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Articles by Dylan Tomine
2022 Fly Fisherman Holiday Gift Guide
Fly fishing gift ideas for the anglers on your Christmas list. Most fly fishers believe you can never have enough flies, rods, reels, and many other types of fly fishing gear. Here are some gift ideas for the fly angler on your list, both stocking stuffers and under-the-tree presents that we think they'll love. Conversely, if you're the angler that wants some fishy gifts, e-mail this list to your non-fishing family and friends.
The worst guide in the world
OK, I’m just going to come right out and say it: I sucked at guiding. Oh, my clients caught plenty of fish. But if I were a doctor, you might say I had a lousy bedside manner. Or what an old coach of mine often referred to as a “piss-poor attitude.” The fact is, I could never stop thinking about whether or not various clients deserved to catch fish just because they could afford to travel and stay at an expensive lodge. That, and I was frequently impatient. And sarcastic. And irritable.
The Worst Guide in the World
The following is excerpted from Dylan Tomine's wonderful new book, Headwaters: The Adventures, Obsession and Evolution of a Fly Fisherman. We ran a different excerpt in a recent print issue of AJ, and wanted to share some with our digital readers too. Tomine has a wonderfully self-aware, bordering of self-effacing, writing style, making the very difficult and complicated world of fly fishing for steelhead accessible to people who've never even considered wetting a fly.
Silver lining
The river is going out. Big time. Sure, it’s been raining since the helicopter dropped us off six days ago and seventeen miles upriver, but only enough to ensure that everything we own is wet. A week of dripping tents, soggy sleeping bags, and wrinkled fingers isn’t so bad when the river’s green. But now, this is different. The gentle drizzle we’ve grown accustomed to has transformed into a howling, spitting front that roared off the Pacific in the middle of the night.
Luck
The old Subaru’s water pump blows up just outside The Dalles. Our already failing plan to make Macks Canyon before dark is now officially shot, and the whole trip appears to be in jeopardy. Visions of a week spent camping on hot asphalt behind the gas station while waiting for parts swim through my heat-addled brain. At seven o’clock on an unseasonably sweltering September evening in the central Oregon desert, I feel as far from catching a steelhead on a fly as you would in Phoenix, Arizona.
On the Podcast: Neelou Malekpour, Dylan Tomine, and Erin S. Lane
On the Podcast: Neelou Malekpour, Dylan Tomine, and Erin S. Lane In this episode, meet SMUDGED founder Neelou Malekpour, author of The Art of Sacred Smoke, Patagonia ambassador and conservation advocate Dylan Tomine, author of Headwaters, and writer and theologian Erin S. Lane, author of Someone Other Than a Mother. Listen in to hear what inspired these authors to write their audiobooks, and what they’re most excited for audiobook listeners to hear.
Dylan Tomine - Protecting What He Loves
Dylan Tomine is a conservationist, angler, and author of the excellent new book Headwaters: The Adventures, Obsession and Evolution of a Fly Fisherman. Headwaters is a collection of essays and stories from Dylan’s life as a self-proclaimed fly fishing bum, a life that has taken him from his home in the northwest to the far reaches of the globe and back again.
"Headwaters" | MidCurrent
Purchase Headwaters by Dylan Tomine Three minutes into our float, the V-wakes of submerged rocks in the tailout begin to move, creasing the glassy surface as they peel away from our approaching raft. Skyla and Weston lean forward, scouting ahead. “Are those all fish?” Skyla asks, then, with rising urgency, “They are! Look!” Weston climbs up onto the bow, afraid to miss out. Chaos ensues. I yell at him to keep his feet on the floor; he ignores me and scrambles for position.
Rearranging deck chairs on the Olympic Peninsula
Olympic Peninsula wild steelhead—the luminous, iconic objects of our collective dreams—are nearing the bottom of a decades-long slide into oblivion. We are staring into the abyss. On our current trajectory, extinction is not out of the question. At a recent virtual town-hall meeting, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) presented their forecast for coastal wild steelhead runs in the coming season.
We are starving the last of our Puget Sound killer whales to death
Update: As of December 31, 2020, the population of SRKW has been reduced to 74. Our southern resident killer whales (SRKW), the local, salmon-eating orcas, are starving to death. And the small size of the king salmon we boated this summer has had me thinking a lot about these whales, which we see on a fairly regular basis around our home waters. There are currently 75 SRKWs left. Not seventy-five thousand. Not seventy-five hundred. Seventy-five. Period. They haven’t had a live birth in three years.
“Real Life” Science
These guys were incredibly friendly and patient with the kids, happy to explain each process as they captured individual fish, measured and recorded them without harm, then placed them into another bucket for release once the netting was done. A great lesson in how science works in the field and the importance of consistent methodology. Both of my kids love their science classes in school, and Skyla often mentions wanting to be a marine biologist when she grows up.
Protecting Bristol Bay: Smart Money
Salmon, on the other hand, if properly managed, are perhaps the ultimate renewable resource. By all accounts, the Bristol Bay salmon industry is one of the best managed fisheries in the world, producing a sustainable $2 billion annual fish economy. Oil and gas reserves, as we know, are limited by however much is already in the ground and our ability to extract it.
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