Tabla de contenidos para Winter 2019/20 en The Drake

HIGH IN BRITISH Columbia’s Cascade Mountains, 100 miles east of Vancouver, an infant Skagit River bubbles to life. More of a mountain brook, it trickles west following Highway 3 until its confluence with the eastbound Sumallo River turns it south, transforming the Skagit into a perfect freestone. Meandering through a glacial-carved valley toward the 49th parallel, the river continues into Washington State, emerging from the Cascades under the turbid influence of the Sauk. Pushing west and gaining volume from the 30-mile-long Baker, the hefty Skagit—now familiar as the famous salmon and steelhead river, and the only river in the state containing chinook, coho, sockeye, pink, and chum salmon—continues through bluecollar towns and fertile farmland before finally spilling into Puget Sound. Over the course of history, this 150-mile-long river of many…

WESTERN CUBA INSTEAD OF THE REST OF CUBA THE HARDEST PART about fishing western Cuba’s Guanahacabibes Peninsula is learning how to pronounce it. Opening spring 2020 for its first full season, El Faro Lodge is brought to you by the folks at Untamed Angling; the team that put dorado on ten thousand bucket lists. The lodge offers a different experience than many other Cuban destinations. For starters, you’ll sleep in roomy cabins instead of on a boat. Both have their charms: live-aboards (some of them) allow you to showcase your cannonball skills from the rooftop. While El Faro allows you to showcase your Gram shots of roaming piglets. Measuring roughly 50 miles by 20 miles, this beautiful swath of a peninsula is quiet, remote, and lightly pressured, sitting inside a…

AS A LIFETIME Oregon resident, angler, and guide, I spend 40-60 days a year on the rivers of the Southern Oregon coast. I interact with anglers that use all types of methods, and every one of them I’ve talked to has noticed a significant decline in encounters with wild steelhead. How can this be explained? There are only 12 rivers left in the U.S. and Canada where anglers can still legally harvest a wild steelhead. All twelve of these are in my home state of Oregon, and ten of them are in the Southwest Zone, where myself, other guides, and a huge contingent of recreational anglers annually chase the legendary winter steelhead run. On January 17, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission voted 4-2 to deny a petition that would…

Roy Palm Longtime legend of Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley, guide, carpenter, dog-lover, and fly-tyer Roy Palm passed away in November 2019, from cancer. A one-time Aspen bar bouncer and former owner of Frying Pan Anglers in Basalt, Palm’s legacy includes his popular midge and bluewing emerger patterns, like the loopwing Roy’s Special—a staple in any winter tailwater flybox. Palm owned FPA for 20 years, and was a fervent defender of the Pan and its flows. In the early 2000s, Palm fought BuRec plans to suck water out of Ruedi Reservoir and send it to the Colorado because it would’ve meant dangerously lower winter flows for Fryingpan trout. When writers John Gierach, AK Best, and Mike Lawson all reference you in their books, then you’ve clearly led an influential life in…

MY MIND DRIFTS between two worlds as I survey the muddy water flowing slowly between creosote piers supporting this abandoned railroad bridge. One world is tangible, here and now: the Tallahatchie River coiling through North Mississippi and, within it, the white bass that will hopefully come to my flies as they cruise these sluggish waters in search of spawning beds. The other is intangible, almost mythical; William Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County, which bisected this river and was immortalized by singer Bobbie Gentry’s ballad, “Ode to Billy Joe,” about a disconsolate young man who takes his life by jumping from a bridge into this water. Nondescript among Southern rivers in appearance and behavior, the Tallahatchie assumes an outsized role in literature and music and, consequently, supercharges my imagination when I should…

EVERY YEAR, a small number of striped bass winter over in the bays, marshes, and salt ponds of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. We call them “holdovers.” They’re not big, they can be tough to find, and by the middle of the winter, they look a little haggard. Their flanks, once polished a gleaming silver by a life in the ocean, dull to a slate gray by New Year’s. With more food and better conditions off Virginia and Maryland—where most of the striped bass population lives from December to March—it’s unclear why these fish stay behind. Perhaps they became trapped, following the scent of baitfish into the backwaters and staying until the ocean was too cold to continue their journey. Perhaps they weighed the risks, deciding that a lean winter was more…

Sigurður “Siggy” Sigurðsson swung his 4Runner off the dirt tracks and through the low-lying grass, stopping among some copseweed at the edge of the Litlaá River. He rolled out of the car and stood in front of the headlights. Whether the Icelandic sun had set or the weather had simply gone from bad to horrible, my fishing partner Jonas and I couldn’t tell. We could not hear the heavy wind that blew his unkempt red beard and made him squint into the cold, driving rain over the heavy-metal blasting from the car’s speakers, but we could see the backs of large brown trout rising in the pool in front of us. It was the last stop of the day, but not Siggy’s last beer. He raised his arms, clenched his…

I SAW THEM the first morning as I stood choking down shitty hotel coffee and staring out our window from the 24th floor. Fish. Rising and rolling. Right below me in the canals. Holy shit. Dawn was breaking and the Adhan pouring out of the mosque seven blocks away seemed loud enough to wake the whole city. I could see at least three miles of river spread across a grid of right angles to the east. The whole stretch of water looked like Islamorada under the Keys bridges during mid-migration of tarpon season, only without the battling toad-slingers and yelling skiff captains. We certainly weren’t in Bangkok looking for fish, that’s for sure. Ostensibly, this was just a three-day layover on the way to some city in the North where…

IT’S EARLY JANUARY and my postseason fly-vest purge has begun. Outside, the second big storm of the Maine winter dumps the kind of snow that intends to stay through April. My routine is always the same: everything out of every pocket, each item examined as to its current condition and life expectancy, and notes taken for the next trip to the fly shop. I reminisce along the way about the previous season’s great campaigns, long hours of offerings, and now and again that special moment when angler and target meet. I remember with equal joy the moments of solitude and the time shared with chosen companions. With jumbled fly boxes and tangled leaders strewn around me on the living room floor, I open the last pocket, sewed into a remote…

ON CLYDE’S VISIT TO ARKANSAS That Clyde tale (“Back in the Saddle” Fall ’19), was as American as rosé apple cider. Creek-tripping by land yacht. Nice story. Bryan Bennett, via drakemag.com FELLOW EAST-COAST ALBIE CHASER Great piece on false albacore (“Albies of Autumn” Fall ’19). I live and fish for them in North Carolina. It’s a total addiction. I usually fish from a boat, but agree there is nothing like catching them from shore! Gregg Williamson, via drakemag.com GOING FOR BIG BASS AT BACCARAC I was excited for your article on Baccarac (“La Vita Largemouth” Fall ’19), as I’m headed down there in a few months and have found it quite difficult to find any information with regard to the flyfishing. Thom Page, Denver, CO BE CAREFUL WITH THOSE COVERS……

ESPIRITO SANTO BAY INSTEAD OF ASCENSION BAY DESPITE SITTING JUST south of Mexico’s popular Ascension Bay—and, like Ascension, located within the 1.3 million-acre Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve—Espiritu Santo Bay is far less known and far less fished. The main reason: Road access. The drive from Cancun to Punta Allen is just over 100 miles, doable in about three hours if the road south of Tulum isn’t too beat-up. But driving from Cancun to Punta Herrero, the tiny fishing village on Espirito Santo, will take you seven and a half. The alternative, and recommended method, is to take a small charter plane for the hour-flight south, down the scenic coast along the Mayan Riviera, past Boca Paila lagoon, over Ascension Bay, and past Casa Blanca and Playa Blanca resorts, to the…

DATA FROM THOUSANDS of United States Geological Survey (USGS) stream gauges makes it easy to check conditions on almost any river in the country. You’ll find flows measured in water-level, cubic feet per second (cfs), or both, and some gauges even give water temperature. Know your river well enough, and you can predict a great fishing day or an awful one before you even leave the house. If you’re planning to float-fish, especially down a highgradient stream during runoff, or a technical river at low, lateseason flows, then these gauges become even more important, as they can determine risk levels, and whether a particular river is even runnable at all. In other words, you can count on these river monitors. We all do. The only thing you can’t always count…

KNOW HOW YOU SOMETIMES feel like you’re doing your fair share to help a worthy cause, be it the environment or those less fortunate than yourself, and then you meet someone who’s really contributing and making a difference—one of those people that doesn’t just give his or her own time, money, and energy, but is constantly getting others involved as well, forcing you to admit to yourself: “Wow, I ain’t doin’ shit.” This is how I feel every time I see Bill Farnum. That’s Bill down there standing on the floor of the cockpit in early November, waiting for his turn on the bow while chasing reds out of Woodland Plantation, about 45 mins. south of New Orleans. For the past 12 years, Bill and his wife Beth have been…

ACCORDING TO MUSIC lore, Doug Ingle, organist and lead vocalist for the legendary rock band Iron Butterfly, wrote the band’s most popular song during an evening of heavy drinking. The instrument-driven ballad would eventually run more than 17 minutes, cover the entire Side B of an album, and be named one of the top hard-rock songs in history by VH1. The title of the song was supposed to be “In the Garden of Eden,” but when Iron Butterfly drummer Ron Bushy asked Ingle for the lyrics later that night, all the inebriated Ingle could slur out was, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” The chorus of that catchy song filled my head as we sailed a blustery 12-mile passage from our previous anchorage in Eustatia Bay, British Virgin Islands, to the relatively far-flung, northernmost island…

IN FALL OF 2016, I was browsing in my local bookstore when I saw a poster advertising upcoming author events. I was beyond excited when I read that David James Duncan, author of The River Why, My Story as Told By Water, and The Brothers K, among others, would soon be visiting. Like many, Duncan’s novels and essays had resonated deeply with me. The River Why bookended an extended fishing holiday of mine years ago, and I imagined myself in the place of Gus, the main character. I recall starting to read the book in a hostel in Christchurch, New Zealand. Through Gus, Duncan wrote, “The once-monthly fisherman adores his rare day on the river, imagining that ten times the trips would yield ten times the pleasure. But I have…

Survive, is what an angler does the first few minutes after hooking a striped marlin. My friend Nick and I shout with joy, accompanied by excited words in Spanish from our new friends. We watch a reel getting emptied and watch the fish leap, flip, and dive. Thirty minutes later and it’s the post-release chatter, all high fives, and back slaps. The following day, a strong tide is rapidly dumping out of the river we’re fishing, exposing a sandy beach. So we hop out of the panga and begin casting a variety of sinking lines and Clousers into colliding currents. Soon, Nick calls out every angler’s favorite two words. “I’m on!” His ten-weight is buckled in a perfect inverse curve to his smile. Nick gets pulled slowly down the beach…

I SAT STARING at my computer monitor, transfixed by what I’d found in a Japanese flyfishing forum. It was the perfect fly. At least, it was exactly what I needed to catch pink salmon on Japan’s Churui River. I just knew it. And it wasn’t even the flashy red sexiness of the pattern; it was the name: “Kamui Chep.” Though I would certainly go fishing in Japan, the main purpose of my upcoming trip was research for a story on the Ainu people, the indigenous residents of Japan’s northern island, Hokkaido. There are only ten known fluent speakers of the endangered Ainu language left in the world. Kamui chep, meaning “divine fish,” is a special title afforded the salmon that play such a powerful role in Ainu life. Finding this…

WRITER AND HISTORIAN DAVID T. Courtwright calls them “limbic capitalists”—people or companies that target our limbic system, the part of our brains primarily responsible for emotion, especially as it relates to pleasure, motivation, and survival. Courtwright is author of The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business. “Biological evolution shaped the limbic system, which is indispensable for life and reproduction,” writes Courtwright, in a recent story for Stat, a health-news website. “But cultural evolution and technological change created a trapdoor. The same neural pathways can be exploited—lethally—by entrepreneurs of brain-rewarding products that foster excessive consumption and addictive behavior.” Amy Herrig and her father, Jerry Shults are, or were, limbic capitalists on two fronts: fake weed and flyfishing lodges. For much of the past decade, the Texas-based pair sold…

GREENLAND INSTEAD OF ICELAND ICELAND HAS SEEMINGLY been the rage forever, and justifiably so, with the waterfalls, volcanos, and some of the world’s finest Atlantic salmon rivers. But if you’re tired of being the only one at the party who’s hasn’t hiked the glaciers of Skaftafell or bathed in the Blue Lagoon, then switch to trendsetter instead and hop over to Greenland. The Danish-owned (for now!) island is only 750 miles from Iceland—just slightly farther than driving from Denver to Bozeman. (Erfalik guests arrive via Copenhagen.) The fishing program is walk-and-wade for Arctic char, most of which are decent-sized, with the occasional 10-plus pounder. This is primarily six-weight water, and a fighting butt is a good idea. Tourism is relatively new to Greenland in general, and flyfishing is newer still.…

WHEN IT COMES to traffic, I’d rather be stuck behind cows than cars. Colorado gained 80,000 new human residents from 2017 to 2018, so when I hit hooved traffic upon entering the town of Carbondale, at the head of the Crystal River Valley, I tended to relax. The land just upstream of town remains in agriculture—mostly smallish cow-calf operations—and each summer, the valley turns bright green as fields drink from the Crystal River. Those fields produce the grass-fed beef that ends up in stores like Whole Foods. They also host bald eagles sitting in cottonwoods, and elk grazing during the winter months. For a significant portion of the valley, that will not change. People who care about preserving open space, scenic views, and wildlife habitat learned decades ago that they…

I PAY MY bills here in Southeast Alaska, at least in part, by having short and intense conversations on airplanes. I help wedge wadered clients from all over the globe into DeHavilland Beavers, then drop in on some of the planet’s most spectacular temperate rainforest to make brief, intimate connections with the salmon, char, and trout that thrive in this unique environment. The conversations on the plane are of course just prelude to the main act—visiting the forest itself. Yet the flights offer important moments to contextualize the experience for folks visiting the Tongass National Forest. From our sub 2000-foot cruising altitude, it’s so much easier to see connections between the glaciers, steep mountains, spruce-and-hemlock-clad hillsides, and our short, high-gradient, salmon-producing streams. Like any worthwhile guide, I want my clients…

IT’S LATE FEBRUARY and I stumble out the door to grab another beer kept cold by winter’s free refrigeration. If it was anything but the high-octane variety, it would’ve frozen from a lack of alcohol. I pop the cap, drain it, and unzip my pants, melting as much snow as possible when I piss—anything to help usher spring on its way. It’s small victories like this that keep me sane. If I had a flame-thrower, I’d set this whole frigid wasteland on fire. We’ve had 53 inches of snow in February. That’s an entire winter’s accumulation in a single month. It hasn’t been above freezing since December, and every flake that’s fallen is still on the ground. I’ve been stuck inside for weeks. I grab another beer. This is winter…

BEFORE I’D FULLY degenerated into the folly of flyfishing, I lived in South Bend, Indiana, along the St. Joseph River. Every year, I would talk my dad or girlfriend into a winter drift trip for steelhead, but this was the business of egg sacks and crankbaits, not fly rods. And it only worked part of the year, when the fish would swim up from Lake Michigan in search of salmon eggs and spawning grounds. During other times of the year, I fished away from the Rust Belt waters of the St. Joe. I confess that, as a busy graduate student, I squandered my prime location along the St. Joseph for much of the year, failing to chase many of its endemic species with a fly rod. I would take long…

WHEN LEWIS and Clark discovered coastal cutthroat, they were using horse-hair leaders, wearing rain-drenched leather moccasins, and traveling with a bunch of aggravated pack mules. When I discovered coastal cutthroat more than 200 years later, I did it with a tungsten sink-tip, a pair of polyester waders, and a rental Jeep Renegade barreling down Juneau’s Glacier Highway. Upon landing in Juneau, the salty squalls of Southeast Alaska were abundant, and some quick research affirmed that I would be hiking through eight miles of rain for twelve inches of cutthroat. As the trail wound through Sitka spruce, I periodically broke the mossy silence with a bear call. Woodpeckers jack-hammered their way into cambium, warblers pinged like sonar high in the canopy, and I went several miles before my delirious bliss began…

Ron called December 14, out of the blue, to say he’d booked us a guide for two days in Colorado, starting the 20th. That kind of spontaneity wasn’t like him, or me, so I figured I’d better join him. I found a flight from San Francisco that matched up with Ron’s from Indianapolis. We both arrived in Denver a bit after 9 p.m., picked up a rental car, and headed southwest on highways 70 and 285 to Bailey, a hardscrabble town of a few shacks, eateries, liquor store, and a gas station. It was also home to Bailey Lodge, where we were staying. Along the way we stopped at a Safeway that looked closed, but wasn’t. We were the only ones in sight, so we briefly contemplated walking out with…

Eager as I was to wet a line, the misty slopes across the lake drew my gaze to a row of treeless summits dented with deep, spherical depressions. The Dena’ina people call these hills Vahunqishdghuch’i: the “ones with holes on it.” Some locals call them the Holy Hills. They looked like old Norse giants had been playing bocce on them. Eventually, my attention returned to what had brought me to Lake Kontrashibuna—and would keep bringing me back over the ensuing years. This fourteen-mile-long glacial-turquoise lake sits about 150 miles southwest of Anchorage, in the midst of Alaska’s Lake Clark National Park and Preserve—a park the size of Connecticut that sees as many visitors in a year as Yellowstone gets on a single July day. This was one of the few…

CARL ALLEN WAS twelve years old when he knew he would one day call the Bahamas home. Memories of his many trips to the renowned Walkers Cay with his father and stepfather fostered a love affair with the islands well into adulthood. Allen is the type of fishing addict who will spend eight or nine hours fishing bluewater for marlin, wahoo, tuna, and dorado, then return to shore and wade the flats until dark for bonefish and permit. “When people say they don’t fish or hunt,” Allen says. “I ask them what they do for memories.” As Allen’s fondness for world-class sportfishing grew, so too did his adoration of the Bahamian people. Returning to the islands every year has been the thread that stitched his life together. In 2018, two…

IN OCTOBER 2001, Hurricane Iris ransacked Belize, leveling trees, flooding fields and streets, and driving more than 15,000 people from their homes before vanishing into the ether somewhere over Central America. One year before the storm, veteran Belizean guide Charles Leslie Sr. opened Tarpon Caye Lodge, an eight-acre mangroveand-sand outpost off the coast of Placencia. Within hours of Iris making landfall, the lodge was no more. But Leslie Sr.’s dream wouldn’t be snuffed. He collected the splintered remains of Tarpon Caye and began rebuilding. “People thought I was crazy—I was highly criticized. But I had a vision for Tarpon Caye, and it was all about location,” Leslie Sr. says. “Migratory tarpon stopped there every year. It’s surrounded by great permit flats and, more than that, I developed a system of…