Fishing News

153 posts

Happy Holidays aka No Brook Trout Fishing for Months!

Fly Fishing Christmas Tree
The new bass fly?

The holiday season is here. It’s the time of year we celebrate pleasant moments with loved ones. We eat. We sing. It’s a fine time. No need to elaborate on all that good stuff. But let’s also consider what we’re stuck with. It’s winter. Cold weather. Crowded roads. The burden of holiday shopping. It’s enough to make some of us convince ourselves that cold weather fishing is fine, and to make me write something to jolt myself out of the pre-holiday funk.

Continue reading

Mark Madoff, Abel Reels Co-Owner, Dead by Suicide

Mark Madoff, son of convicted megaswindler Bernie Madoff, was found dead in an apparent suicide in his SoHo apartment in New York City yesterday morning. Madoff, along with his younger brother Andrew, led the group that took ownership of Abel Reels in November, 2007. Madoff was an avid fly fisherman and, tragically, steeped in the mess of his father’s scandal. Another extremely sad chapter in this whole Madoff story.

Shenandoah National Park 75th Birthday

Shenandoah National Park is will be 75 years old in 2011 and the National Park Service is planning a series of events commemorating the dedication of the park in 1936. The establishment of the park was a great achievement, especially during the Great Depression. Now, the narrow strip of the Blue Ridge that makes up the park faces considerable challenges:

Generations later, the challenges continue as the park services try to protect the land in the face of invasive species, eroding air quality and urban sprawl. [National Park Superintendent Nancy] Bogle said, “We’ve got to work with our adjacent communities and the people that care about this place to help protect it for the future.”

For you and me, “invasive species” means rainbow trout. Rainbows stocked by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries have established themselves in the lower reaches of many park streams. They out compete the native brook trout in most cases. We’ll have more on this in a subsequent post so stay tuned.