Laegreid Outdoors

I had to drive up to Casper, Wyoming for a business thing on Friday. This was good for two reasons:first, it meant a day driving and out of the office. Score! Second, it meant I would be in the neighborhood of the fabled North Platte, one of my favorite rivers. Double Score! I loaded up my gear Thursday evening and eagerly awaited the next morning's drive. After the roads opened up (they closed due to a snowstorm, which also knocked out power at our HQ) I bebopped on up through the shirley basin, bucking a wind that was probably 35mph sustained, with some seriously butt-clenching gusts. Always fun. Got up to Casper, did the meeting, and headed to the Gray Reef. The tent was pitched right away, and I geared up and headed down to the water to see what was what. On the river, directly below the damn, I got about zero hits and no interest shown from the wiley Platte River troots. They were rising very sporadically to midges, but all of my imitations fell short that evening. Such...

I've been an angler for as long as I can remember, but saltwater fly-fishing was injected into my blood when I moved out to Washington state a few years back. The cold, fertile waters of Puget Sound were my playground, and I chased the trout and salmon with wild abandon. The climate up in the PacNW, while mild, was only warm for about three months out of the year, and the saltwater was always pretty chilly. That was the extent of my experience with saltwater fly-fishing until this December, when my family decided to take a little trip to Sayulita, Mexico. Sayulita is a little town about 45 minutes north of Puerta Vallarta. It's more popular for its surfing and yoga than its fishing, but that wasn't going to stop me from trying! Our first full day in Sayulita, we went swimming at Playa de los Muertos, a smaller, less crowded beach on the South side of town. As we were floating in the surf, we noticed bait busting around us. I waited until I couldn't stand it anymore...

There's a lake that I like to fish that is great for rainbow trout, but it also has a hidden gem of a species that nobody seems to chase: grass carp. I tried a few times last year to land one of these beasts to no avail. I will say this: grass carp are not an easy fish to target. Their diet is weird, their eyesight is amazing, and their lateral line, the sensory organ that detects vibrations and changes in pressure, is incredibly sensitive. I've dropped flies just a hair too close, which puts them down. A cast that lands over a fish can cause the whole pod to explode in fear. Sloppy wading, the wrong fly, a tippet that's too heavy, tippet that's too light, there are hundreds of things that can screw up your shot at a grass carp. Not to mention that if you hook one, they can bend your hook like it's a wet noodle or snap your tippet with very little effort. Sometimes, however, the stars align and you can get hooked up to one of these beasts, and when that happens yo...

We've been in a period of politically-charged posts recently, something I had not planned for this blog. It's important stuff, and the future of fishing and hunting and public lands are in serious jeopardy at the moment, but in this post, we're gonna step back and take a look at some pretty pictures. Keep fighting the good fight, but don't burn out. It's summer, take some time every now and then to get out to the places you love and clear your mind. Cutthroat Trout are usually gorgeous, but the slash on this one was particularly vivid! This toothy rainbow was all about the chironomids. Chunky. My dad and I stumbled on some grayling the other day. They are really interesting fish! None of the grayling were huge, but what a cool opportunity. Fish on! Crows are cool. Lavender in the park.

Dear Mr. President, American Sportsmen and Women are tired of seeing hoot-owl closures on their rivers. We're tired of fish kills caused by extreme water temperature . We're tired of seeing our forests killed by beetles because our winters are not getting cold enough and our summers are hotter. We're tired of ocean conditions making salmon survival even more difficult. We're tired of longer, hotter forest fire seasons . Sportspeople are out in the wild parts of our great country more often than most, and we are seeing the effects of climate change on a daily basis. The sporting way of life is in danger as a direct result of the warming earth, and you just withdrew us from the Paris Agreement. Mr. President, you (and your son) have said how you want to protect the rights of sportsmen and women, second amendment rights and land usage rights and so on, but none of that matters if we don't have fish and game to pursue. If the environment goes, the game goes,...

We're less than a week in to 2017 and Congress is already positioning itself to strip America of its public lands. I'm no political whiz, so I'll let Field and Stream's Bob Marshall explain it more clearly: "Yesterday, on its first day in session, the House amended a rule to make it easier to justify transfer of [public lands] ownership to states, by changing the way it calculates the financial cost of the move to the nation. The change passed 233–190, largely on party lines, with the GOP overwhelmingly in favor."  1 If this does not raise red flags and set off alarm bells for hunters, anglers, campers and hikers across our great nation, it should. We are moving ever closer to a reality where our public lands become privatized, monetized and inaccessible to you and me. We should be outraged that this is happening, and we should let Congress know that they are not acting in the best interest of the public. Remember, public lands are OUR lands. YOU o...