Fly Fishing Stories and Essays

Read The Story April Fools on South Boulder Creek We were not the first ones to the gravel pull off, Erin and I. A late start, a stop for coffee and one wrong turn up a dirt road. Oh well. The two guys ahead of us looked decent enough—two fellow fly fishers—not a couple of turds who would likely camp out on fish or high hole us. I’ll get back to this. They were already wadered up and about to hit the trail down to the South Boulder Creek tailwater. I was going to give a good luck wave and see ya down there, but before any of those niceties could be exchanged a big pickup truck lurched into the pull-out next to us. As the dust was settling a big man in a tight “I Once Went to Sturgis” T-shirt rolled out of the cab...

Read The Story Farm Ponds, Horse Shit & Other Memories of the Midwest "Kind of reminds ya of home, doesn't it..." he said, casting me a smile over his shoulder as he turned back to his line. It tightened with the tell of a bite. His smile grew bigger. Smell that...and he held out the taddle-tale line's catch. I took a drag of the farm pond water infused bass. Turns out, that humid color of green algae is my hallucinogen for home...

Read The Story Trial by Fire (Just ain’t fair…this love, war and fly fishing) Wisdom is the only constructive result of a lifetime of dumb decisions. Or something like that. My memory is paraphrasing some motivational poster I once saw. But I get the gist. Yeah…I get the gist. I have learned some hard lessons in life the long way. I had to figure them out for myself. Had to touch the flame. Mother said it was hot and it would burn my finger. And it did. Every time. But listening to advise and taking it are not the same. Even as a toddler I guess I was striving to be a wise man, not an obedient one. Besides, now I knew about fire. Then, as an eighteen-year-old Army recruit, my father—a Vietnam War vet—advised I not volunteer for anything. Lay low, aim low...

Read The Story Rods Lost To Ladies A guide friend and I were catching up on each others’ lives, to include fishing, beer and women. While discussing the finer points of each I was reminded of a favorite graphite rod that is now sitting in an ex-girlfriends closet and likely has not seen the light of day since I last put it in its’ tube...

Read The Story Junk Food

Yup. Sorry to say. These are the two main reasons why I am a fisherman. Good ol’ pretzel rods and orange soda. No, really. I mean it. It is rumored that I owe my life to Jim Beam (good on ya, Dad!) but I am certain that I owe my passion for fishing to junk food. Yeah, yeah…I’ll explain. My childhood diet consisted of bran cereal and yogurt for breakfast, not Fruit Loops.

Read The Story Pot Roasts & Dog Hair Flies

Sitting in a pot-roasting house, can make people do crazy things. If I am to be home for the day, or even just the afternoon, I avoid turning that little gray knob to "warm" on the crock -- as if it contains a plague of locusts...

Read The Story Allure of Virginal Creeks I have had many, memorable love affairs with small creeks. Larger rivers are intoxicating creatures, I’ll grant you and they live much louder, vivacious existences…but we have all seen their tasteless centerfolds in Fly Fisherman magazine—laid out in the buff...

Read The Story Solitary Life of a Commercial Fly Designer There was a time (I am told) when a guy in his early 20’s could help put himself through college by tying flies for his local shops. Those days are long gone. The mind boggles trying to calculate the number of flies it would take to pay the average tuition these days.

Read The Story Enjoy The Perks The last thing I want to get into is a long-winded speculation about why we fly fish. Good, god…that has been done to death.

Read The Story Asylum on the Williams Fork I already had the overwhelming desire to be off grid for awhile…to get on the road and out of cell reception. So, I leapt at the suggestion to join my friends Jeff and Cody on a slightly misguided jaunt down to the Colorado River...

Read The Story Lost Flies Sometime toward the end of my first year living here in Colorado I met and fell in love with a woman. I remember it being sometime in the fall when we met. She was tall and beautiful…

Read The Story Sometimes Ya Just Gotta Swim How many times can you remember standing along the bank of a river or shore of a lake looking longingly to a run, eddy or far shore wishing you could get a cast that far, or be standing there instead of where you happened to be...

Read The Story Keeping the Ice Off ‘Tis the season. Holidays are comin’. Heehaw. You are about to fall off the diet wagon and gain back that 12 pounds, get into an argument with an in-law that will haunt you for the next decade...

Read The Story Being Thankful I have not always been thankful on Thanksgiving. It is not necessarily my default state-of-mind. Although being thankful is an act of introspection and humility...

Read The Story Being a Good Host I learned what it was to be a good host by watching my sister. This was years ago…back before I lived in Colorado. I was living and working in fairly random places. Canada… Alaska…

Read The Story Bunch of Old Crap Mementoes. Keepsakes. Call them what you want. Call them all just a bunch of old crap. But they are artifacts from past lives. We don’t think about them until we stumble onto them …unexpectedly. Then the old stories swarm out of the subconscious like ground hornets from under a lawn mower...

Read The Story The Male Ego... A young woman in her mid-twenties told me I was the most incredible man she had ever met. And…for a few hours I actually believed. I stood in a strange shower the next morning squeezing oddly scented shampoo onto my head, basking in hot water and my own awesomeness…