with a bobber and a can of red wigglers. This time of year, when the water in a million sunfish-filled lakes warms up into the 70s and 80s, bluegills can make for many a forty-fish day. Just launch the float-tube, tie on a little popper, mayfly or midge pattern, and be sure to set the hook on ‘em before they swallow it.

But are all sunfish created equal? Last night we did a little comparison fishing and found that the redear sunfish (pictured below) not only is a little more difficult to catch than the standard bluegill, but might even–egads!–fight a little harder. To further our studies, tonight we plan to tie the tails of two of them together and let them have a swim off. We’ll post results…

Regardless of which one you’re after, make sure you’re packing plenty of these:

And maybe a few of these:

And remember–if you can’t catch bluegills in June, then maybe you should try another sport.

According to Mountainfilm officials, some distributors think the audience award is a much better harbinger of success for a film than a juried award. Red Gold tells the story of a proposed gold mine at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Alaska, and how the impact of the mine could effect the sportfishing, commercial fishing, and very lifeblood of the region.

FeltSoul previously produced the movie “The Hatch”–about the famed salmonfly hatch on Colorado’s Gunnison River and Running Down the Man, about chasing roosterfish with a fly rod along the coast of southern Baja. For more info, visit www.feltsoulmedia.com

Above: The painting—”Quitting Early”—that illustrated John Gierach’s first Sporting Life column in Fly Rod and Reel. (March, 1992)

As some of you may know, the current issue of Fly Rod & Reel magazine marks my one-hundredth column with John Gierach. Our very first collaboration occurred twenty years ago, in July of 1988, when I illustrated his article “East Big Fish” for what was then called Rod and Reel.

After Lee Wulff’s tragic death in 1991, the editors at Rod & Reel asked John to write the magazine’s closing column, and they asked me to illustrate it. Our first regular column together, “The Sporting Life,” was published in March of 1992. This July marks our 100th column together, and I wanted to do a painting of John fishing his home water to commemorate that event.

Today’s image is that painting, and is titled “Close To Home”.

To mark the event, Lisa has created a 100 Painting Retrospective and for the very first time, visitors to our website will be able to review all 100 paintings from John’s columns in one place.

When she suggested that we build this retrospective, I found the idea both exciting and frightening. Did I really want people to look back over sixteen years of my artwork and be able to compare and contrast what I did then with what I’m doing now? In the end I decided that we all start somewhere, and if I wasn’t getting better at what I do… then I should be doing something else. Besides, I like some of the early paintings as much as I do the recent work.

To see Bob’s work, visit www.whitefishstudio.com

Bull trout to remain listed as threatened species in Lower 48
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Bull trout should remain listed as a threatened species in the Lower 48, and some populations may be studied for additional protections under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday.

The agency announced its decision after a five-year review of the status of the fish, which is found in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Nevada.

“This maintains the status quo and provides opportunities for future considerations,” said Ted Koch, a Fish and Wildlife biologist in Boise, Idaho.

Koch said a decision will be made later this year on whether to break bull trout into five distinct populations that will be evaluated separately for future protection and recovery efforts.

Environmentalists praised the decision, but said it is time to end studies and act to restore bull trout numbers. Bull trout were designated as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1998 and 1999.

A member of the salmon family, they are typically found in high mountain streams, where the water is clean and cold. Human encroachment, mining, grazing, logging and overfishing over the past 150 years have reduced the species to about 45 percent of its range.

Five-year reviews have been rare since they were required by 1978 amendments to the Endangered Species Act.

This one was requested by former Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne — now U.S. secretary of the interior — and the Idaho congressional delegation, who contend the species is thriving in Idaho and that restrictions on logging, mining and other activities that can degrade water quality are not needed. Environmentalists had complained the review was motivated by politics, not science.

The review concluded that multiple distinct populations of bull trout might exist and that the agency should evaluate whether these require different levels of protection.

“The health of bull trout populations varies by location, but overall, the species in the United States still needs protection,” said Ren Lohoefener, director of Fish and Wildlife’s Pacific Region.

Studying individual populations will allow the agency to focus resources on those in trouble, remove regulatory burdens where they are not needed, and provide local incentives to help recovery, Lohoefener said.

Michael Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, a Montana environmental group, said that retaining threatened status for the fish was good news.

“I think they should now focus on recovering the population to remove it from the ESA, rather than divert resources to considering if it should be listed as five distinct groups,” Garrity said. “That is a delay tactic by the Bush administration to delay recovering the bull trout.”

Wipers were first introduced into many parts of the country—Kansas, Colorado and Nebraska in particular—in the late 1970s. But it wasn’t until recent years that they’ve become the target of many flyfishers who’ve discovered the fish’s willingness to attack popular saltwater fly patterns like the clouser minnow.
The idea with their introduction was to mix a relatively small bass–the white bass–with a relatively big one: the saltwater striper. The result is a fish that combines the power of one with the fast-growth of the other to provide a  great sport and one that helps control the population of shad in many Mid-America reservoirs.
While not easy to catch, wipers get big (the world record is currently 27 pounds, 5 ounces), and they provide as much power per pound as any freshwater fish.

John Gierach’s 16th book– Fool’s Paradise –hits the shelves this month, much to the delight of his legion of fans. Here’s a profile of John that first ran in The Drake magazine:

YOU’RE A CAB DRIVER in New York City in 1971, trying to make a right hand turn at a busy Manhattan intersection but there’s some cocky bike messenger in your way and he won’t move…

…so you nudge him. Not hard, just enough to let him know that you’re in a cab and he’s on a bike and if he doesn’t move and soon you might run his ass over. But the bike messenger does a strange thing. He doesn’t move out of your way. He gets off his bike, walks to the front of your cab, and swiftly kicks your headlight in. Then he invites you to step outside and discuss the matter further. You, as the cab driver, make a wise choice and roll up the window instead. Because you’ve just met John Gierach on a bad day and getting out of your car would only make it worse.

“By that time I’d figured out what it took to live in New York City,” Gierach now says of the Big Apple incident over 30 years ago. “You didn’t take any shit.”

Gierach and I are sitting in the back room of the South Creek, Ltd. rod shop in the tiny town of Lyons, Colorado—a setting so seemingly Gierach-like that it’s hard to imagine him ever being part of any other world, much less Manhattan. Cigarette smoke fills the room as he describes how he migrated from Glenwood, Illinois, to Colorado back in the late ’60s.

“I graduated from Findlay College in Findlay, Ohio, with a major in philosophy and a minor in art and English—an absolutely worthless degree,” he says. “And I came west mostly because you could—you could do that back then, when you were 20 years old and it was the late ’60s.”

But it turns out that his degree wasn’t worthless. In fact, if you own all 13 of Gierach’s highly successful books and you think that constitutes his entire collection, you’re wrong. Because his 14th book, the one you don’t hear about, the one nobody knows exists, is actually a collection of poetry.

“I never thought I’d become a fishing writer,” he says—a rather surprising statement coming from one of the most successful fishing writers of all time. “I thought I’d be a poet or a novelist or something. I started writing about fishing because I was doing a lot of fishing anyway and I figured, ‘Hey, why not do this?’”

Like many participants in fast-growing outdoor sports, Gierach has mixed feelings about the increasingly crowded conditions he finds on the rivers he fishes. “Flyfishing has been very good to me and I make a decent living from it,” he says. “But it’s just too big and commercial. Back in the ’60s and ’70s it had this sort of cool, underground, Bohemian feel to it. And I miss that.”

Gierach addresses this issue, however, through a longtime love of hiking to high lakes and headwaters where other anglers are unwilling to go. He has never been much of a big fish guy and in 40 years of angling he’s never caught a fish over 20 pounds. He prefers not just fishing for trout, but also generally fishing for them close to home, on small streams.

“There’s so much good fishing, I just don’t see spending all that money to go someplace really exotic.” His name alone, and the publications he writes for, would get Gierach access to any fishing lodge on earth. Yet he will choose a local road trip first, at least in part because he rather prefers roughing it. One of his great lines from the 1996 title, “Another Lousy Day in Paradise,” in a chapter called ‘Travel,’ reads: “If nothing else, a road trip amounts to several days of running conversation with friends, and since good conversation is so hard to come by these days, that in itself, is worth the effort.” Amen.

It is this desire for intimate knowledge of a river, his drive to really know a place, that has limited his saltwater experience. He’s been to Islamorada but came away with his feelings for trout intact.

“I wasn’t terribly impressed,” he says. “I think if I were really interested then the thing to do would be to move there, work for an outfitter or something and really learn what’s going on.”

Though he has written instructional-type books (”Fly Fishing Small Streams,” “Fly Fishing the High Country,” “Fishing Bamboo”), Gierach has made his name and his career with the folksy, me-and-Joe stories collected in his many other books, including “Sex, Death, and Flyfishing”—now in its 20th printing—and the cult classic, “Trout Bum,” which he wrote in 1985. It is on these pages that Gierach shows his true colors as a down-to-earth guy, preferring the company of a couple good friends to the posturing of a large industry gathering. And though he’s been friends with Colorado’s great tailwater fisherman Ed Engle for even longer, nobody has appeared in more of his stories than A.K. Best. “Somebody asked me once who was the better fisherman between the two of us,” Gierach recalls. “And though it really depends on the day, I can say that A.K. is certainly more persistent. He’ll get on a ten-inch fish and just spend hours. He’s relentless.”

For his part, however, A.K. insists that Gierach is as persistent as he is, but adds that, “John is a much better nymph fisherman than me.” (Knowing both of these guys’ opinions about nymphing vs. dry fly fishing, it’s hard to tell whether this is meant as a compliment.) Gierach and Best have both long been known as purists. But even the purists have their moments. “I don’t like beadheads,” Gierach says,”but I can’t say I never fished with one. And I’ve been known to buy a Dave’s Hopper or a Royal Wulff. When you get to be known as a purist, it sort of takes on a life of its own. I might even buy a spey rod this year.”

Gierach recently turned in his 60th column to Fly Rod and Reel magazine, and FR&R’s editor, Paul Guernsey, says Gierach’s influence extends far beyond the pages of his columns and books.

“John is the angling voice of his generation,” says Guernsey.”He is probably the best known fly fisherman in the country next to Lefty Kreh. His sense of irony and introspection is outstanding and he is a very authentic, very American writer.”

Again it is Gierach’s lack of pretension that shines through. “In fly fishing there is a strong streak of snobbery,” Guernsey says. “But Gierach will turn in a column about fishing for carp or something and he’ll actually help bring some of his readers down to earth.” Guernsey adds that up to half of the stories or ideas for stories he’ll receive from aspiring writers are obvious attempts to imitate Gierach in their writing style. “Nobody can, of course,” Guernsey says. “But they all try.”

Because Gierach so enjoys both writing and fishing, I asked him one last question: “If you had to put down either your pen or your rod for a year, which would it be?” He thought for a second while his friend, Mike, in the background, gestured like he were holding a gun to his head, as if to say, “Fishing, of course. That’s a no-brainer.”

And Gierach did agree, saying, “It’s more likely that I’d need a break from writing than a break from fishing.” But lucky for his fans, he probably won’t need a break from either. “I don’t travel or fish to ‘get away,’” he once wrote, “because my life at home isn’t something I need to escape from.”

We should all be so lucky.

It’s finally here! The highly anticipated trout opener on the Lower Deschutes will kick-off this weekend. It’s one of the most anticipated weekends of the year on the Big D’.

The “upper reaches” of the Lower Deschutes, between Pelton Dam and the Northern Boundary of the Warm Springs Reservation will be open for fishing April 26th, until October 31st.

The resident “footballs” have lost some intellect as of late, this section of the river has been closed for nearly 6 months! The trout are now gorging themselves on fat 3-year old Stonefly Nymphs as well as other aquatic morsels.

f you are planning on going out to the desert to join in on the party, click the link below and we’ll break down the weekend for you.

Visitr Jakob’s extended Deschutes River Fishing Report and Weekend Forecast: http://elist.kaufmannsstreamborn.com/jakob_report_april08b.html

20th Anniversary Reel

A once-in-a-lifetime Collectors’ Edition 1988-style Big Game #2 reel. This is a precision re-engineered replica of the original Abel with the original large handle, full frame, a “beauty line” on the frame and all the other features of that classic. A collector’s dream come true individually numbered 1 to 100.

  Abel/Borski Tarpon Reel

An Abel Super 12X model reel – inspired and illustrated by world-renowned fish and wildlife artist Tim Borski. We will produce just 50 signed and numbered reels with #1 going to Borski and #2 to the non-profit Bonefish & Tarpon Unlimited to support education, conservation and research.

  No Pebble Mine Super 5N

A limited edition Super 5N – numbered 1 to 100 – in red to benefit the Sportsman’s Alliance for Alaska in their campaign to stop development of the Pebble Mine in the Bristol Bay Region. The color is symbolic of the area’s sockeye or red salmon and the Alliance’s “No Pebble Mine” campaign. Abel will donate Reel #1 and $200 per reel on all others sold.

By Pamela Dickman
The (Loveland, Colorado) Reporter-Herald

The Poudre River today becomes the third Colorado river to be listed as endangered on an American Rivers annual Most Endangered Rivers list.
It is one of 10 rivers on the national organization’s list — and currently the only one in Colorado — and was designated because of a reservoir proposal, the Northern Integrated Supply Project.

The project, if approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, would divert about 40,000 acre-feet of water per year into two new reservoirs, Glade and Galeton.

Opponents say removing that much water — 36 million gallons per day, or enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every 8 minutes — would dry up the river, which they say is the heart of recreation, wildlife, the economy and the downtown business community in Fort Collins.

“Everything that we have been saying for three years we’re getting corroborated at the national level,” said Gary Wockner of the Save the Poudre Coalition.

“This is an endangered river, and the threat is real.”

However, a proponent of the diversion project said the project wouldn’t make much difference in the Poudre.

The severity of the threat to the state’s only federally designated Wild and Scenic River and the fact that a decision on a permit is expected within the next year led to the Poudre’s ranking as the nation’s third most endangered river.

“Pulling 40 acre-feet of water from a river that is already stressed by current diversions as well as global warming would just kill this river,” said Rebecca Wodder, president of American Rivers, a national organization formed in 1973 to work for healthy rivers.

“It’s just too much.”

A panel of experts chose the Poudre and nine other rivers from more than a quarter million rivers in the United States. In previous years, the Gunnison River and Animas River in Colorado have appeared on the list.

Opponents have been trying for three years to stop the reservoir project, which involves building the 180,000 acre-foot Glade Reservoir north of Fort Collins and
the 40,000-acre-foot Galeton Reservoir near Ault.

They say water conservation is key to solving a water shortage, not pulling more water from the Poudre River.

However, the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, or Northern Water, argues that its plans won’t harm the river and will provide needed water to the 15 growing communities that are paying for the water storage project.

“If NISP isn’t built, the communities will still need water,” said Brian Werner, spokes-man for Northern Water. “It doesn’t mean the water isn’t going to get diverted. There are people lined up behind Northern Water to get that water.

“We’re vested in the region, so it makes sense for us to do it rather than a Thornton.”

The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, based in Berthoud, cares about the ecosystem and the community and keeping water for agriculture and open land, Werner said.

The project would require the district to leave certain levels in the river, but at times the Poudre would run dry just as it does today, he said.

“The river is dried up,” Werner said. “It dried up in 1907 just as it is in 2008.”

In fact, Werner pointed to another national designation. In 1996, Congress listed the Poudre River as one of the best examples of a working river in the Western United States.

That, Werner said, will not change with Northern Integrated Supply Project.

He added, “Aesthetically, I will challenge people to note much of a difference.”

ON THE NET: For more information, go to www.ncwcd.org, www.savethepoudre.org or www.americanrivers.org.

1 - Campeche, Yucatan, Mexico
The fish are close. The city is safe, friendly, and everything Cancun isn’t. But the biggest reason Campeche rules is that the stretch of mangrove creeks running north to Isla Arena might be the finest stretch of baby tarpon water on earth. It’s hard to believe it was only five years ago that the first outfitters began running trips here. The mix of Mayan ruins, affordable restaurants and hotels, Cathedral Plaza, snook, and endless shots at tarpon—both in the mangroves and out on the flats—makes Campeche tough to beat.

2 - Key West, Florida
If you can only pick one place…  There’s the history, the nightlife on Duval Street, the mix of large bones and permit, the Hemingway factor. Sure, a day on the flats here can cost more than a two-bedroom in Tulsa, but nowhere is there a better mix of big tarpon and the guiding talent to find them.

3 - Bonthe, Sierra Leone, Africa
Other than the occasional mention in conflict films like Blood Diamond and Lord of War, few people have ever heard of Sierra Leone. But Victor Sebag landed a 283-pound tarpon here in 1991, and 12 IGFA world record tarpon have come from the nearby Sherbo and Kittan estuaries. With the war officially over since 2001, lodge-rebuilding rumors have many a monster-hunter checking flights to Freetown.

4 - Islamorada/Marathon, Florida
Maybe, if it weren’t for the weather, the sea-food, the people, the lore, and the endless access to frontcountry and backcountry waters, maybe if it weren’t for that, then there might be two more perfect Florida fishing towns. Until then, there’s Islamorada and Marathon. Like Key West, without the tourist and jackass factor.

5 - Boca Grande, Florida
Nobody knows for sure why tarpon are so in love with the waters of Boca Grande Pass. But one thing is certain: When temperatures start to rise every spring around the mouth of Charlotte Harbor, there is no finer place to be on the front of a flats boat.

6 - Homosassa, Florida
In Florida fishing circles, it’s commonly believed that Boca Grande has the most tarpon and that the Keys have the most fishable flats. But if it’s May or June, and you and your twelve-weight are on a mission for the biggest tarpon that swim, you head to Homosassa. The numbers back this up—at least five world records have come from here, including both the 16- and 20-pound class—and every year threatens to add names to the 200-pound club.

7 - Isla Holbox, Yucatan, Mexico
We got on a bus in Cancun. Rode the bus north to a ferry. Took the ferry to an island. And on the island found a town with no ATMs, no pavement, and nary a whitey in sight. What it did have were boats that took us to baby tarpon, lots of baby tarpon, swimming in circles 40 feet in front of us.

8 - Manzanillo, Costa Rica
The southern Caribbean is sometimes seen as a place where only babies roam.  But many of the tarpon swimming between the coastal village of Manzanillo and the Panama border are
of the triple-digit variety. To seal the deal, add in extraordinary bird life, good numbers of jacks and snappers, and sight-
casting at Monkey Island or the Gondoca Lagoon.

9 - San Pedro, Belize
San Pedro may be an overdeveloped tourist trap, filled with cheezy, Croc-wearin’ cruise-ship types. But it still has the largest classic-style tarpon flats in the world outside of the Keys, with one flat alone running 35 miles. And every year, fish in the 200-pound range are caught here.

10 - Port of Spain, Trinidad
It was just a casual sea-kayaking trip around Trinidad’s
Chaguaramas Bay. But we couldn’t take our eyes off the
massive tarpon rolling all around us—and not a fishing boat in sight. A 177-pounder won the Trinidad Tarpon Bash  here in 2006, and for a great double-dipper, combine your trip
here with a visit to Venezuela, just seven miles away.