The Best Fly Fishing is Everywhere - 07.04.2025
Ramblings & Readings, Creativity & Conservation, Happenings & Hope
My Fishy Friends,
Summer is officially here and weekends are slipping past like river currents around submerged legs. Do we hold firm or go along for the ride? Staycations or fill the calendar with trips? Yes, of course!
Cheers,
Jesse
Banner photo: To the other side, an old fly rod and a fresh beer in hands.
TBFFIE Archive
As a reminder — for subscribers both new and old — I keep an up-to-date archive of each and every one of these newsletters on my website's blog. So if ever you’re looking for some readings or videos or quotes, browse away! My two most-clicked editions are from 7/26/2024 and 4/18/2025.
The blog also keeps all the essays that I share through the newsletters. A couple favorites (at least according to YOU, dear readers!) are To Set or Not To Set (the hook) and The High, The Hangover & The Healing.
Peripatetic Poets
Have you had the experience in which you find yourself in conversation with someone whose beloved author(s) or artist(s) are the same as yours? This happened to me in a Freeflow Institute writing workshop over the spring and it helped to further bring together nine folks spread across the country who were connected only over Zoom. Chandra Brown, founder of Freeflow, penned an essay speaking of her experiences with these beloved authors of ours; check it out here. She writes, “The paths of peripatetic poets run like rivers over this landscape.”
Our Power
In her essay, “Our Power,” Jane Fonda writes:
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that politicians don’t wake up one day and realize right from wrong. Rather, once they’re in office, social movements put pressure on them to do the right thing.
It seems Our Power did indeed cause (some) politicians to do the right thing, at least when it comes to public lands: last Saturday, thanks to a national uprising of anglers, hunters, boaters, campers, birders, outdoors-people and public land advocates, the public land sell-off was defeated. Read about it here, via Backcountry Hunters & Anglers.
The Golden Trout Project
Here’s another feel-good story: Trout Unlimited’s Golden Trout Project. Based in the southern Sierras of California, this beautiful, endemic trout species has benefitted from of over 30 years of restoration, monitoring, collaboration, and volunteer efforts. Watch the film to learn more about this extensive effort and feel a bit of hope. As TU’s Jessica Strickland says in the film, “There’s always a reason to care as an angler, in my mind… how can you not care?”
V-slick
It’s that smooth-as-silk tongue of water, tinted green in Idaho, or blue-green in British Columbia, or red-brown in the desert Southwest, or silvery gray in Alaska, the richness and depth of the V-slick’s color determined by the nature of the river, in what stage of runoff, and whether or not there’s a dam upstream.
~ From Pam Houston’s essay “The Tongue”
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© Jesse Lance Robbins, 2025
