Northern lights over Kristiansund, Norway from FPV-Håkon on Vimeo.

Red Aurora Australis from Alex Cherney on Vimeo.

Vimeo and You Tube are full of pro and amateur coverage of the nifty aurorae after the recent solar flare / storm activity. Dig around for some more….

Tags: Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Bubba was right.

There are dozens and dozens of ways to prepare incredibly good shrimp.

She Who Must Be Obeyed and I can almost never resist an innovative dish with a Southwestern flare. This is one of those dishes.

Incredibly simple and quick to prepare score huge points and the sauce you’ll make cooking Gambas al Ajillo is liquid gold.

Make sure you have the cold adult beverage of your choice available as well as a loaf of very fresh, crusty french bread in hand to soak up all that sauce. This recipe handles more spice (more red pepper flakes) very well if you want to turn up the spice too.

Fresh garlic is essential and the fresh lime juice takes it to another level. Don’t miss this one.

4 tbs olive oil
5 cloves fresh garlic, peeled
1 lb medium shrimp, cleaned, peeled, deveined
2 tbs butter
1 generous tbs fresh garlic, chopped fine
1-2 tsp hot red chile flakes
1 tsp paprika
3 tbs lime juice (fresh is incredibly better)
2 tbs dry white wine
1/2 cup chicken stock
3 tbs fresh Italian parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper

Sear the shrimp and garlic. Heat the olive oil and the 5 cloves of garlic in a large sauce pan over medium high heat until the oil just begins to smoke. Toss in the shrimp and saute (keep ‘em moving) for 30 seconds. REMOVE from heat, remove the garlic cloves and drain any remaining oil.

Make the sauce. Add the butter, chopped garlic, pepper flakes, paprika, lime juice, white wine, stock salt and pepper. Stir well and cook the shrimp and sauce over medium heat for three minutes or so until the sauce is slightly thickened.

Grab the bread and serve. Throw in the parsley just before serving. Serve this up with a fresh, crusty bread – the perfect vehicle to soak up the outrageous sauce these shrimp will be swimming in. Finish the bottle of white wine you opened for the recipe.

You’ll be fighting for the last drop of sauce. Hot damn.

Enjoy.

Tags: Friday Feast

Meet the Fresh Pimp – one of the latest creations from the Roughfisher.  Recipe on the link.

There will be one in my vise in about ten minutes.

Tags: Flies

From West Yellowstone yesterday afternoon…..

Tags: Quote of the Day

Many thanks to reader Joshua C. who sent us this picture of a cutthroat he caught during a trip the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone in late July.  Here is the story in his own words:

I didn’t realize its size at first.  It didn’t seem to know it was hooked.  Then I felt its first head shake, which felt like a moose’s must feel should you hook one on a back cast.  I had to boulder-hop down river about 50 yards before I could get him in.  He (she?) simply refused to be landed.  It was caught on some dark-bodied-parachute-stimulator looking fly (sorry I don’t remember the names of most of my 7 boxes of flies….), about size 10.

Please ignore the crack-head grin on my face, and the mosquito biting me on the forehead.  

And despite how it looks, I did not put any fingers in its gills.  Although a few of its teeth cut me pretty deep while taking the picture.  I should have held it out in front of me so that it looked 6 feet long, but oh well.  It was promptly released in good shape.

With a fish like that, the crack-head grin is not only acceptable, but expected.  Beautiful fish Joshua, you won’t be forgetting this one any time soon.

Tags: Pic of the Day

As distracting and distasteful as it may seem on some days – there are indeed bills to pay, shelter and food to purchase, vehicles to fuel, and clothes to buy – though you probably could wear waders around town here in Bozeman year-round and nobody would fire you a second look. 

Several ‘real world’ projects that I’m involved with force me to stay more or less abreast of current themes, trends and news regarding the economy (yawn) as well as commercial real estate (sigh) and publishing trends (fascinating). 

So what the heck does this have to do with a fly fishing blog? 

There have been several spirited discussions in the recent and almost recent past on the future of print media and PR / advertising that have rattled through the fly fishing world – even TC and KB have been chatting about some of the insights being proffered over on wicked outdoorsy (read the last several posts at W on PR and publishing if you have time) recently. 

These discussions have oft centered upon the seemingly weakening position of the traditional ‘dead-tree’ fly fishing media, particularly considered in the context of online fly fishing ‘mags’ which have surfaced thus far – no doubt more will soon follow.  We view the online fly fishing ‘magazine’ field as wide open for a well-crafted, insightful presentation of eye candy combined artfully with insightfully written and presented content. 

So what the heck does the discussion have to do with Google? 

There are about 40 financial news portals and blogs that I run through every morning early; Barry Ritholtz writing at The Big Picture had an interesting link up today referencing an article over at Wired.com – Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability.  That’s their graphic above; not very ‘fishy’ is it?  (Actually you Google haters out there might think it’s very fishy….)

Google’s economists and algorithm wonks have changed and will continue to alter the world of advertising at warp speed.  They’re fishing for and tracking an astounding volume of data that will impact decisions that advertisers make in terms of spending shrinking advertising dollars. 

Will those spending decisions impact to some degree the viability of the ‘traditional’ print fly fishing media? 

Probably. 

Does the ‘traditional’ print fly fishing media have ‘bigger fish to fry’ in terms of dealing with competition from alternative media delivery of fly fishing wit, wisdom and advertising? 

Sure looks like it.

Tags: Dry Fly Media

We’re humbled and amazed at the response to the announcement of our Good Chi newsletter yesterday – it appears that we’ve had so many folks sign up that it temporarily overwhelmed our subscription service.  My apologies if you tried to sign up via the blog post link yesterday and were unable to. 

The subscription / mailing service we’re using (temporarily until we install a much more robust system) is aptly named Mail Chimp.  Our own Chi Wulff Tech Chimp (Jake) worked on the issue a bit, though has just run off to the fish the lower Madison in the snow this afternoon with an attractive member of the opposite sex.  She also happens to be an expert fly fisher.  

When faced with the difficult dilemma of choosing between working on the web site and the excursion mentioned above, he took about 0.00452 seconds and made the right choice to go fishing.  April 29th only comes around once each year. 

The Good Chi sign up box in the first side bar to the right is still working, and we’ll have a signup widget posted on the Good Chi newsletter page (tab above) by this evening, provided Jake returns to his Tech Chimp cage as scheduled.

Your interest is very much appreciated; the first Good Chi newsletter rolls out 7 May.

Tags: Chi Wulff

The Chi Wulff team is pleased as punch to announce the arrival of our new weekly newsletter:  Good Chi – A Weekly Journal of Fly Fishing in Yellowstone, Southern Montana, and Around. 

We’re doing this primarily in response to a hoard of requests that we’ve received during the past two years that we were blogging over at Best Fly Fishing Yellowstone.  For the past two years, guys and gals who have ventured to our site have requested that we provide a ‘cheat sheet’ type report covering all the rivers that we update during the week. 

Being folks that would rather fish than write stuff for the most part, we thanked our kind visitors for their interest and promptly filed the requests in the round file. 

Now that we’ve expanded our team a bit and have a bit more horsepower as well as several 8 packs of crayons to share, it’s our pleasure to start the Good Chi Weekly Journal next week. 

Here’s what we plan to include –

For each river we’re updating every week, we’ll provide a short and sweet summary of what’s happening in one sentence or less.  Coverage will include:

Montana and Idaho Rivers

• Beaverhead
• Big Hole
• Bighorn
• Bitterroot
• Blackfoot
• Clark Fork
• Gallatin
• Henry’s Fork
• Madison
• Rock Creek
• Yellowstone

Yellowstone NP Rivers (late May to early November)

• Cascade Corner (Bechler and Fall)
• Firehole
• Gardner
• Gibbon
• Lamar
• Slough Creek
• Soda Butte Creek
• Yellowstone
• Smaller waters

Good Chi will also include comments on area still waters, events in the neighborhood, and maybe a comment or two about shops, eateries, and other things you’ll want to know about when you’re up this way.

Good Chi won’t just cover things happening here in the area – we’ll highlight interesting, unusual, noteworthy, or just freakin’ weird stuff from around the fly fishing world. 

Good Chi will be FREE (always a good thing when the economy sucks) and delivered electronically more or less every Thursday to save those beautiful trees.  We’re going to play by the rules and have a real sign up process so that we don’t spam – all we need is a functional email and your first name so that you can confirm your desire to receive this soon to be released work of crayon genius. 

The Chi Wulff team promises upon pain of death and, much more importantly, destruction of all our personal fly fishing gear, that we will NEVER EVER sell, lend, disclose, barter, distribute, publish, ransom or otherwise mistreat, misuse, or malfease ( I know that’s not a word but I needed another ‘m’) your contact information. 

The Chi Wulff team does NOT promise that all the content in Good Chi will be absolutely ‘fresh’ – there will perhaps be a link or two to things other great minds (or we) have recently written, recorded in video or still photos, cooked, caught, or eaten.  

The Chi Wulff team does NEITHER promise NOR guarantee that you’ll be amazed, impressed, inspired, uplifted, motivated, educated, enlivened, encouraged, animated, moved, energized, dumbfounded, stunned, overwhelmed, or otherwise excited by Good Chi – but we’re damn sure going to try. 

There will be a tab at the top of the site up today titled Good Chi; we’ll have a sign up widget up there and in the first sidebar to the right, and will be posting archives of the newsletter on the Good Chi page. 

Sign up today, we’re coloring like mad for the first issue debuting on Thursday, May 7.

Tags: Chi Wulff

Post Title:  Team Chi Wulff Throws Down the 2009 Tater Tot Challenge
Post Subtitle:  Clarity on the Yellowstone is Slipping a Bit

After a business meeting in Livingston today discussing a pending video shoot concept with a client, Jake and I found ourselves with time to burn around lunch. 

As we’ve been preaching this spring, with Mark’s In and Out Drive In open once again for the season, lunch anywhere else simply seems a waste of time and energy.  Don’t get me wrong, Livingston has more than her fair share of unique and delicious eateries – but on a glorious spring day ripe with sunshine and temps pushing 70, Mark’s is really the only choice. 

We have marveled often at how the deft team of chefs and food wizards at Mark’s can transform a lowly Tater Tot into a culinary gem each and every time we’re there.  $1.69 buys you a large bag of crispy (but not too crunchy) Tots hot out of the fryer, with just enough salt to make you think about taking another sip of your ice-cold, genuine fountain cherry coke. 

Tater Tot historians credit potato king Ore-Ida with creating the Tater Tot in 1953 as a method to utilized potato shreds that were left over from french fry production.  Tater Tots were delivered to the masses in 1954, and unbelievably Mark’s in Livingston began serving them that very year. 

Tater Tots have graced menus world wide under several clever aliases:  Potato Gems (Australia), Potato Pom-Poms (Australia, New Zealand), Oven Crunchies (UK, nomenclature retired), and Potato Puffs (Canada and NE US).  They’ve also been called Tasti Taters, Spud Puppies, Tater Treats, and Jullienes. 

Enough history – here’s the challenge.  There is no question in our minds that Mark’s serves the finest Tater Tot in the country world universe.  If anyone opines that their local eatery serves a better tot, we’ll pay for the procurement of professional level culinary judges who are also part of the greater fly fishing brotherhood to judge the upstart against a Mark’s Tot.  The Tot Challenge Face Off will be scheduled pending the identification of suitable challengers. 

We’re thinking the judges team should include a member or two of the Fat Guys, as they have also blogged of late about regional culinary delights in their neighborhood.  We’ll need several judges with somewhat more refined tastes as well – we’re thinking through who might fit and welcome any and all suggestions. 

And BTW, the Yellowstone is off at Mallard’s as you can see below; the drifter was just launched at Mayor’s Landing as we drove by.  

Tags: Chi Wulff

Some of us who labor tirelessly from our cramped, dank and dark back offices to author Chi Wulff are also involved with a fly fishing and river related media company – Dry Fly Media. 

(Hasty note to self – maybe that title is not the right way to say what I’m trying to say.   When I say ‘New from our friends at Dry Fly Media’, can you be friends with yourself?  I guess you should be, though clearly we’ve all run into people who don’t seem at all to be friends with themselves.   Suddenly I have this picture of a small, somewhat dull-minded puppy chasing his own tail in an ever-shrinking circle like Sambo – that must mean my logic is getting into that stalled circular pattern and it’s time to move on.  Damn, I did it again….)

Though the seemingly endless Montana winter (actually, it wasn’t that bad this year) we received a number of requests from fly fisher friends and folk living across the fruited plain that were remarkably similar. 

The requests trickled in from a diverse collection of folks – young and old, paupers and wealthy, highly skilled and nubes, men and women, even east coast and west coast folks (yes, we do have maps and some limited knowledge of national geography here in Montana). 

Folks have been asking if Dry Fly Media would accompany them to the field and river and film a day fishing with friends or family on the fabled waters of the neighborhood. 

I’ve got to be frankly honest, when the requests started to trickle in we thought it was a joke, and had a few laughs about it around the dinner table and at the bar.  We’ve had have a bucket full of projects planned for ‘the season’ ourselves, some commercial projects to shoot, and at first couldn’t see how it could make sense to do. 

As the requests continued to trickle in, we started to take the concept a bit more seriously.  We were hearing many of the same stories from good people.  Many of the stories related how with the economy as it is these days (and with the hope for  a rapid recovery now vanished like cheeseburgers and tots at Mark’s in Livingston after a long day on the river) many folks around the country were planning that long put off trip or return trip to Yellowstone and Big Sky country.

These good people wanted to record their trip with family or friends to preserve the memory of great times on great water in great surroundings.   We looked around for a model to shape a program after and couldn’t really find one. 

Bottom line – we’ve done a bit of head-scratching and have come up with a program we’re calling Trip Clips.  Click on the link to head over to the Trip Clips page on Dry Fly Media for a more serious and detailed explanation of what we think folks have been asking for. 

Yep, we think it sounds sort of crazy too; we’ve also spent some time thinking about all the nifty things we enjoy in the fly fishing and the real worlds that started off as something of a ‘crazy idea’ as well.  Like Velcro.  Chili Dogs.  Cheetos.  Cell phones.  Al Gore’s internet.  You get the idea. 

Discounts are in play for early sign ups, and space is quite limited.  We’ll have to talk about how crazy the idea is / was later this fall. 

See you in the viewfinder…..

Tags: Dry Fly Media

Tags: Critters

The McKenzie River Wooden Boat Festival is coming up in less than two weeks – it’s 25 April at Eagle Rock Lodge on the McKenzie River.   Here’s an event page for the Festival at Wooden Boat People. 

The show is being organized by Randy Dersham, who sounds like a pretty danged interesting guy.  He and his wife run the Eagle Rock Lodge there on the McKenzie, and he co-owns Tatman Wooden Boats with his son Sanderson.  Sounds like he even has a day job as a consultant in the computer and video game industry.  Busy guy, and sounds like he has fun as well – isn’t that the goal? 

At the risk of sounding like another wheezing, reminiscing, old geezer, I very fortunately had my first exposure to the classic wooden McKenzie drifter design when I helped a friend (Lincoln Clark of SLC) one of Greg Tatman’s kits together on Lincoln’s back patio one late summer and fall – it must have been the fall of 1989.  Lincoln oiled the inside of the boat with the Marine Penofin oil that Tatman’s still sells, and painted the outside of the boat an incredibly beautiful deep forest green. 

Months later, one fine spring day in April of 1990 I left my bleary-eyed wife at about 4 am, holding two toddlers in diapers in arm, and drove from SLC out to Greg Tatman’s shop there on the McKenzie to pick up my first kit for a 17.5 foot high side, wide bottom drifter.

Greg was a fascinating guy – he looked every part the shop master that he was back then, jeans and a wool shirt covered in sawdust and shavings from the planer.  My plan was to drive from SLC to the old shop (I think close to where they are now in Nimrod, OR), pick up my kit and another one for a friend in SLC, and drive back as far as I could that day and night so as not leave my wife stranded for the entire weekend. 

Greg and his team were having a bit of trouble getting the mahogany gunnels I had requested to run through his big, old, chattering planer without chipping badly; he made several runs though the mahogany he had scarfed together was just getting chewed to hell every time he ran it.  We both finally decided it wasn’t going to work, so I settled for oak that he had prepped as a backup, and we loaded the trailer. 

Greg felt bad that we’d burned the last few precious hours of daylight working on the gunnels, so he drove me down to the nearby diner for a blue plate special of trout and all the trimmings.  We talked of boats and wood shops mostly, though I was pleased to learn that Greg was a gifted water colorist, the recipient of a master’s degree in English Literature, a budding musician, and somewhat of a wordsmith as well. 

Our first boat went together without a hitch; I liked the simplicity of the oiled interior and painted the boat’s hull a fire engine red – it was gorgeous. 

Over the ensuing years that boat went all over the west from our base in SLC at that time, and was eventually sold to a group of friends after seven or eight hard seasons.  My family and I built another one of Greg’s boats in late 2001 – a mahogany beauty. 

I tried to track Greg down a couple of years ago, and the last I heard from him (mid 2007, I think) he was in seminary down in Austin, Texas.  All the best to Greg whatever he’s doing and wherever he is today. 

Wooden drifters need a little more care and attention than glass boats, though they’re quieter, more easily customizable, and simply a thing of beauty to behold.  We’ll have to spend a bit of time next fall looking more at wooden drifters, and maybe take a drive out to some of the wooden boat shops out West.  

Think about the McKenzie River Wooden Boat Festival the weekend after, it will make you drool over some of the fine wooden boats on display.  And yes, anybody with decent woodworking skills and basic hand tools (including a decent router) can put one of these babies together.

Tags: Events