18 Southwest monsoon update says parts of the Southwest may see above-average monsoon rain this summer. Good news for dry ground. Less helpful for big river flows and reservoir storage. A wet afternoon in the desert does not refill Lake Powell. It also does not fix a bad snowpack. It may knock down dust, green up some hillsides and make the creosote smell great–we’ll take that, but nobody should confuse it with a reset button.

• Paddling Magazine has a good video on the back deck roll–this is one of those kayak moves that looks like falling over on purpose, then somehow getting credit for it. Worth a watch if you paddle whitewater, mess around in playboats, or would rather roll than swim while your friends pretend not to laugh.

• Bonefish & Tarpon Trust is running its 2026 Ultimate Flats Boat Sweepstakes. The prize package includes a Floyd 5WT Skiff, Magic Tilt trailer, Yamaha F40, Minn Kota trolling motor, Simrad electronics, Sage gear, a push pole, Turtlebox, Fishpond gear, Costa sunglasses and more. The package is valued at more than $49,000. It supports BTT’s work for bonefish, tarpon, permit and the flats they live on. Start measuring the garage now.

• Down River Equipment has a useful guide to raft rigging: cargo floors, King Slings, drop bags, Captain’s Bags, crossbar bags, thwart bags, cup holders and all the other stuff that keeps your boat from looking like a garage sale after the first wave train. The big lesson is simple: rig tight. Keep heavy gear secure, suspend what needs to be suspended and do not donate your dry box, sandals, sunscreen and lunch to the river because you got lazy with straps.

Music

MJ Lenderman performing a few songs from Manning Fireworks live on KEXP–one of the better albums of 2025, if you haven’t listened. On the discipline of writing: “It comes and goes I guess. I’m grateful when it does happen, and I try to keep some sort of discipline and reading helps–also being attentive to my surroundings.” Good advice for thinkers, writers and creators. It’s always about the process, not the outcome. The Pitchfork review: “In an MJ Lenderman song, the extraordinary is always elbowing its way into the mundane. His 2022 breakthrough album, Boat Songs, thrived on these situations. One minute someone was clinically depressed on the Six Flags log flume, the next they were locked in a spat about a ‘dumb hat’ outside a butcher shop. ‘Being really sad or upset while wearing a costume,’ he told Pitchfork last year, ‘that’s funny.’ Over the last couple of years–as he signed with Anti- and remained a guitarist and songwriter in the great Southern indie rock band Wednesday, alongside his now ex-partner Karly Hartzman–Lenderman became a cult folk hero for people willing to talk about their feelings if they could couch it in a joke about Jackass.” – Andrew Steketee

Some days, carp will feed like swine at the slop trough, plowing right over a flat, inhaling seemingly everything in their paths.

On other days, they can be as fickle and spooky as permit. I can’t tell you how many trout and bonefish guides I’ve heard tell me how much they respect carp as difficult fish to fool. You can travel throughout the West, for example, and learn that when the guides go fishing on their time off at the end of the day, they’re often not casting at trout–they chase carp.

Carp will eat just about anything, from crayfish to Cheetos. That’s a good news/bad news deal. The angler’s options are almost limitless, which means the angler has to think hard before choosing a fly to tie on.

They can be found almost anywhere–again, a good news/bad news deal. The good news is that you can fish for carp in an odd assortment of places, from the pristine flats of Lake Michigan to the less-than-bucolic aquascape of the Los Angeles River. The angler must stay sharp, keep his or her eyes peeled and factor in the less anticipated when they chase carp.

Compare that to the trout river. When the mayflies are hatching, even a novice angler can reasonably guess what to tie on. The rings left by rising trout on the river surface are de facto bull’s-eyes that give you a pretty good idea of where to drop the cast. Trout fishing is about understanding systems and patterns. The better you can do that, the better your chances for success. That’s also generally true when it comes to bonefish moving on tides, tarpon rolling through channels, or redfish feeding in a marsh–and it’s true with carp as well.

The thing is, in carp fishing, those systems and patterns are far more subtle and harder to predict, and they change more frequently than most anglers expect.

And yet another challenge is that carp are extremely sensitive, communicative fish. They have giant lateral lines, so they can sense danger from a distance. Not only that, they’ll also signal that danger to other fish. Oftentimes, I’ve seen a school of carp slowly cruise into range, and with one errant cast, one awkward slap of the line, not only did I cause the fish I was targeting to flee, but the whole school up and vanished in an instant. Poof.

No fish species connects the sports of angling and hunting better than carp.

Barry Reynolds, Brad Befus and John Berryman wrote Carp on the Fly: A Flyfishing Guide (with a foreword by Dave Whitlock) more than 29 years ago, and that book has been the standard that got many anglers to embrace the challenge of carp fishing. My dog-eared copy of that book has followed me on many fishing trips, even when I wasn’t planning to fish for carp.

The basic knowledge that these guys introduced to fly anglers is still very relevant and important.

As more anglers have endeavored to chase carp with flies, a few more tips and techniques have come to the fore, and I’ll be explaining some of them in this series. But the ultimate lesson a carp angler can learn is that the more one sees and experiences, the more he or she realizes that carp fishing with flies is a labyrinth of challenges that can last more than a lifetime.

This chapter is excerpted from The Orvis Guide to Fly Fishing for Carp: Tips and Tricks for the Determined Angler (2013).

Also, check out KD’s new book: A Fishable Feast: Fly Fishing and Eating Your Way Around the World–out this year and published by Rizzoli in New York. (order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million.) If you want a personalized copy with an inscription from me for yourself or a gift recipient–e.g. “to Susie, the greatest fly angler ever to grace the rivers of the Americas”–sure, I’m game. Just visit kirkdeeter.com to order and tell me what you want me to write.

By John Juracek

The Yellowstone area is subject at any time to violent weather changes, but especially so in the month of June. Two days ago we were enjoying near 70 degree temperatures (June 6, 2020). That night it rained, and by the following morning it was snowing. That kind of swift change can cause serious changes in water levels and temperature.

See the two charts below. The first shows water flows on the Firehole River, the second water temperature. What had been a pattern of smooth, gradual reduction in flow levels and consistent daily temperature fluctuations were upset dramatically by the arrival of rain, snow and cold.

Experienced anglers know that insect activity controls trout feeding activity. And they know, too, that weather plays a vital role in controlling insect activity. It was apparent from looking at these charts that things were not going to be the same as they had been on the Firehole. For the previous six days, beginning sometime between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m., we had enjoyed good hatches and lots of rising trout. The activity generally lasted until between 1:30 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. (There are many micro-habitats on the Firehole, hence the range of starting and ending times.)

Knowing that things would be different, I arrived to the river at 2:15 p.m. My car thermometer read 42 degrees. When I checked the water, it was 56. Dark, heavy clouds drizzled rain. The river appeared lifeless. Not a single bug hatching, not a fish moving. Over the years, I’ve seen the Firehole shocked by weather many times. At the very least, emergences are delayed. Sometimes, they don’t happen at all. You never know for sure.

Patience is called for on these occasions, which admittedly can tax even the anglers that understand the situation. (I had guessed I might be early for the expected hatch of Baetis and Pale Morning Duns. At least I could take my time rigging up, which I did. I don’t handle things well when I arrive to a river with the fish already rising.)

On days like this, many fishermen will have already fished for hours. They usually arrive in the morning, gear up and go right to work. I understand it–they came to Yellowstone to fish, their time is limited, they’re going to fish. But the river flows cold, the fish largely inactive. Yes, the occasional trout will be caught, but what happens all too often is that these fishermen freeze out or tire out by the time the activity really begins. So, at the most propitious time to fish, they’re pretty much done. Guard against this, if your goal is to have the best fishing possible.

It wasn’t until 3:23 p.m. that I saw my first rise. Others followed quickly. As I shouldered my vest and grabbed my rod, a couple Pale Morning Duns flew overhead. For the next hour and a half, I fished constantly to rising trout. By then my hands were frozen out, barely functioning to tie on a fly or dry one off. Fish continued to rise as I de-rigged and headed home to the warmth of the wood stove.

In the evening, I heard from friends that fished elsewhere on the river. The hatch of Pale Morning Duns where they were didn’t begin in earnest until 5:00 p.m., and they fished until 7:00 p.m. I’m not sure whether they quit because they’d caught enough, were tired out, frozen out, or whether the hatch simply ended. In any event, it was the knowledge of knowing how these shocks to the system play out that kept them on the water well past when most anglers have already thrown in the towel.

That’s knowledge worth having, and worth heeding.

John Juracek is a fly fisherman, writer and photographer from West Yellowstone, Montana. For twenty-some years he was a partner at Blue Ribbon Flies, a local fly shop, and is currently the head casting instructor at the School of Trout and Anglers Academy. His writing credits include Yellowstone: Photographs of an Angling Landscape, Fly Patterns of Yellowstone, Fishing Yellowstone Hatches and Fly Patterns of Yellowstone, Volume Two.

He is considered one of the sport’s expert fly casters and instructors and offers casting lessons for $100/hour at jjuracek@gmail.com or (406) 640-2828.

There’s barely enough room for a weed whacker in Travis Gillman’s Pensacola, Florida, garage. From floor to ceiling, boxes tower over me and the 31-year-old former IT specialist turned part time fishing guide turned apparel company owner. In each cardboard casket are meticulously packed hooded performance sun shirts in pastel blue, coral, teal and olive drab. The left breast of each is emblazoned with a barracuda skeleton snarling its teeth. Under every intimidating fish the words “Salty Killer Outdoors” are scrawled in a font identical to that used by the heavy metal band Pantera. Securing this much product set Gillman back a cool $40,000, which he scraped together by putting up his life savings and talking his 84-year-old grandmother and friend Charlie into investing in his brand. There’s just one problem. In the three weeks since Salty Killer Outdoors launched, Gillman hasn’t sold a single sun shirt.

“I really don’t get it,” he says as he opens the Shopify app on his phone. “The brand has 982 followers on Insta, the Salty Killer community is thriving and people know me around here. They know me and my crew go harder than anyone. They know if we’re wearing Salty Killer it’s a brand they can trust. They should know it’s not the same garbage everyone else is making.”

During my three-year, fully immersive investigation into the pop-up sun shirt market, this would not be the last time I’d hear almost these exact words spoken by a perplexed 26- to 34-year-old holding a Yeti tumbler.

The China Syndrome

Several hundred miles east in Georgetown, South Carolina, 62-year-old Rick Berger has just opened his bait and tackle shop up for the day. He skims any dead shrimp or mud minnows out of his tanks as the low morning sun paints the wall of Mirr-O-Lures in a warm orange glow. Bergie’s B & T has been open since 1996, and in the last 30 years, Berger has gotten sales pitches from countless tackle companies and manufacturers insisting their products belonged on his shelves. But according to him, none of them have been more persistent or obnoxious than local kids pushing performance sun shirts.

“They’re like a plague,” Berger tells me. “I swear not a week goes by without some new dude walking in here wearing those Pit Cobra sunglasses telling me why I should be carrying his shirts. It’s always the same script. Bull Red Outdoors, Carolina Reaper Outdoors, High Hooker Apparel, doesn’t matter. They say, ‘We’re local and we think it would be great if our businesses supported each other.’ They wanna shoot TikToks in here that will supposedly increase foot traffic. Then they tell me they’re different. They ‘live it.’ Their shirts are made by fishermen for fishermen.”

If you consider the popularity of angling in Chinese culture, it’s not impossible these shirts are, in fact, made by fishermen for fishermen. In the winter of 2024, I was granted unprecedented access to the Hongyu Sheng apparel manufacturing facility in the Guangdong Province. Approximately 95% of American pop-up performance sun shirt brands use Hongyu Sheng–a testament to the company’s skill at harnessing private messaging targeted directly at anglers on social media.

“If you have pictures on social media holding fish and look like a man-child who doesn’t work for a living, we send you a message,” a grinning Chen Jun, Hongyu Sheng’s CEO, tells me as we eat Peking duck garnished with wild orchids in his sprawling office. “Man-child sees our low prices, sees how easy it is to put some skeleton fish or mermaid on shirt, and decides right then he’s going to start an entire clothing brand.”

Jun erupts into uncontrollable laughter, adding, “And he’s going to do it different!”

After lunch, I’m granted a tour of the facility. In a warehouse space so massive I can’t see the other side, hundreds of children are diligently making performance sun shirts. I’m cautious not to interact with them too much under the watchful eye of my stoic top-brass tour guides. At every sewing station the same coral, pastel blue, teal and olive drab performance sun shirts are taking shape. Further down the line, other children are heat transferring brand names and logos on sleeves and chests. Pine Mountain Outdoors. Salt Crush Outdoors. Get Tight Apparel. Drag Scream Outdoors. Fly-By Gear. On and on it went.

Before leaving for China, I taught myself exactly one phrase in the native language: Do you like to go fishing? Of the 36 children I deftly and quietly asked this question as we walked the factory floor, 30 never lifted their eyes from their work, three just smiled a little and three nodded a hollow yes. I noted the brands being made by the yesses: Streamer Junky Apparel, Rock Solid Outdoors and FishFace Outdoors. Armed with the knowledge that these brands could kind of legitimately claim their performance sun shirts were being made by fishermen, I decided to track them down as soon as I returned to the States.

Performance Issues

Rock Solid Outdoors and FishFace Outdoors were dead ends. I couldn’t find any trace of them on social media, which confirmed something Chen Jun told me during a Shiatsu massage he treated me to at the most exclusive gentleman’s club in Hong Kong.

“Most of the time they buy shirts first, come up with business plan later,” he said. “When nobody likes shirts on Instagram, man-child gives all shirts to friends and sells boat to pay.”

He started laughing so hard the scantily clad masseuse had to stop kneading his thighs for a minute.

But when I found 27-year-old Cody Brammell, the man behind Streamer Junky Apparel, at his parents’ house in Boulder, Colorado, nothing I told him about what I’d learned in China even seemed to compute.

“I hear you, bro,” he said, taking another slug of Black Rifle Coffee from his Yeti tumbler, “But Streamer Junky Apparel is just different. People know how hard I fly fish. They know I’m not gonna sell them anything I wouldn’t wear on the water myself.”

Unlike Travis Gillman in Pensacola who went from inception of Salty Killer Outdoors to launch in a month and a half, it turns out Brammell ordered his shirts on a whim on a Monday, received them a week later and was live on Instagram by Friday. He even spent an extra thousand dollars to boost his launch post, which kind of worked. When I met Brammell he’d been live for two weeks, and so far, sold six performance sun shirts, albeit at a loss because he offered the 50% discount code: MEATLIFE50.

“I’m not worried about it at all,” he told me as he put a new Streamer Junky Apparel sticker on his Rod Vault. “I’ve got a great pro staff repping the brand, you know, mostly my local homies, but they go hard as hell out there. And I’m gonna get the product in a few local fly shops, which will really increase brand visibility. I’m so confident I’ve already got Chat GPT working on a new logo for Popper Junky Apparel. The performance sun shirts in that line will be pretty close to Streamer Junky, just a little different. I’m thinking a bunch of small logos running down both sleeves. Nobody else is doing that.”

Of course, Brammell was incorrect. One year after meeting Travis Gillman, I returned to Pensacola, where things had not gotten any better for Salty Killer Outdoors. Gillman did try to salvage the brand by doing a second limited-edition pressing of sun shirts with small logos running up the front and back of both sleeves, but the nail in the coffin came when four out of his six South Florida pro staffers were cited and publicly shamed for keeping snook out of season. To try and recoup some money, Gillman took to selling shirts at local flea markets, a handful of which were purchased by old ladies for their leathery old husbands who already had a few dozen melanomas removed.

“I blame the tackle shops,” an unshaven Gillman said as he sipped warm Jim Beam out of his Yeti tumbler and stared at the dusty boxes in his garage. “Local businesses should support local businesses, but most of these owners were complete assholes. They had such bad attitudes. Like, so what if I’ve never been in your shop or bought anything there before? I’m making top-quality sun shirts! I have a community! They’ll fly off the rack! If there’s one thing I know, fishermen can’t get enough performance sun shirts with fish skeletons on them.”

By Todd Tanner

Back in the 1980s, Sy Syms, the founder of the off-price clothing retailer SYMS, ran a series of television commercials featuring the company’s longtime motto: “an educated consumer is our best customer.”

While I was never crazy about the term “consumer,” which reeked of unconsidered implications, it was hard not to agree with the overall sentiment. When it comes time to make a major purchase, those of us who take the time to educate ourselves tend to make better decisions than those of us who act impulsively.

With that truism in mind, here are a few thoughts that might prove worthwhile the next time you’re thinking about buying a fly rod.

Read more

When I told my mother I was writing a book on fly fishing for carp, her first response was, “Why would you do that?” She related a childhood story of how she hooked a carp while fishing with her father below the Independence Dam in Defiance, Ohio, and he laughed and laughed as that big, ugly fish tugged her up and down the riverbank.

Back then–and to this day–the carp is considered by many anglers to be an unfortunate result. It’s the fish you hook by accident. Most people certainly wouldn’t think of eating carp (at least not these days). And to target carp intentionally with a fly rod, rather than a bow and arrow... well, that’s just nuts.

Unless you really like to fly fish. And unless you really want to get good at fly fishing.

There is no doubt that the fly-fishing world spins on the axis of trout. Most of us start with trout. Most of the companies that make and sell things like rods, reels, lines and other gear would not exist were it not for trout.

Saltwater fly fishing is almost an entirely different sport than fly fishing for trout. Same basic tools, totally different approach. On a trout stream, presentation is paramount. How the fly behaves after it hits the water is as important as, or more important than, the cast you make to get it there in the first place. In the salt, on the other hand, a great cast (long and accurate) is usually the price of admission.

We can debate the importance of other factors like the angler’s ability to read water, and fly pattern selection and the other intangibles that go into various types of fly fishing until we’re blue in our faces. I’ve heard those conversations over and over. And my short answer is that all of it is important. No angler has ever suffered by having a great, accurate cast. You might not need to throw a fly 80 feet all the time, especially not on a trout stream, but it’s pretty nice to have that distance in your arsenal. You don’t need to be an entomologist or a marine biologist to decide on the right fly, but the more you understand what fish actually eat, the more fish you catch.

And it never hurts to be able to spot fish and understand the subtle telltales that indicate where they will be at any given time.

Which is what brings me back to carp. Carp do a better job of demanding all the skills an angler can muster–from the accurate cast, to spotting fish, to picking the right bug, to dropping that fly right into the feeding zone at exactly the right moment and making it behave just so–than almost any fish you can chase with a fly rod.

This chapter is excerpted from The Orvis Guide to Fly Fishing for Carp: Tips and Tricks for the Determined Angler (2013).

Also, check out KD’s new book: A Fishable Feast: Fly Fishing and Eating Your Way Around the World–out this year and published by Rizzoli in New York. (order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million.) If you want a personalized copy with an inscription from me for yourself or a gift recipient–e.g. “to Susie, the greatest fly angler ever to grace the rivers of the Americas”–sure, I’m game. Just visit kirkdeeter.com to order and tell me what you want me to write.

By John Juracek

A number of readers have inquired as to what fly rods I fish with. Here are some of my choices, with a few notes appended. My rod collection reflects the demands of the various kinds of fishing that I do. In any given instance, my choice of rod is dictated by the fishing conditions. I’m wedded to no particular brand nor any particular type of action.

Naturally, not everyone shares this philosophy, and that’s okay. But I dislike accepting tradeoffs, being forced to fish a rod for any reason other than that it’s ideal for the type of fishing I’m doing. So again, the choices I make reflect this sentiment.

Akimaru 8-foot 4-weight

Shuichi Akimaru is a Japanese bamboo rod builder that I befriended years ago on one of his yearly trips to attend Nelson Ishiyama’s bamboo rod gathering on the Henry’s Fork of the Snake. His rods are wonderful pieces of craftsmanship, with a unique ferrule design and understated aesthetics. This rod is fairly soft in action, ideally suited for the dry fly and small (unweighted) nymph fishing that I do most often. It’s built from Watake bamboo, a slightly different bamboo than many rod builders use. The action is a result of discussions I’ve had with Aki, striving for a butt-bending, tip-resisting rod that meets the needs of my fishing. This casts smoothly, fights fish well and protects fine tippets–all essential needs for me. It feels very light in hand and is delightful to fish with.

Montana Brothers 9-foot 4-weight

Montana Brothers is a relatively new (2021) rod company based in Bozeman, Montana. It’s owned by two former colleagues of mine from Blue Ribbon Flies, Doug and Dan Daufel. Their long-term interest in developing fly rods culminated in 2021 with the release of their first two rods, both 9-foot 4-weights. The 904L model is very full-flexing, the 904M somewhat stiffer. I own and fish both but much prefer the 904M. The impetus behind these rods was to improve upon the 1980s Fenwick World Class 9-foot 2 and 3-weight rods. (Those were wonderful rods that collected a cult-like following among hardcore anglers when first introduced; I was among their ardent fans.) Montana Brothers has succeeded in improving on the Fenwicks, and both rods are a delight to fish. I choose the 904M for most of my fishing because the range of its sweet spot (30-45 feet) is a bit longer than the 904L’s (10-35 feet). For the bulk of the fishing I’m doing these days, that makes for a better fit. I don’t believe that any better 4-weight rods exist today than these Montana Brothers rods.

Tim Anderson 8-foot 6-inch 4-weight

Tim Anderson is a bamboo rod builder from Lafayette, California. He’s a meticulous and excellent craftsman, always experimenting with some aspect of rod building. This rod is designed to meet the needs of the Henry’s Fork and other waters with similar conditions, and is loosely based on G.E.M. Skue’s “W.B.R.” rod taper. Though fairly long, it is hollow-built and therefore feels quite light in hand. Partly due to the bamboo and partly due to the taper, it possesses a great deal of self-weight momentum. That makes for very smooth casting at any range between 10-50 feet. Like the other rods I’ve listed, it also manipulates line well and protects the finest of tippets. Tim does not sell his rods, and I’m unaware of any similar rods being made.

Sage ZXL 9-foot 5-weight

This Sage model is a fine distance rod. It can cast 50-100 feet comfortably. I do very little fishing that requires casts of those distances, but some of our lake fishing occasionally qualifies–Hebgen, Henry’s, or Yellowstone for instance. Truth be told, I spend more time with this rod casting on the practice field than on the water, working on my casting skills. But whenever it is necessary to cast long or to generate the highest line speeds (fishing in big wind, for instance), this rod works well. Sage no longer makes the ZXL series, but they can still be found by poking around the internet and secondary markets.

John Juracek is a fly fisherman, writer and photographer from West Yellowstone, Montana. For twenty-some years he was a partner at Blue Ribbon Flies, a local fly shop, and is currently the head casting instructor at the School of Trout and Anglers Academy. His writing credits include Yellowstone: Photographs of an Angling Landscape, Fly Patterns of Yellowstone, Fishing Yellowstone Hatches and Fly Patterns of Yellowstone, Volume Two.

He is considered one of the sport’s expert fly casters and instructors and offers casting lessons for $100/hour at jjuracek@gmail.com or (406) 640-2828.

As AI floods the digital channel with content no one asked for, the brands that will win are the ones building somewhere real.

Brands spent the last decade perfecting the art of reaching people who weren’t paying attention. The scroll-past, the muted pre-roll, the “skip ad” button worn smooth by ten billion thumbs. An entire industry built around a medium everyone wishes they could ignore.

Generative AI is coming for that medium next. The cost of producing content has collapsed to near zero. Every brand, at every budget level, can now generate infinite variations of the ad nobody was watching to begin with. What that does is make already-scarce attention disappear entirely. In that environment, the premium doesn’t go to the brand with the best algorithm. It goes to the brand that gives people a reason to gather, the one that creates real connection.

The data has been making this argument for a while. Strava’s 2025 Year in Sport report found that new clubs on the platform nearly quadrupled in a single year. 1 The previous year’s report added a behavioral dimension: 58 percent of Strava users said they made new friends through a fitness group, and average activity length increased by 40 percent when people exercised with ten or more others versus alone. 2 People aren’t just joining clubs. They’re going farther together and coming back with something they didn’t have before. The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory on loneliness framed the demand side: 15-to-24-year-olds spend roughly 70 percent less time with friends in person than they did two decades ago. 3 Digital gave people convenience. What it did not give them, and what they are now spending to find, is connection. The only medium that reliably delivers it is physical presence.

The brands that have figured this out fastest are not, for the most part, fly fishing brands. Snow Peak understood this before the data made it obvious. Dan Coe’s excellent piece in The Brand Report examined Snow Peak’s physical strategy in detail earlier this year. 4 While almost every other outdoor brand was doubling down on e-commerce, Snow Peak built a four-property physical portfolio in the U.S. The Portland flagship, designed by Skylab Architecture from salvaged 100-year-old Douglas fir beams, includes a covered outdoor demo bay and regular gear clinics. 5 On Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula, the brand opened a 25-acre campground featuring a cabin designed by Kengo Kuma, which Time named one of its 100 World’s Greatest Places in 2024. 6 In May 2026, Snow Peak signed into Seattle’s Fremont Collective alongside Black Diamond and evo, framing the move as “creating community-driven hubs where retail, outdoor recreation, and culture intersect.” 7 Snow Peak isn’t selling camping gear. It’s selling a way of being in the world, and using physical space to prove it.

YETI arrived at the same destination by a different road. Instead of physical retail as community, they built a film studio. YETI Presents has produced more than 75 short documentary films over a decade: films about anglers, ranchers, pitmasters, trappers and surfers, with no products on screen and no voice-over selling anything. Ad Age named YETI’s in-house creative team its 2024 In-House Agency of the Year. 8 Ten years of films had already told the customer exactly who YETI was for and what kind of life they were meant to live.

Tracksmith did the same thing for running at a smaller scale. The Trackhouse, at 285 Newbury Street in Boston, is not a store with events bolted on. It’s a cultural center that happens to sell apparel. Community runs depart from it regularly. Local groups use it as a meeting point. Tracksmith launched Hare A.C., a running club with annual membership priced at $128, including a racing vest, early product access and invites to in-person events. The brand grew nearly 280 percent over three years without a Super Bowl buy. 9 The community was the media plan.

None of these brands abandoned digital. Snow Peak sells online. YETI sells online. Tracksmith sells online. But all three understood that digital is the fulfillment layer, not the brand-building layer. The brand gets built somewhere people actually show up: physically, willingly, without being targeted. That distinction is going to widen as AI floods the interruption medium with more content than any human can process. The brands that figured this out early are sitting on a structural advantage. The brands still buying digital reach in a world of infinite digital content are paying a premium for noise.

Here is where the outdoor industry should be paying very close attention: fly fishing has been running this playbook for decades without calling it marketing. The sport is inherently physical and inherently communal. You cannot fish a river through a screen. Knowledge passes hand-to-hand: guide to client, club member to newcomer, parent to child. The pace of the sport, the silence it requires, the attention it demands, the shared discomfort of cold water and early mornings, these are the exact conditions under which human beings actually connect. Dozens of nonprofits didn’t independently arrive at fly fishing as a vehicle for healing veterans, women in recovery and people carrying grief by accident. The river creates something almost no other environment replicates: it requires presence, gives you something to do with your hands and puts you next to another person in a way that makes honesty easier.

Fishing the Good Fight is the program I know best. Jennings Hester founded it in November 2019. A former Alabama football player, he spent years not knowing that the anxiety and depression he was carrying was treatable. What he built is a community of men and therapists, using fly fishing as a gateway to mental health work. 10 The model is almost entirely physical: fly tying nights, fish-alongs, men’s groups and weekend retreats that pair time on private water with group counseling led by clinicians from Denver’s Elevated Wellness. In the winter, Off the Water events keep the community connected online. But the river is where the work happens. No app. No algorithm. Just a river, a rod and a reason to show up. In five years, Fishing the Good Fight has reached participants from twenty states and expanded into chapters in Colorado Springs and Atlanta, where local events have taken hold. What Hester understood, and what the river keeps proving, is that the sport doesn’t just fill time. It lowers the guard. And a lowered guard is where community actually starts.

The opportunity in front of the right fly fishing brand right now is not to sponsor this category. It is to own it: the way Snow Peak owns the campfire, the way Tracksmith owns the Saturday long run. The fly fishing industry generates roughly $3 billion in annual gear sales globally, 11 but the gear is not the asset. The culture is. The 8.1 million Americans who fly fish 12 are not defined by what they’re carrying. They are defined by what they’re looking for: time on moving water, genuine connection and the particular clarity that comes from being somewhere that requires your full presence. That is not a niche. It is an audience actively searching for exactly what the best brands in outdoor have already proven they will pay for.

Orvis has run fly fishing schools since 1966, introducing more people to the sport than any other brand in the country. The infrastructure exists. What Orvis has never done is make the gathering itself the brand story. That is the open lane. And the fact that Snow Peak, already the most intentional community builder in the outdoor industry, has now moved into fly fishing by acquiring Swift Fly Fishing and hosting river camps in the Catskills 13 should tell you something about where this is going. The native fly fishing brands have a window. It will not stay open.

The Instagram ad reaches people who weren’t looking for you. A weekend on the water, guided by your brand, reaches people who will never forget you were there.

Which brand outdoors do you think is closest to figuring this out?

Andrew Luter is the founder of Rio Chato Investments and the Substack: Notes From The Boat. He backs early-stage outdoor recreation and lifestyle brands, the kind of companies building gear and experiences for people who’d rather be outside. He’s based in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, which is basically a full-time reminder of why this space matters.

Disclosure: I serve on the board of Fishing the Good Fight.