• COVER • “Time after time in the blue water of Magdalena Bay, Mexico, I have watched striped marlin crash bait at the surface and sometimes even throw bait up into the air. It’s fleeting, blink-of-the-eye fast and generally hard to tell where the next marlin will break the surface. Last December, I dedicated quite a bit of panga time attempting to photograph marlin slashing partially out of the water. They moved so fast that I had no idea what I’d captured here until checking images later on my laptop.” Photo: Nick Price • RISES • • 01 • The walk back to the truck is often long and can be painful, pleasurable or something in between depending on the day’s events. After this exceptional day of fishing on a South Island, New Zealand, river, Pat Murphy and Matthew Simmonds were all smiles, and they even had a little spring in their step. Photo: Jeff Forsee • 02 • As any smallmouth angler knows, smallies like to jump. They jump out of the water, onto your boat, over logs, between your legs— and of course out of your hands when trying to get a picture. This one released itself back into the lower Wisconsin River about an hour north of Madison, WI. Photo: Tim Romano • 03 • “The macro lens is one of my absolute favorite tools. It’s hard not to bring it along on trips in Colorado’s Front Range where I know there will be bugs out and about. Grasshoppers make perhaps the easiest subjects to work with as they sit so still for so long.” Photo: Jakob Burleson • 04 • Slough Creek, flowing through Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, is a special fishery that, on any given day, will provide fishing partners consisting of bison, wolves, bears, pronghorn, badgers, coyotes, eagles and more. Sam Aaberg finds a way to navigate through them carefully while sneaking in a few casts to the river’s prodigious cutthroat. Photo: Jakob Burleson • 05 • “Though Patrick Rhea may have seized the opportunity to catch this large gray triggerfish—something I’ve been dreaming about for years—my consolation prize was that I caught the permit on this trip to the Berry Islands in the Bahamas.” Photo: Hayden Dobbins • 06 • “Canadian wildfire smoke blanketed Minneapolis, with advisories telling everyone to limit time outdoors. Robert Tanouye and I were not aware of the advisory when we hit this not-so-secret fishing spot (Stone Arch Bridge) to wrangle Mississippi River smallies with fiberglass rods.” Photo: Justin Carfagnini • 07 • Katka Švagrová clambers over a mid-river boulder in the Bolivian Amazon while chasing golden dorado with Tsimane’s heli-fishing program out of Pluma Lodge. Unseasonably high temperatures, low water and wildfire smoke made for unique late-season conditions, but the high mountain watersheds still produced stunning numbers of large dorado willing to take a fly. Photo: Jess McGlothlin THE FLYFISH JOURNAL 017
The Flyfish Journal The Flyfish Journal 15.4: Page 14
