This article originally ran in the November/December 2007 edition of American Angler and is reproduced here with permission.

EVERY SPRING, you walk into your local fly shop and find out that some of your gear is obsolete. Two years earlier, you probably plunked down several hundred bucks to be the proud owner of the latest, greatest gizmo in the history of the sport. Your rod, reel, or waders had never been equaled; you were the envy of your friends. But now its successor is staring you in the face, taunting you with its crisper action, lower startup inertia, or improved breathability. How did it come to be here? Why is it here so soon? What could it possibly offer that your pride and joy doesn’t already? Suddenly, an intense rationalization process begins, and your wallet hand gets itchy.

Sound familiar? Since time immemorial, fly-fishing gear manufacturers have been engaged in a battle to one-up each other—and themselves—with newer, better, often more expensive products. Along the way, they’ve changed the nature of the pastime itself: breathable waders replaced neoprene, and graphite dealt the death blow to fiberglass, itself guilty of the destruction of bamboo.

This article originally ran in the Fall 2007 edition of American Angler and is reproduced here with permission.

THE COWS WERE CAUSING TROUBLE AGAIN. I was fishing Arkansas's White River at Rim Shoals—Dixie's equivalent of the Miracle Mile—but the herd occupying the bank behind me was preventing any kind of real backcast. With my trout stick, I tried making Spey casts across the broad open shoal, reminding myself exactly why Spey casters usually prefer longer rods. What I needed was a hybrid—a rod I could cast like a two-hander but fish like a standard rod—but at the time I didn't know such a rod existed. Turns out I wasn't the only one to find myself in such a situation. A new wave of these hybrid tools, called "switch rods," is making its way onto shelves this year.

This article originally ran in the Spring 2007 edition of American Angler and is reproduced here with permission.

ON A TRIP THROUGH Mississippi, I once saw an elderly man catching catfish using nothing but a coffee can as a "reel." Strange as it may have looked, his can accomplished a reel's simplest purpose: it held his line. And for many fly fishermen, this is almost all a reel does. On the other hand, saltwater anglers sometimes need serious stopping power, and many big-game reels look like a brake array on a racecar. Between the coffee can and the engineering marvel is a whole range of technology that many anglers understand only vaguely.

This article originally ran in the January/February 2007 edition of American Angler and is reproduced here with permission.

“PIRANHA,” THE GUIDE SPAT, indicating that I should cast elsewhere. I had no regard for such misgivings: if the piranha were the only fish biting, then I was just thankful for something—anything—tugging at the end of my line. My companion, Cale, and I shared long-suffering looks, and then went back to the anything-but-elegant rhythm of chucking lead shooting heads on ten weights. It was mindless work, and my thoughts returned to events of the past few days.  The fishing party had rendezvoused in Miami the previous Tuesday. After a long wait for the redeye to Manaus, Brazil, we were faced with an inauspicious omen so early in our trip: Our flight had been cancelled, due to vulture strike. “What kind of pterodactyl does it take to knock out a 737?” I asked. “These aren’t your ordinary turkey buzzards,” our guide, Mark, shot back. I laughed and caught the others on the way to the bar. Nothing like getting the bad stuff out of the way early, we figured.  Our second flight made it out the gate, and soon enough we found ourselves in Belém, Brazil, at the mouth of the Amazon. The rubber barons had made Belém one of the jewels of their industrial empire, but those days are long gone. Now the spirit of industry, never quenched, lives on in the form of streetside vendors willing to sell anything from monkey skulls to anaconda skins to themselves to the few gringos who pass through.

Our time there being short, we ran around doing the tourist thing, until the next morning, when we found ourselves a man down shortly before takeoff for the bush. Our guide, on the verge of apoplexy, began a room-to-room search, while I stepped outside to catch a glimpse of the World Cup on a street vendor’s portable TV. When I looked up, there in mid-traffic was our missing soldier stumbling back to the hotel. The vendor, noticing his look, winked at me: “He have good time in Belém, yes?” I just winked back.

This article originally ran in the November/December 2006 edition of American Angler and is reproduced here with permission.

WRITERS AND ENTHUSIASTS have been so busy describing the recent "resurgence" of bamboo in the fly-fishing world, it’s easy to forget that cane rods never actually went away. The truth is, there is no more versatile rod-building material than bamboo, which is why it’s been so successful. The stuff’s been ripped, planed, and glued together into fly rods since at least the late 1800s, when Hiram Leonard came up with the idea of using a six-sided tube of cane as a fishing rod. Today, there are more kinds of bamboo rods out there than all the other types put together. For nearly a century, a fisherman using cane could be confident his rod was made from the best material available. Millions of fish fell victim to the allure of the soft presentations made by the supple, tippet-protecting grass. Generations of anglers did quite well, thank you, with these tools, and nothing about that equation has changed. A bamboo rod can still be a wonderful fishing tool, and there are lots of good reasons to own one. The only problem is, there are about as many styles of bamboo rods as there are makers of bamboo rods (read: a whole lot).

With thousands of choices out there, how do you know which bamboo rod is right for you? What do you get with a cane stick as opposed to a graphite or fiberglass rod? When it comes to bamboo, most of us will be quick to admit we’re dunces. I know I was, which is why I set out to find out the answers to these questions and many others.

This article originally ran in the April 2006 edition of American Angler and is reproduced here with permission.

IF YOU’VE LOOKED AT THE STACK of fly-fishing catalogs on your bedstand lately, you’ve probably noticed a lot of recent growth. Just 15 years ago, fly fishers could reliably choose from a small handful of products for their wader, jacket, vest, and sundry other needs. Established companies such as Hodgman, L.L. Bean, Orvis, Patagonia, and Simms have been providing technical products for decades, but lately they’ve been joined by such upstarts as Albright, Cloudveil, William Joseph, and even Under Armour, to name just a few. Having all these new players at the table means an increase in competition—and where there’s competition, innovation thrives. Unfortunately, all that innovation can add substantially to the level of confusion when an angler walks into a fly shop and takes a couple wading jackets or pairs of waders down off the walls. What makes a $350 wader a $350 wader anyway? Why is a $350 model worth more than the one that costs $99? To answer these questions, you need to understand a little about how fly-fishing clothing is designed and made.

This article originally ran in the March 2006 edition of American Angler and is reproduced here with permission.

AS THE NAME IMPLIES, a guide school is where fly fishermen go to learn how to be guides. Or, to be more precise, guide school is where some fly fishermen go to learn how to be good guides. Typical guide-school curriculum includes things such as how to tie knots, how to be a better caster, and what to expect from various kinds of clients. A good guide school will go in to stuff like important business decisions-everything from how to choose a name and logo to what kind of insurance to carry in case you accidentally kill somebody. (Hey, guiding can get a little hairy.) And when the school is over, any outfit worth its salt will help place a student in a guiding job.

This article originally ran in the January/February 2006 edition of American Angler and is reproduced here with permission.

YOU'VE PROBABLY BEEN THERE. Two hours from home, halfway through the thermos of coffee, knee-deep in cold water on a cold day, and not a single, solitary fish to show for it. They're taunting you. Riseforms are everywhere, but not one of the shiny little bull's-eyes has your fly in the middle of it. You're forced to ask the most forlorn question heard on the water: What the heck are they feeding on?

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.