Fishing Report

Photo: Hillary Maybery “The best fisherman I know try not to make the same mistakes over and over again; instead they strive to make new and interesting mistakes and to remember what they learned from them.” – John Gierach True mastery never eliminates mistakes; it finds them useful. Silver Creek Looks like another perfect week with cool mornings and pleasant…

Photo: Hillary Maybery “Best of all, he loved the fall, the leaves yellow on the cottonwoods, leaves floating on the trout streams, and above the hills the high blue windless skies...” –  Ernest Hemingway Hem had it right juxtaposing the stillness of the sky against the subtle movement of leaves and water. Rivers in autumn are for making memories and…

Photo: Hillary Maybery “If you want the rainbow, you have to put up with the rain.” –  Dolly Parton A beautiful, bright sun, windless day could mean tough fishing. But if blustery weather is in the forecast, head to the river. Silver Creek The possibility of rain and cooler weather is in the forecast. This is a welcome change after…

Photo: Hillary Maybery “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” –  F. Scott Fitzgerald The rivers continue to drop, cool, and clear. The trout are becoming more aggressive, feeding on revitalized late-season hatches. The foliage is beginning to turn from summer green to gold. The fall reset is coming. Silver Creek The cooler weather this…

Photo: James Conrad “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant — there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” – Georgia O'Keeffe Every cast counts, whether or not it ends in a fish. The value isn't in the outcome. It's in the act of reaching toward something and discovering, one presentation at a time, where…

Photo: Hillary Maybery “Rhythm was just as important as color and just as complicated. It was one rhythm superimposed upon another, our father's four-count rhythm of the line and wrist being still the base rhythm... The canyon was glorified by rhythms and colors.” – Norman Maclean There is a chord that binds a river, a season, and a concert lawn:…

Photo: Hillary Maybery “Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” – Berthold Auerbach For anglers, the river's symphony washes from the soul the dust of everyday life — the swell and hush of the current, the riffle's rush of white noise, the promise of a trout's rise as the encore. Silver Creek The Trico hatch has…

“When we first begin fighting for a dream, we have no experience and make mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.” – Paulo Coelho The trout don't care if you botch your presentation — if you fail, learn and adjust your next shot.  What angling teaches, maybe better than most…

“To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together.” – Barry Lopez When you wade a river for a season, it begins to shape your imagination. You become connected to its vicissitudes and your heart ripples to its iron strings. The water's rhythm gets into your core, so that even off the…

Photo by: Bob Knoebel “Our senses exist mainly to refine, or error-correct, our minds’ best guesses as to what we’re experiencing.” – Michael Pollan Every cast is a prediction, a question seeking resolution. The standard operating mode of a persistent angler is guess-adjust-guess-adjust. A refusal means you got it slightly wrong. Adjust again: the fly, tippet, drift, until…the loop never…