The Great Falls of the Yellowstone and a Madison River brown.

Travelogues can be a surprisingly difficult thing to write. No one wants to read the nitty-gritty details of each stop along the road, but when you are in a far strange country for the first time, you want to do justice to the things locals may take for granted. For instance, I got a kick out of all the 'World's Biggest' displays, like the World's Biggest Pink Concrete Prairie Dog, outside Badlands National Park.

Keeping that in mind, I will try to lead you through the wonder I felt at the West's immensity and laid-back atmosphere without boring you with the details of crappy hotels (Dayton, Wyoming), bad food (Dillon, Montana), or broken-down vehicles (Shoshone National Forest, Wyoming) that mark and mar so many trips. Those things happened, but the grandeur of the West made them irrelevant. This was the most exhausting and grueling trip I have ever taken - psychologically hard, and hard on the pocketbook in the sense of being much more expensive than I anticipated - but none of that mattered. I was going West, farther out and for longer than ever before.

THE TRUTH IS, anybody can take excellent fishing photos.

With modern point and shoot technology, such arcane concepts as "reciprocity of exposure" and the algebra behind camera stops have become unnecessary for the taking of good pictures. Most photographers starting out today can afford a point and shoot digital camera. With so many new photographers in the game, displays of pictures and fish are becoming increasingly common. What is not becoming common, however, are good pictures.

Think about it. How many pictures have you seen of fish so washed-out you can't see the scales being held by a guy whose skin tone is "three days dead" for every shot that might have belonged in a magazine? The ratio may be 100 to 1.

The following tips and tricks will help you improve your fishing pictures.

ONE OF THE MOST COMMON QUESTIONS raised by visitors to the southern tailwaters is "How do I know when to get out of the water?" Anglers from outside the area are often incredulous at a situation locals take for granted: we have no control of the dams.

Trout speys can handle large fish on light tippet.

Spey Fishing for Trout
By Zach Matthews
First Published January 29, 2005

You have probably heard about it by now; you may even have seen it coming to your area. Spey. What is it? Why is it on a trout stream? Who came up with such a bizarre name? The development of Spey fishing began in Scotland, but chances are it came to your area through the American Northwest. The style is named for the River Spey, which begins in the Scottish Highlands and meanders its way north east to its mouth in the Moray Firth, emptying into the North Sea.

Did you know a Crazy Charlie will catch a carp?

Screwball Looks, Lonely Places
by Zach Matthews
First Published September 18, 2004

Ten years ago, maybe even fifteen, you'd have gotten a strange look if you mentioned flyfishing for carp anywhere this side of the Atlantic. Since then, carp seem to have become the species everyone feels obliged to mention at least once. You see carp in magazines, in books, even on the occasional flyfishing television show. Although some of these articles and books have been very good, carp have still managed to slip under the radar of the American angling public. In Europe, carp fishing is an established and expanding sport. Whole magazines are dedicated to the species and anglers routinely make the local newspapers gripping-and-grinning these fish like they know something we don't. After all, here in the United States the average angler would rather be photographed knee-deep in his sinking driftboat than discovered to have hooked a carp, much less caught it and looked proud about doing so. Sure, some enlightened anglers have begun to target carp - usually out of curiosity or boredom with still more trout. But if you asked a guy on the street to tell you about carp, he'd give you a funny look and inform you, sonny, that carp are widely known to be the nastiest, slimiest, plug-ugliest, bottom-dwelling-est fish on the continent. So before I get into why I not only respect the species, but actively seek to embarrass myself by catching them, maybe a brief review of the carp's less-than-noble history in the United States is in order.