MOLDY CHUM

Bear's Private Lives Caught on Tape

Shitting in woods strangely absent.  Via: MSNBC  LINK

SOTM Montucky style

Submitted by Tyson Webb, his chick friend, Sarah Jameson shows off a lower Madison pig.  Might not be enough for SOTM, but the cuteness factor could come into play. 

Montana Rivers Peak

The Clark Fork running through Missoula usually sees mean late-June flows at 12,000 cubic feet per second (cfs), but is currently flowing at 21,100cfs. Via: New West LINK

Another minnow takes the SOTM bounty?

Submitted by Don Rogers, Steve Hemkens' monster poon may very well contend for the June prize.  Even with the no hoist policy in effect, it's clear this biatch exudes respect.

Dang Gina!

The faceless one himself shows us how the salt was won with this SouthEast royalty.  Already a SOTM winner of yesteryear, G_Smolt here is pushing for another slice of fame.

State Record Golden Tilefish

The fish was hooked in approximately 600 feet of water. Via: The Roanoke Times  LINK

Vote Chum

How and where not to do The Fishstick

Respeck

 

Taken by chum purveyor, Grant Sturgis, the sticka represented on a recent trip to the Ruby.

Fishing Trip

The little steelhead that could

J. Thompson and I dusted off the el doubles and got our spey on last night (snoqualmie style).  Two casts into it, steelie jr. here had an issue with my skunk and laid down a nice little downstream assault.

The under aged boozing bikini clad shore party was impressed.  They had no idea this set a record - for smallest wild buck taken on a spey rod.

A Tiny Bundle of Doom

In The Back Eddy

THe newest member of the Chum sidebar. LINK

Deschutes River Country Geological History

Not Bad for an Octogenarian

In 2005 Mom caught a 90 pound Halibut, a 55 pound King salmon and a 50 pound King salmon.

Mom was 85 years old in 2005. 

Via: Grow A Brain LINK

The Ultimate Secret Weapon for Stalking Spooky Fish!

This is not a toy or a magic trick!

This is not an illusion or a Ninja technique!

LINK

Join The Vespa Fishing Team

AJ Klott of Fish Wrap fame offers up a unique solution to rising gas costs,

I know this sounds drastic, but if I am to continue my passion for fishing --this may be the only way to make it affordable to do so.

I also know that the visual image of a rugged outdoorsman on the back of a Mo-ped is not exactly the vision Madison Avenue would like to sell to Orvis or Jeep Cherokee and is more akin to the image of Jim Carrey in "Dumb and Dumber"--but I don't care!!  LINK

Yakamas reintroduce salmon in Yakima River Basin headwaters

Fish returning to spawn will be captured below Cle Elum Dam and trucked around it. 

Via: The Seattle PI LINK

Fly Fishing for Flatties

Because halibut are bottom dwellers, they’re usually found pretty deep, so fly fishing for flatties can be a difficult task unless you know when and where to find them.  LINK

Powell's Books Q & A with David James Duncan

With filming starting soon on The River Why, this Q & A with D.J.D. from back in 2001 is still relevant today. You can read the entire interview here. LINK

This respons to a question about a favorite pair of shoes is vintage Duncan,

What makes your favorite pair of shoes different from the rest?

My Patagonia wading shoes are different from my others in that they have felt soles and fit over waders, and so allow me to walk comfortably for hours in and out of cold moving water. What this does to a walk is pretty amazing. Two days ago, for instance, I crossed a muddy channel that no one in regular shoes could possibly have crossed without getting their shoes sucked off. This brought me, still warm and dry, to a magic island. I then walked miles up through this island, which reminds me of some glorious deer park where the Buddha would hang out — herds of literally a hundred or more whitetail deer fleeing in the distance. Wild turkeys. Moose. Many many kinds of birds. Big serene Ponderosa pines. Great horned owls and bald eagles in the cottonwoods. Aspen groves with white bark, growing in "fairy rings" because the entire grove is a single organism that encloses you as you enter.

At the upper end of this walk I reached a favorite stretch of river where I hooked and after a long time landed a twenty-four-inch brown trout. This is a rare fish. A one in a ten thousand fish, maybe. A trout this big and powerful, in fast water, remains invisible for the longest time as you play it. On the end of a sensitive rod, this invisible life feels as though the kingdom of heaven is hidden inside the river and you have hooked into the kingdom and it's electrocuting you with a strange feeling that enters your hand and shoots up your arm and soon fills your whole body. It is indescribable to finally capture and briefly hold such a wild, shining creature in your hands, then quell its fear by returning it to its kingdom.

Combining such walks with my love for contemplative literature, I trudge along in my favorite shoes, on the way back to my little truck with the Live Aloha bumpersticker, thinking about the saints and mystics. Catherine of Siena, for example, said, "All the way to heaven is heaven." On the face of it, I was thinking the other day, this is an insanely optimistic statement that flies in the face of a ton of our grimmest experiences. Yet Catherine of Siena was no fool. Nor was she sheltered. She lived in a time of hatred, and she made her outrageous statement even though half of Italy and beloved members of her family were killed, during her early childhood, by the Black Death.

Catherine owned no felt-soled wading shoes, I was thinking, and so maybe took no Magic Island walks. But my theory is that she walked around feeling as though she was playing a fish like my Magic Island Brown Trout anyway. Catherine of Siena, it seemed to me in my favorite shoes the other day, somehow hooked an invisible and interior fish that somehow connected her to kingdom and electrocuted her daily with joy.

And you know what? I believe what I was thinking in my best shoes on my magic island the other day. I believe Catherine was playing such a fish. I believe we are, too. And hope we grow ever more vividly aware of it.  

Connie, we are concerned with the increasing frequency of your nocturnal interaction with the humans

LINK

Sad saga of Bighorn River trout

Mike Whittington, a retired hydrologist, laments the loss of 80% of the brown trout fry on the Bighorn due to mismanagement of water flows by the Bureau of Reclamation. 

Here's hoping that those half-dozen or so Wyoming water skiers enjoyed their Memorial Day outing, at the expense of a whole year age class of fish in the already impacted Bighorn River fishery.

Via: The Billings Gazette  LINK

Ceramic Fish Platters from Aspen Potters

If you're ever in need of a fish platter for your Paradise Valley ranch. LINK

Spring Creeks, Glass Rods and Beyond...

All on the menu at the Fly Fisherman's Cafe. LINK

A must for the tackle box

LINK

Feeding Time

LINK

If it's Tuesday it must be Baja

Our pal Sid, who now calls south of the border home, sent us this morning dispatch from his front yard.

Just back in from a great morning!
2 Bonito
1 little Dorado
3 Jack Crevalle (one took 55 min to bring in)
1 little Rooster (fought like hell) big ones are coming in.
All still swimming except Dorado.

Hello energy development and goodbye to the Rio Grande

An editorial by TRCP’s

SW Colorado

field representative, Ross Tuckwiller, that ran in the Denver Post late in May.

How does oil and gas development fit with the Rio Grande? The Bureau of Land Management planned to lease almost 145,000 acres of the Rio Grande National Forest to the energy industry. The decision to lease these public lands was made with no input from citizens or the Colorado Division of Wildlife and was based on outdated planning documents.

In response to a wave of criticism and close to 100 formal protests, the BLM withdrew the Rio Grande acreage from its May sale, although the area could be nominated for future sales.  Via: The Denver Post LINK

Lipstick on a Pig

You owe it to yourself to check out the Pebblemine Partnership site and see first hand their strategies for beating back opposition to the Pebble Mine. According to Scott Hed of the Sportsman's Alliance for Alaska the Pebble Partnership is peddling the above ad to sporting publications in an attempt to paint themselves as friends of fish and wildlife.

Their pro Pebble You Tube video, embedding is disabled so here's the LINK

We posted a link to another pro Pebble Mine group last October.

In other news:

A major decision will be coming from the Alaska Supreme Court regarding a proposed ballot initiative that mine proponents say will not limit the proposed mine as intended.  LINK

Daily Dose of Rotten Chum

LINK

To his greater chagrin, Ma calls him "Hen."

William Hurt will be taking the role of Henning Hale-Orviston (H2O) in the upcoming screen adaptation of The River Why. 

IMBD has details on the cast, director, and producer on the project. LINK

Hurt himself makes it official in this interview with CNN. LINK

CNN: What about your upcoming projects?

Hurt: There's a small independent film I'm about to do called "The River Why," and hopefully I'm going to do some episodes on "Damages" with Glenn Close.

New research fellowship honors fly-fishing legend

A research award funded by the Chico Area Flyfishers to study angling, fisheries or aquatic sciences on Big Chico Creek has been awarded to a Chico State student.

The award is named in honor of Press Powell, a third-generation owner-operator of the world-renowned Powell Rod Company of Chico, who passed away in 2004.  Via ChicoER LINK

Carp enthusiasts gather for Carp-O-Rama

They served the fresh-caught carp with coleslaw and Krause’s homemade carp chowder during an event called Carp-O-Rama, which Game and Parks started three years ago in an effort to turn more Nebraska anglers on to the charms of carp.

Carp are not among the most popular of Nebraska fish.

Via: The Journal Star LINK

RIP

Fish Fuss

From Joe Bogaard at Save Our Wild Salmon, watch it tonight below.

This coming Sunday evening, June 22, CBS News 60 MINUTES will feature an expose on the severely depressed   salmon populations in the Columbia & Snake Rivers. The story will spotlight the tremendous amount of taxpayer dollars our federal government continues to spend on ineffective programs that are failing to restore an endangered national treasure - wild salmon of the Columbia and Snake Rivers.

The story will raise serious questions about the billions of taxpayer dollars the government has spent - and wants to keep spending into the future - on salmon programs that aren't working, and scientists tell us are extremely   unlikely ever to work.  LINK

Sunday Funnies

 

Happy Summer Solstice

Technically, a henge is actually an oval or circular earthwork, with a surrounding bank built up of the earth excavated from a ditch inside the bank. By this definition, Stonehenge is not truly a henge in any sense, as its ditch lies outside the bank. LINK

Peter Goes Fishing

Romeo and Juliet of the insect world

So today I grieve for the Mayfly that landed on my shoulder on Tuesday. Although I placed it very carefully on the leaves of the clematis by our front door, it made no attempt to fly away and its chances of finding romance were, I am sad to report, zero. Via: Countryside News for the York  LINK

Snakes on a Trail

These are pictures taken last weekend by a family hiking in the Mt Clemans area just North of Naches in eastern WA.

Help Wanted - Orvis Endorsed Employment Opportunities

LINK

The Undisputed World's Largest Fly

Length:  32' 6"    Hook Shank: 22' long  Hook Gap: 7' 6"  Hackle: Stands 12' 6" off the ground and is 8' in diameter             Weight: Exceeds three tons.  LINK

My Fishing Adventure

Personalize this book so your favorite young angler is the main character.

LINK

Raising the Ghost

You thought there was Pebble Mine overload at this years' Fly Fishing Film Festival?

At last count this now makes 5 movies about fly fishing for steelhead currently in production.

Early Spring Stripers!

Get in the mood with these recently posted images from our friend Dave Skok. LINK

Bermuda Suicide Challenge

Last year two brothers set a world record for the longest unescorted oceanic crossing in a flats boat.

LINK

Filet of the Month

OP Guide Jim Kerr flashes some mystery meat.

Aloha

HAWAII FISHING NEWS is the official state record-keeper of the biggest fish caught in the state-regardless of the method of capture. Take a look at some of the enormous fish taken from our state waters.

LINK