In 1960, 34-year-old Joan Cummings — later to become Joan Wulff — used a one-handed bamboo fly rod to cast 161 feet and set an unofficial women’s record. Unofficial because there was no women’s distance division in casting events at the time; Joan competed with...
To know a place Written by John Gifford My wife and I have this ongoing debate: Have you visited a place — a state, for example — if you’ve only spent a few hours in one of its airports? Or by driving through it on the interstate?...
“Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” — Henry David Thoreau At some point, about a dozen years into my practice of fly fishing, it became important to me to catch a really big fish. In the...
I was looking out the window, watching the last bit of winter drip off the roof, creating a Morse code message of sorts: longer drips keyed in amongst tight, neat drops — all of them bursting with sunlight. If I’d known the code, I might...
Phil Gonzalez recalls fishing the Bighorn River a few times back before Yellowtail Dam transformed it into one of the nation’s premier trout fisheries.“It was muddy, that’s mostly what I remember,” says Gonzalez, who was raised on the Yellowstone River in Huntley Project, east of...
Marquee destinations in Big Sky Country now receive unprecedented levels of visitation, particularly during peak operational seasons. Consequently, intel on off-the-beaten-path alternatives has never been more valuable. Excluding the abbreviated and access-restricted 2020 season due to COVID-19, Glacier National Park, for instance, has averaged roughly 3...
I can’t believe all that water tore through here,” I reflected. “Even Noah’s proverbial ark would have splintered on the rocks, the world’s animals lost.” My wife Mary and I gaped over a rocky precipice into the maw of western Montana’s Sun River Canyon, time-traveling...
Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill to Boost Conservation and Restoration Efforts The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a substantial legislative package targeting U.S. infrastructure and conservation priorities, was recently advanced by the House of Representatives to President Biden’s desk. The bill includes key measures aimed at reclaiming public...
There’s an old adage in the bird-watching world: “If the bird and the book disagree, believe the bird.” These intelligent creatures have evolved to successfully occupy nearly every earthly habitat. They do things that surprise and delight us, and the more we watch and pay...
Little did Nate Stansfield know, as he spent his youth fishing the quiet mountain streams of northern New England and chasing striped bass off the Cape Ann coast in Massachusetts, that he would one day be defined by those selfsame pursuits. After stints across the...