I like to imagine that Captain Nemo would have been a fly fisherman. That he would have stood on the deck of the Nautilus swinging streamers for kraken on windless, starlit nights. After dinner, in his stateroom, he would have tied intricate deer hair flies by candlelight, carving sculpted diver-style heads with a straight razor, and whispering madly to the flies about the monstrous jaws they would eventually meet.
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The waterfalls on the Big South fork of the Poudre River
Photo by Sam Larson
Fallen In
I’ve just fallen into the river. Perched one-footed on top of a slick rock and trying to cast into the deep part of the pool was too much for my boot’s aging tread. I’ve just splashed, magnificently, inelegantly, completely, into neck deep water. A quick, gasping lunge towards the bank and I toss my rod into the willows, rip open my chest pack, and throw my phone onto the grass.
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Photo by Jeffrey Stutsman
Weekend Dispatch from the Arkansas
The pile of fleece on the floor stirs as Baxter begins to unfold himself from his blanket fort. I say, “My, what big teeth you have.” But he shakes himself awake in a manner that indicates he is a dog, and doesn’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.
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Sam tries out his 3-wt. Redington Butterstick on the St. Vrain.
Photo by Jeffrey Stutsman
Nymphs of Doom
The spillway of the Lake Estes dam is choked with chunks of blue-white ice. Up the valley and over the roofs of Estes Park proper, the Continental Divide is knife-sharp against the cloudless Colorado sky: stark, jagged, and cloaked in snow.
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Sam fails to catch any fish on the Arkansas tailwater and is mocked by ducks
Photo by Jeffrey Stutsman
Winter Fishing Desperation
It’s the ass-end of January, and I longingly remember the sequences I use to tie blood knots, davey knots, and surgeons knots, but when I look down at my hands, dry and cracked from the cold winter air, they feel useless and palsied. They feel old.
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