Month: October 2021

  • Elephants of Kadizora Camp

    5 Years Ago: Kadizora Camp

    Monwana Lodge at Thornybush was a great way to start our safari adventure. They had all of the big five African game animals, and we had closeup experiences with them all. That’s the benefit of a game reserve that’s relatively compact in size. The Okavango Delta, our next stop, is much more vast and open.…

  • Monwana Game Drive

    5 Years Ago: Monwana Lodge

    For a long time, my favorite fishing hat was a black ball cap with the California Republic bear on it that I bought at the Laguna Seca racetrack sometime in the mid-2000s. I’d forgotten to bring a hat to work, you see, so was forced to pay track-side concession prices to keep my pale bald…

  • Camps Bay

    Five Years Ago: Revisiting an African Adventure

    I realized the other day that five years has passed since Mom invited me to go with her on an African adventure. It was just about as amazing as you might imagine, just from those two words, “African adventure”. Back then, I posted photos to Instagram at the end of each day’s exploration, but Instagram…

  • Southbound Through Utah

    Southbound Again

    I hesitated as I approached the main junction. Salt Lake City is the turning point, if one chooses to go to California. Or you can continue south on I-15, with Las Vegas as the next major intersection. As it happened, I decided to keep going south. In October of 2018, I went to the Colorado…

  • Exiting Montana…

    …Without winning the big fish lottery, AKA, fishing the Madison River in the Fall for lake-run browns and rainbows. This year, I picked a losing ticket. I caught a few nice average fish, but nothing special. Last year wasn’t great, but it felt better than this year. A guy I chatted with at Barnes Hole…

  • Barnes Hole

    Dear Diary, a Madison Update

    Sometimes things just don’t go the way you expect them to. A couple of days ago, I thought everything was coming together nicely for my last days on the Madison river in 2021. The following day however, saw no fish. Not for me, and not for the dozens of other anglers lined up to take…

  • Bakers Hole Rainbow

    Paydirt

    I could not have asked for a better start back on the water, after a two week break. The second stretch of water I swung produced a really beautifully colored rainbow and the third seam had a nice brown eat the soft hackle I tied yesterday. The winning fly I tied was a variant of…

  • Friday at Bakers Hole

    Fishing Masochists

    The plan continues to play out… It’s the middle of October in West Yellowstone, and the RV park has shut down for the season. I’m off to fish the Madison from Bakers Hole upstream a mile or so. The sun is finally out and all the roadside trailheads are rammed with anglers’ vehicles. But still…

  • The Best Laid Plans…

    “The fishing was great! The catching, not so much.” So I overheard as an angler came off the water back at Bakers Hole a while back. Yuk yuk yuk. He was so pleased with his joke, I heard him repeat it to another tourist a few minutes later. So it was. My plan was to…

  • Fish of the Day