After Jake’s “I’m Leaving Montana” post a few days ago, we’ve both been asked by a number of folks if we’re finally shuttering Chi Wulff after what has been an improbable six year and counting run.
It would appear we’ve both responded with the (in)famous misquote of Mark Twain: “The reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated”.
[Twain, responding to rumors circulating about his own premature demise, wrote in the 2 June 1897 issue of the New York Journal “The report of my death was an exaggeration”. Twain’s cousin, James Ross Clemens was seriously ill in London at the time; some in the eagle-eyed media of the day (some things never change) confused the two.]
We’d be the first to admit that at various times in the past we fell into the trap that many a Northern Rockies fly fisher falls into, that being the navel-gazing assumption that the Universe’s Epicenter of Fly Fishing sits somewhere near that magical place where the borders of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming collide.
Granted, you could draw a big circle with a radius of say 350 or 400 miles, with the iconic West Yellowstone at the very center, and within that circle you’d enclose some of the most beautiful, the most engaging and the most historic salmonid water in the world.
However, man and woman don’t live by trout alone.
Over the past several years we’ve crawled out of our own trout-coma and seen there are some damned interesting species that swim in the salt or split time between salt and fresh. Many of those fish are bigger, faster, more aggressive and (dare we say) at least as much fun to pursue as naive 12-inch native cutthroats high in the backcountry.
Maybe it’s just us, but it sure looks like the guys chasing redfish in the bayous, bones on the flats and tarpon off the jetties are having one hell of time doing so, maybe even more so than some of our trout chasing brethren. (Proof yet again one must choose one’s fishing partners with care.)
Chi Wulff isn’t going anywhere; we’ll be broadening our scope a bit ensconced in the Pacific Northwest for a year or two, though business interests (and fishing) will keep us running in and out of Montana with regularity. We’re in the midst of our busiest year ever here on the blog, with steadily growing visitor logs and just a few shy of 2.2 million page views over the past twelve months as of this morning.
As always, we greatly appreciate our readers and will be back on the People of Fly Fishing interview trail shortly and adding some new features that will make you smile.
