A bucket list of top destinations in the US for trophy trout, featuring interviews with local guides, stunning images, and essential where-to and timing information. Landon Mayer describes in detail water systems from Alaska to Maine, revealing what makes each unique; where, when, and how to fish it; and what flies to use there, as well as how to tie them. With essential advice and tips from local experts such as Pat Dorsey, John Miller, Phil Tereyla, Nanci Morris Lyon, and Bill Betts.
This inspirational handbook demonstrates time-tested approaches to catching elusive, giant "trophy" trout. Focusing on strategy and technique, this beautifully illustrated guide for both beginning and advanced fly fishermen explains the best methods to employ when fishing for large trout. Tips on locating giant trout, understanding the behavior of the species, and fooling the fish into biting are included.
A comprehensive book on tactics for streamers, including new approaches for trout, steelhead, muskie, and bass. Features over 450 detailed photos and illustrations of casting and presenting streamers.
Using Topographic Maps to Find Deer Topographic maps and aerial photos can lead you right to the biggest bucks you've ever seen. You just have to know how to use them. Brad Herndon takes the mystery out of finding deer with maps. Through years of dedicated hunting and careful study of maps and photos, Herndon has perfected the use of maps to find the routes deer travel. And once you know where the deer will be headed you can establish the perfect ambush site. Maps are often the forgotten link in scouting prime deer habitat. Yet because they show you all the hills, gullies, rivers and ridges, you can learn the lay of the land without walking mile after unproductive mile. Maps won't eliminate the need to get in the woods, but they will tell the best places to start your search for the buck of your dreams. Herndon also shows hunters how to use the latest Internet and computer technology to personalize any map. Mark your stand locations, the locations of deer sign, even note the best possible wind direction to make your hunt a success. If you hunt deer, let Mapping Trophy Bucks lead you right to where the big boys hide. The rest is up to you.
A breakthrough fly-fishing system that teaches you how to consistently catch trophy trout in Western lakes. This all-color guide by a man who catches 700 trout from 40 to 20 pounds per year, offers excellent advice concerning fly patterns, reading water, equipment and fly lines, techniques, trout foods, temperature, and oxygen factors, seasons, locations, float craft, and much more. This all-color book is also a feast of big fish photos.
From the bestselling author of Saban, 4th and Goal, and Sowbelly comes the thrilling, untold story of the quest for the world record tarpon on a fly rod—a tale that reveals as much about Man as it does about the fish. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, something unique happened in the quiet little town on the west coast of Florida known as Homosassa. The best fly anglers in the world—Lefty Kreh, Stu Apte, Ted Williams, Tom Evans, Billy Pate and others—all gathered together to chase the same Holy Grail: The world record for the world’s most glamorous and sought-after fly rod species, the tarpon. The anglers would meet each morning for breakfast. They would compete out on the water during the day, eat dinner together at night, socialize and party. Some harder than others. The world record fell nearly every year. But records weren’t the only things that were broken. Hooks, lines, rods, reels, hearts and marriages didn’t survive, either. The egos involved made the atmosphere electric. The difficulty of the quest made it legitimate. The drugs and romantic entaglements that were swept in with the tide would finally make it all veer out of control. It was a confluence of people and place that had never happened before in the world of fishing and will never happen again. It was a collision of the top anglers and the top species of fish which would lead to smashed lives for nearly all involved, man and fish alike. In Lords of the Fly, Burke, an obsessed tarpon fly angler himself, delves into this incredible moment. He examines the growing popularity of the tarpon, an amazing fish has been around for 50 million years, can live to 80 years old and can grow to 300 pounds in weight. It is a massive, leaping, bullet train of a fish. When hooked in shallow water, it produces “immediate unreality,” as the late poet and tarpon obsessive, Richard Brautigan, once described it. Burke also chronicles the heartbreaking destruction that exists as a result—brought on by greed, environmental degradation and the shenanigans of a notorious Miami gangster—and how all of it has shaped our contemporary fishery. Filled with larger-than-life characters and vivid prose, Lords of the Fly is not only a must read for anglers of all stripes, but also for those interested in the desperate yearning of the human condition.
In this illuminating and evocative exploration of the origin and function of storytelling, the author goes beyond the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell, arguing that mythmaking evolved as a cultural survival strategy for coping with the constant fear of being killed and eaten by predators. Beginning nearly two million years ago in the Pleistocene era, the first stories, Trout argues, functioned as alarm calls, warning fellow group members about the carnivores lurking in the surroundings. At the earliest period, before the development of language, these rudimentary "stories" would have been acted out. When language appeared with the evolution of the ancestral human brain, stories were recited, memorized, and much later written down as the often bone-chilling myths that have survived to this day. This book takes the reader through the landscape of world mythology to show how our more recent ancestors created myths that portrayed animal predators in four basic ways: as monsters, as gods, as benefactors, and as role models. Each incarnation is a variation of the fear-management technique that enabled early humans not only to survive but to overcome their potentially incapacitating fear of predators. In the final chapter, Trout explores the ways in which our visceral fear of predators is played out in the movies, where both animal and human predators serve to probe and revitalize our capacity to detect and survive danger. Anyone with an interest in mythology, archaeology, folk tales, and the origins of contemporary storytelling will find this book an exciting and provocative exploration into the natural and psychological forces that shaped human culture and gave rise to storytelling and mythmaking.
