In The New York Times, Chris Santella (author of Fifty Places to Fly Fish Before You Dieand Fifty Favorite Fly Fishing Tales) goes fishing with shark fishing guru Conway Bowman in the seas off of San Diego and discovers it’s “not a dainty game.”

“The notion of fly-fishing for sharks seems as if it were the product of an overactive (and likely distraught) imagination — perhaps a scribbling from Hunter S. Thompson’s notebook after a cocktail of espresso and mescaline.”

Is the loss of interest in fish and duck stamps, as some artists claim, a sign that no one is interested in wildlife art any more? Or have changes in taste and state economies driven stamp artists out of business? In the Wall Street Journal, Barry Newman writes about sporting art’s latest endangered species.

“To lure collectors, states issued a lot more stamps than they had hunters or anglers. A stamp glut compounded the print glut. The revenue stamps often cost more to print than they raised in revenue. As a result, Mr. Dumaine now counts 15 states that have eliminated duck stamps, on top of the 16 that have dropped their trout stamps.”

Paul Greenberg of The New York Times explores the global decline of the “totemic” bluefin tuna, stemming from commercial overfishing, global sushi “appetites outstripping supply,” and a patchwork of ineffectual “high seas” multinational agreements responsible for maintaining viability of the species.

“Tuna then are both a real thing and a metaphor. Literally they are one of the last big public supplies of wild fish left in the world. Metaphorically they are the terminus of an idea: that the ocean is an endless resource where new fish can always be found. In the years to come we can treat tuna as a mile marker to zoom past on our way toward annihilating the wild ocean or as a stop sign that compels us to turn back and radically reconsider.”

photo credit: Stewart Butterfield

Scott & Nix did an excellent interview with fishing artist, book illustrator and fly fisher Flick Ford this week. Flick fly fishes “99 percent of the time,” with most of his days spent in the Delaware River system, Berkshires and northeast coast.

“On average I would say [I fish] about 90-100 days a year, down a bit from when I used to fish 100-150 days a year. Gas, time, money is in shorter supply these days, but no complaints.”

Ford was most recently illustrator of the popular book FISH: 77 Great Fish of North America.

Cold precipitation didn’t dampen the spirits of those celebrating the renaming of Colorado’s “Dream Stream” in honor of the late Charlie Meyers on Saturday. Karl Licis writes about the event in The Denver Post: “A steady flow of sportsmen, public-policy makers and regular readers filed past a newly placed kiosk with photos, biographical tidbits and a vintage column by Meyers that celebrated a barefoot fishing boy.”

Fly fishing gutter balls: writer Allen Morris Jones (Last Year’s River) of Big Sky Journal considers the consequences of losing a healthy Shields River brown trout in his short essay The Lost Fish.

“I sling out my first cast, dropping an ugly rubber leg down into the hole. Presented well, the water gives up nothing. I follow the line with my rod, then retrieve. Roll cast back up to the shallow riffle and watch the line float closer to the bank, smooth and slow. Uninterrupted. It’s dusk, no breeze, the stars are aligned. How could I not catch a fish?”

photo credit: carolynconner

In a classic article from the August 1972 issue of Field & Stream, Nick Lyons ruminates on fishing, how it changes our lives and why it drives most to behave irrationally.

“A guy named Art Flick once spent three years doing nothing but catching and identifying the bugs trout eat. He only carried a rod so other fishermen wouldn’t think he was nuts. Maybe those were the best years of his life. Trout fishermen are the subrace within the subrace. Which is pretty low.”

The passing in April of the 100-year-old man whose dams plugged up the Colorado and other majestic western rivers suddenly got plenty of attention this week, from sources as different in scope as the High Country News and the Wall Street Journal.

In The New York Times, Douglas Martin quotes Marc Reisner, who in his 1986 book Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water said Mr. Dominy cultivated Congress “as if he were tending prize-winning orchids.”

Here’s Dominy in an interview with Outside magazine in 1999, talking about the push to build Glen Canyon Dam: “‘Of course we covered up some delightful country: country that was inaccessible, country that would never be visited by very many people, which we turned into one of the most beautiful lakes in the world.’”

But our favorite coverage of Dominy’s legacy came yesterday from NPR’s Elizabeth Arnold, whose three-minute podcast includes the surprising reminder that the Sierra Club supported Glen Canyon in return for the bureau passing up on other damming projects.

photo credit: the_tahoe_guy

Stu Apte and the Florida Citrus Queen subdue “seven feet of silvery dynamite” before settling down for Manhattans and The Lawrence Welk Show…

This vintage film from the IGFA Museum’s library was reproduced by Costa Del Mar in partnership with the IGFA. The idea was to remind people how great fishing stories were in yesteryear, before equipment and technique formats became so prevalent in outdoor shows.

Marshall Cutchin of MidCurrent notes, “the clips are so refreshing because it’s a such great reduction of the sport to its elements–hard to find anything like this being done today.”

Produced by Costa Del Mar

Jeff Erickson of Big Sky Journal drops into Wyoming’s Tri-Basin Divide to explore the headwaters of the Greys River (Snake River cutthroats), LaBarge Creek (Colorado River cutthroats), and the Smiths Fork River (Bonneville cutthroats) in search of three distinct types of native cutthroat trout.

“Like the other Tri-Basin cutthroats, Greys’ denizens tend to be opportunistic feeders, not hatch-specific Einsteins. Cutts are suckers for attractor dry patterns — bring Turck’s Tarantulas, Chernobyl Ants, Madame Xs, Humpies, Wulffs, Renegades, Stimulators, and Trudes and you’ll likely be off to the races. These fish don’t mind looking up for their next meal.”

photo credit: araddon