The Drake Fall 2020

THIS SUMMER AND FALL has been a busy season for wildland firefighters, a career some pursue for the views, the hard work, and the people met along the way. But when the off-season is 4-6 months, and your activity of choice is flyfishing, wildland firefighting offers another benefit: finding new water. For Brianna Proctor—a lead helicopter crewmember based in Swan Valley, Idaho—learning about and working near rivers all over the country has become a major benefit of her firefighting career. She’s been at it for 15 years, working primarily in the air attack realm as a member of what’s called a “helitack” crew—a group that works alongside helicopters to facilitate water drops, fire recons, and the shuttling of crews into remote areas of the fire. When she first started fishing…

THAT WE’RE TOO DIVIDED. That a delicate hookset with a light leader on a 20-inch trout is a difficult thing to master. That fishing from a raft or a driftboat with two of your friends is a far more equitable experience when all three of you know how to row. That many American steelheaders this fall are learning just how much they love Canada. That if your neighbor’s home is on fire, you rush to help put it out regardless of which candidate’s sign stood in the yard. That an early-morning run in a flats skiff across calm water is one of the most hopeful, enjoyable, anticipatory acts in the known universe. That your one missed fish was always slightly larger than the three you landed. That there is no…

FLYFISHING AND BASEBALL I loved Joe Dahut’s piece on “Life After Pitching” (Tippets, Summer 2020). I sent it to my younger brother, Ed, who was a pitcher for the Minnesota Gophers during the Dave Winfield/Paul Molitor era. He is also a flyfisherman, and his only comment was, “The one thing Joe forgot was flyfishing for muskies, which is like trying to throw a no-hitter!” Thomas Holz, Minneapolis, MN THE SOCOTRA CHRONICLES Just a quick note that the article on Socotra is one of the finest flyfishing articles I have ever read. Amazing work. Bill Lenehan, McAllister, MN COMPARED TO YEMEN, WE’RE DOING OK The Summer edition did not disappoint, once again proving that The Drake is the best out there. The story about Ray Montoya/Socotra illustrates that, despite our own…

FOR BOB SPENCER, Monday, September 7th, started out like a thousand other days. A fishing guide on Oregon’s McKenzie River for the past 30 years, Spencer was on the water with clients, casting for redside trout, the secret hope of a rare steelhead in his back pocket. “It was just a beautiful day,” recalls Spencer, “Clear, sunny, no wind to speak of.” He got home about six and noticed the wind beginning to gust out of the east. This was rare as a royal flush: West slope Cascade river valleys get their weather from the west, which is where the wind and prodigious rain almost always come from. “By eight it had really begun to howl,” says Spencer. “By nine we were on a level two evacuation. By two in…

BEFORE FIRST LIGHT hit any of the famed pools along Oregon’s North Umpqua on the morning of September 8th, the Archie Creek fire had already begun. I woke up at 5 a.m., when the power went out at the Dogwood Motel, and I opened the door to darkness and an eerie wind. It was blowing so strong it was snapping tree limbs—very unusual for a pre-dawn September morning on the North. It’s always dark when you’re heading out to fish on this river, but it was darker than usual that morning. Something just didn’t feel right. It was downright spooky. As we were about to head out, my buddy Andy was just returning from upriver. He told us they’d spotted a fire, a big one. He showed me a photo…

WHEN STEAMBOAT SPRINGS angler and Hog Island Boatworks owner Johnny St. John floated the idea of a fishing derby to benefit his beloved Yampa River, the local guide community wasn’t exactly thrilled. The river is overfished as it is, why encourage others? Then COVID hit, further complicating matters. Many would-be organizers might have given up the idea and just blamed it on the guides. St. John had a different thought, one every trout town can relate to: an “anti-tournament” that would bring people to the Yampa’s many tributaries instead, rewarding not size or number of fish, but areas visited. It would also include a “Citizen Science” component, rewarding anglers for taking water temperatures and other measurements instead of just trout. “We got some pushback from guides on a traditional floating-and-fishing…