Guide Jim, our somewhat mysterious, former Austin-resident, sometimes Texas-disdaining, fly fishing guide / professor and new cyber friend emailed this link in just now with a thought….

Given your obvious interest in the introduction of non-native fish into desert locales I’m surprised you haven’t run the trailers (released a few weeks ago) for Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.

Should be a good one and I’m going out on a limb and placing my bets on the guess that this flick may rekindle interest in our noble sport almost at the level that The Movie did twenty years ago this year.

The novel upon which the film is based is truly comedic in nature and a worthy read.

The parallels with the tragic comedy of introducing pellet-fattened rainbows into a near-desert environ in central Texas might be consider striking by some. I’d even bet it’s easier to fish for salmon in Yemen than it is for a non-club member to get on the water in your neighborhood.

Hope you can see this film while enjoying a cold brew at one of the Alamo Draft Houses there in town; one of the things Austin does well is throw a party.

Tags: Culture, Books, Art

Until just recently I wasn’t sure why we’ve found ourselves resonating so keenly with the Southern Culture on the Fly guys and gals.

Sure, in part it has to do with our deep respect for any group that would proudly use grits so prominently in their promotional jargon.

In part it has to do with meeting and getting to know a real life, hard-core fly fishing North Carolinian, new friend Mary (fishing manager in the recently-opened Austin Orvis store), whose eyes light up when she talks about chasing wild trout in the NC hills and big reds on her ‘home flats’. (We’re pestering Mary to chat with us in more detail about fishing back home…..)

The SCOF guys hooked us with this one this morning….

Don’t get me wrong, we love looking at pretty pictures in magazines of exotic fishy locales, but for once it would be nice to see a place in a magazine that we could load the truck up and actually go fish. (Editor David Grossman)

Amen.

Southern Culture on the Fly’s issue #2 is out today. Their winter road trip edition highlights some destinations that probably aren’t on a lot of western fishers radar – Arkansas, New York, North Carolina and the Davidson – as well as the Keys, which a lot of winter-bound western fishers do think of this time of year.

Overall, we’d call the bulk of the images damned nifty (a notch below stunning, though there are a few stunners in the mix) and the mix of well-written (and actually edited according to linguist-editor She Who Must Be Obeyed) prose just seems to fit like a glove.

A couple of nice ties thrown in the mix too.

A great reminder to those fly fishers who (occasionally) posture that the quintessential fly fishing experience to be had in the continental US occurs only in the western third of the country.

Well done.

Once again, this ain’t a paid, requested, bribed or otherwise induced promotion, though we’re open to discussion of reasonable compensation. Looks to us like the South is rising again.

Tags: Culture, Books, Art

I am not sure when I first started obsessively reading the back page of Fly Fisherman magazine. I imagine I was in high school, but I might have been slightly younger or a little older. I am pretty sure I hadn’t left for college yet because I remember hunting and pecking through a stack of my father’s collection of Fly Fisherman issues from the ’80s that were stored in the wide shelf at the bottom of a massive ancient record player. I’d leaf through the stack of magazines like so much vinyl until I found one I had not read before. Then I would turn directly to the back page while ignoring the ten-year-old article on the Madison river.

I don’t subscribe to fly fishing magazines anymore, for a variety of reasons that aren’t very interesting. But when I come across one–via dumb luck or after trading some gold–I still spend some time at the back page, at least skimming the essay.

Nick Lyons’ back page column was called The Seasonable Angler. Upstairs in my bookshelf I have two collections of those columns. I’ve read them both more than once and often feel like reading them again. I don’t do it usually, because if I do I find that my own writing is for a time rendered nothing more than a poor voiceless imitation of Nick’s. I can’t help it.  He writes in a way the connects to me for aesthetic and sentimental reasons. I love his writing for its own sake but also because it reminds me that I was young once, and I remember how it felt to discover that writing about fly fishing was not limited to articles about destinations or roll casts, fly tying instructions or gear reviews.

Nick Lyons’ columns taught me that writing about fly fishing could be something else–it could be beautiful.

Lyons the writer is so self effacing that I imagine he would choke on that adjective. But I’ve read Spring Creek and I know the truth. That discovery led me to other writers like Harry Middleton and Norman Maclean and its safe to say nothing has quite been the same for me since.

***

For the past eighteen months or so I have been working on a collection of my own essays–if you can call them that. I don’t want to discuss it too much and you probably don’t care to read it. But I decided that if my book was to ever be read by more than just myself and my family I should probably try to get some of the chapters published.

So between life’s other events I have been polishing some while also trying to write new material for the collection. Occasionally I send something out. Its not very organized. One unintended consequence is the reduction of my work that is published here.

I sold my first fly fishing essay a couple of months ago. My first back page essay. And today I flipped to the back page of American Angler and there was my name. It doesn’t look right or feel right. Its thrilling and ridiculous and that makes me feel like a narcissist and a fool–just like writing this post does.  But I don’t know if I will ever sell another.  The eighteen-year-old version of me would be fiercely proud, I think, and there’s something to be said for that.

What that younger version of me wouldn’t understand is that the fly fishing magazine may be a relic of my own youth. That this blog post might get more readers. That would screw up his brain as it does mine a little. But those are thoughts for another day.  Today I’ll simply be happy that I did something I thought I might never do, even if it feels vain and slightly anticlimactic. Thanks for indulging me.

Tags: Culture, Books, Art

Ben over at Up’North Maine Fly Castings is bringing in the New Year with a new look on his site.  He’s improved the layout and added a few new features.  I like the new photography section..

Keep it up Ben, we all enjoy getting a look into the northern woods.

Tags: Culture, Books, Art

Even as I dare to speak on behalf of the entirety of Team Chi Wulff, here’s to wishing you and yours a Kick Ass New Year.

Sure, we want your upcoming year to be safe, prosperous, healthy, invigorating and full of fine, brilliantly-colored native fish (whatever your fish of choice might be), though a Kick Ass New Year just sounds better.

Oh, and we hope you have too many good days to count on rivers like the Firehole and the Madison.

That said, we’re skipping the schmaltzy ‘New Year’s Resolutions for Fly Fishers’ post this year in favor of stating one simple (personal) resolution for those of us summarily displaced from our motherland:

Go Home.

May your New Year’s goal setting be as simple and unambiguous.

Recover with your Bloody Mary today; enjoy some great food and friends.

Then get out there and kick some ass this year.

Tags: Culture, Books, Art

Just got an email this morning from the good folks at the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust (thanks Glenn) reminding us that the second season of Buccaneers and Bones rolled out today. The show airs at 10:30 and 17:30 tomorrow (EST).

As to YC – he’s a boxer guy as the linked clip and image prove; apparently he stripped down and hit the water right after landing.

Watch the preview here (the clip isn’t embeddable).

Buccaneers and Bones has also just received three nominations for Golden Moose Awards (the Academies of the Outdoor TV world) – Best Conservation Series, Best Series Open, and Best Educational / Instructional Series. Well done.

(Makes me almost want to get TV again – like Sinjin Eberle my crew turned the TV off years ago and hasn’t looked back. This series will be worth tracking down….)

Tags: Culture, Books, Art

Tags: Culture, Books, Art

Via damned artistic friend Scott Hale of Artcreel.com

Tags: Culture, Books, Art

I happened upon this pod of brown trout in the kitchen the other day.  Holding in a lie below the cheese grater they seemed to be content to rest, with only the occasional lazy rise at passing food upon the counter.

Somewhat unfortunately, these trout were one by one picked off by a larger and more cunning predator.

Pardon me while I wipe the crumbs from my beard…

Tags: Culture, Books, Art

Trout wall timelapse from David Burton on Vimeo.

Tags: Culture, Books, Art

A good friend (somewhat ironically nicknamed Red) back home called about a business matter yesterday.

(He’s one of those SOB’s who’re impishly hyper-intelligent; he manages to hide it well in his university post though he has a number of projects simmering outside the walls of the towering academic bastion that is Montana State University).

The related business conversation was short and sweet with the inevitable turn to fly fishing made immediately thereafter.

He was more than a little disheartened by the turn to winter in Southwest Montana this week (with more coming this weekend), though he brightened a bit when mentioning a redfish jaunt he’ll be taking soon in Louisiana.

Red went on to say that he’d never really considered chasing reds until two things happened. One, a good buddy went down and had a great trip, and secondly, he’s been intrigued with the short vids of bayou redfish floating around the fflogosphere.

He then made a very interesting observation as to the power of the short video in communicating a message.

His comment was something more or less along this line…

”A really, really well done short video can have a mesmerizing impact, much more so than the typical American TV commercial aimed at the mind-numbed masses out there.

Look at what fly fishers have done with the short video over the past few years…..there are some genuine gems out there produced by talented amateurs who can now capture and edit in HD and manipulate sound in ways that we never dreamed of five years ago.

For those willing to invest the time and effort to produce a truly engaging, innovative and quality vid, even if it’s 90 seconds of your presenting your core message, the world can be yours.”

He directed me to Vimeo and we laughed together watching this short clip about Australian pork posted on Vimeo in the past few days, Red going on to sagely note that sexual innuendo, like fish porn for fly fishers, will forever be kryptonite to the male mind.

Australian Pork – Postman TVC 30sec from Shift on Vimeo.

Red opined (correctly in our minds) that fly fishers can help shape the upcoming battle over protecting and preserving waterways, fish and fisheries by crafting thoughtful, innovative and engaging messages through short vids. Yesterday he was all over the concept of a 3 to 5 minute ‘mini-documentary with sex appeal’.

We think that’s already happening, though it could, should and will be happening more and more.

Tags: Culture, Books, Art

Team Chi Wulff humbly salutes America’s veterans and service men and women today. Your sacrifice and service are deeply appreciated and remembered.

If you’ve not done so, consider supporting Honor Flight – an organization that offers World War II veterans the chance to visit locations around Washington DC such as the recently built WWII monument, Arlington cemetery, and many other notable places. The trips are made at no cost to the veteran.

Honor Flight New England from Matt Cooney on Vimeo.

Tags: Culture, Books, Art

One of our mentors and fishing buddies, Ed (read about Ed here and here), has been hemming and hawing about writing another book for years.

This topic seems to come up late every fall season when Ed’s done hunting, fishing has wound down and the days are growing short. Just this past weekend Ed was (almost good-naturedly) bitching about it not being long before rivers started icing up and the snow accumulating in earnest.

His pitch is that no matter how humdrum and constrained your life is / has been, everyone has at least one decent book in him (or her).

We’ve quibbled back and forth about that, Ed arguing that very few folks out there are able to write authoritatively and originally about much these days. Ed’s response is

“well hell, if you can’t write from the position of an expert on some topic, any topic, become a novelist. The only other venue allowing you to lie so freely is politics.”

I’d have to agree with Ed that there are far fewer good novels and dramatically fewer great novels out there, though the reading list that She Who Must Be Obeyed and I keep adding to is growing faster than we seem to be able to read through it.

Today, November 1, marks the beginning of National Novel Writing Month; there’s even a website from which to draw inspiration and meet other like minded authors as you endeavor to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

Jason Snell at MacWorld did it last year and put together an informative podcast for those so inclined. Useful stuff.

I’ve been working on my fly fishing based novel for a few months now (from an idea that spawned covering the fly fishing world here on Chi Wulff) and have recently moved all my work into Scrivener, an absolutely kick-ass amazing piece of software from Literature and Latte. This effort sure as hell won’t be done in 30 days, but it’s coming together.

That’s not the only book slowly taking shape around our neighborhood; we’re still working on Ed to corral his (overly) active imagination and get his next book started.

As most of us are staring down the barrel of an approaching La Nina winter, your novel might just be the thing that keeps you sane before next spring’s runoff.

Tags: Culture, Books, Art

Take this one out for a test drive. A very respectable first issue with several original angles on the world of fly and some eye-catching imagery. It ain’t all about the coasts and the Rockies…..

Tags: Culture, Books, Art

Midnight Sun | Iceland from SCIENTIFANTASTIC on Vimeo.

This one has been making the rounds – very well done.

Tags: Culture, Books, Art