A guide to making your own DIY stripping basket for salt and fresh water fly fishing. Including photos, tips, and links to all the materials you’ll need.
Read More >>Author Archives: Benjamin Carmichael
Father’s Day Giveaway: Sage One Humidor
Haven’t bought dad something yet? Don’t worry. If you complete the below survey, I’ll send you or your dad a Sage One Cigar Humidor overnight on Friday, so it gets to you or him in time for the big day.
Read More >>Beautiful Aerial Shots of Striped Bass Schools
One of the reasons I love fishing is that it takes you to beautiful places in search of beautiful things. If you’ve ever held a tuna, or a salmon, or a trout, or any number of other fish, you know that these can be beautiful creatures.
New photos from aerial photographer Wayne Davis help make this point. Flying over Cape Cod bay recently, he spotted huge schools of striped bass. So numerous are the stripers, that they remind me of the sight of a large flock of starlings against the sky. They’re awesome, in the true sense of that word.
One of the things I love about these photos is how they elevate bass. In my opinion, striped bass often do not rise to the top of the list of “beautiful” fish. Their stripes are geometric, their color palette more limited, more two-toned, than many of their hard-tailed saltwater companions. This doesn’t diminish my admiration for them, or my love of chasing them. I just don’t think of them as stunning in the same way as opalescence of a false albacore. These photos make a different case.
Review: LLBean PacLite Stowaway Wading Jacket with Gore-Tex
Growing up in Maine, there were two related summer traditions: One, that we would go on a canoeing and fishing trip on a different river every summer and, two, that it would rain like hell on that trip.
Read More >>Video: Spring Schoolies on Massachusetts’ South Shore
First, they were south of me: schoolies in Rhode Island. Then, they were suddenly north of me: schoolies on the North Shore. It was like I was the bulls eye no one could hit — until I hit it yesterday afternoon.
Read More >>Early Miramichi Salmon
Recently, friends have gone to the Bahamas, to Boca for tarpon, and to the Miramichi for Atlantic salmon. I’ve been thinking about this last one a lot, as my close friend Ben Moody went salmon fishing for the first time on the Little Southwest Miramichi. This winter, I tied him some flies, and so I was anxious to find out how he had done.
Read More >>April Fly Fishing in New England: The Waiting Game
If fly fishing is a sport of delayed expectations — the long winter, the thousand casts — then April, the historic start to trout season and often the month when early schoolies arrive, is typically the month of fulfilled expectations. This year, that may not be the case.
Read More >>Fly Fishing Massachusetts’s Quaboag River: Video, Photos & Notes
The water? 52 degrees. The air? A bluebird 65-70. The Hendricksons? Hatching with profligacy. The trout? Unseen and nearly unfelt.
Read More >>Book Review: Salt: Coastal and Flats Fishing Photography
Salt: Coastal and Flats Fishing Photography by Andy Anderson, a new coffee table book exclusively about saltwater fishing, captures the beauty of these places. Published by Rizzoli, who specializes in high-end coffee table books like this, the book is the nicest I’ve seen on the subject.
Read More >>When Will the Spring Fishing Season Arrive?
As the weather begins to warm, many are asking: what will this long winter mean for this year’s fishing season?
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