The DrakeCast - A Flyfishing Podcast

Montana’s Bighorn River is known throughout the world as a blue-ribbon trout stream. The fishery below Yellowtail Dam holds some of the most robust tour-per-mile numbers in the nation. But in the last decade, the river has changed. There’s more water, skinnier fish, and some say it’s just not the way it used to be. This episode of The DrakeCast takes a float down the Bighorn in search of why this...

Last week, we had a chance to catch up with Tim Evans. He's a salesman that lives in Casper, Wyoming but you most likely to know him as the man behind the Fish on the Brain podcast. We got out with Tim to throw bobbers at wary trout on a Front Range tailwater. As soon as we realized the fish weren't interested in our flies we put our rods down and got to chatting. We discussed fishing, conservatio...

A few weeks ago, I found myself in Duluth, Minnesota and the forecast was rather dicey. As you probably know, it’s pretty darn difficult to flyfish when it’s -20 degrees outside. But with the help of veteran guide Lucky Porter and photographer Hansi Johnson, we were able to make a day out on the frozen water with our eight weights and musky flies. In addition to our normal flyfishing gear, we also...

Carp aren't native to the US, but at this point, they're here to stay. This episode follows the meteoric rise of the nation's number one trashfish and how folks with flyrods began targetting them. During this story we'll hear the musical stylings of the carp loving crew that makes up the string band, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades. Many thanks to Yellow Dog Flyfishing Adventures and Scott Fly Rods for...

In this episode of The DrakeCast, we get a quick preview of the Winter 2017 issue of the Drake Magazine. Right off the bat we hear Drake Editor, Tom Bie, tell us about his favorite parts of the recently released issue. Later on, author and frequent Drake contributor Dave Karczynski tells us about two books that he just published, the first of which is titled, "Smallmouth: Modern Fly Fishing Method...

This week we head to the rivers of Northern Wisconsin in search of the illusive River Nazi. While blindly casting for these toothy critters, we talk to a few folks about the history of musky fishing and how anglers began targeting these fish with flies. Many thanks to Steve Wisner of Eau Claire Anglers, Larry Mann of Hayward Flyfishing Company, Tim Simonson with the WI DNR, and Joe Flater of Flate...

In the early 1970s, Don Wisner learned how to flyfish. It was around this time that his life began to parallel a certain flyfishing story. When Don's son, Stephen, came of age, the two spent hours together fishing the brook trout streams of Western Wisconsin. As the men grew in both age and skill, their interests took them in separate directions - Stephen wandered the world while Don embraced reli...

This week, we have a story of tradition and remembrance, and it’s actually connected to an episode that we put out a few months ago called Dresses & Can Cans. If you haven’t heard this story, definitely pause right now, go back in the feed, find episode #12, listen to it. At it’s core, it’s the story of this woman named Patti and how the wilderness saved her life. But episode #12 is also the story...

This week's episode of The DrakeCast features another flyfishing podcast that has recently hit the airwaves. Jason Rolfe is a guide at Emerald Water Anglers in Washington State, but when he's not on the water he's sitting in front of legendary flyfishing writers asking them about their history with the sport. He has coupled these interviews with live readings in his new podcast, The Fly Tapes. We...

A lot of people claim social media has killed flyfishing. But has it? In this episode of The DrakeCast we chat with parties on both sides of the divide as we suss out the positive and negative impacts social media has had on flyfishing. The backbone of this episode traces the experience of an Idaho fishing guide as well as the growth of a flyfishing company. Through these experiences of these sepa...

In episode #7 of The DrakeCast, we heard about the threatened Menominee River on the border between Michigan's UP and Wisconsin. This river had unfortunately found itself on American River's list of the ten most endangered rivers in the United States. In this episode, we look at the unfortunate body of water that occupies the number one spot on that list - The Colorado River. Throughout the story,...

Jeremy Wade, host of Animal Planet's "River Monsters," is one of the more famous fisherfolks in the industry today. I personally always saw the guy as a globe-trotting Brit who believes every fish in the water wants to kill you. Well, it turns out that Jeremy Wade is much more than that. In this episode of The DrakeCast, Wade fully embraces his fear-mongering ways to alert us of the dangers that f...

This week we travel back to the United States. In the first part of the episode, we visit a fishy hideout in the suburbs of Denver. It's there that we meet Peter Stitcher, the owner of Ascent Fly Fishing. He shows us his secret stash and reveals a few fishy tips that should help us all catch a few more trouts. We then take Peter's ideas and head into the mountains to try them out. (This story was...

Sorry for the delay folks, but The DrakeCast is back! In this episode we continue our EuroTrip to yet another island with great fishing - Iceland. Once again, we'd be targeting Atlantic salmon, but we'd also spend some time chasing wild native browns and sea run arctic char. After my time in the Faroe Islands, I hopped on a ferry to Eastern Iceland. It was there that I met Kristjan Rafnsson, one o...

This week's episode of The DrakeCast takes us to The Faroe Islands, which is a small archipelago in the North Atlantic, about halfway between Norway and Iceland. I was there to experience the culture and see if I could find a couple fish. But during my stay, what I found was an isolated country and fishery that is at an inflection point. As more tourists make their way to the Faroes, the sleepy ch...

"I've been fly fishing since I was a wee little grasshopper. Hell of a long time with the fly. To me, the only way to catch a fish really is on the fly. Spinner? Not that exciting. One salmon on the fly is better than ten on the spinner." -Connie Corcoran, the fishing manager and ghillie for Ballyduff Bridge Salmon Fishery on the River Blackwater in the south of Ireland. This week marks the beginn...

"My sister and my mother were not interested in fishing. So it was my dad and your dad and the boys. And we’d have brandy when we’d catch a fish. My dad would open the big green tackle box and bring out this silver flask and we’d all have to have a snort of brandy. Bill would light up a cigar, my dad would be lighting up a pipe. And my dad would be cold out here and we’d be fishing anyways and he’...

"We’re chasing trophy fish and it’s hard. It shouldn’t be easy. It will kick your ass. It’s physical. Big flies hurt more when they go into you and its covering miles and miles of water. But you know, none of us got into this game because flyfishing was easy. We got into it because it was a challenge." -Steve Dally of Dally's Ozark Flyfisher talking about chasing big fish on Arkansas's White River...

"I really think it's important to show the public how these streams can come back so well if we just give them a chance and make them stable and design them correctly. If you build it right, the wildlife will come back." Sometimes, a stream just needs a little plastic surgery to help it get back on track. But what are the costs of these limnological face lifts? What do we have to give up in order...

"When I was a kid, I dreamed about what it really meant to push the envelope of flyfishing. For me it was muskies. That’s what I experienced that busted up tackle and caused me to rethink how I did things and taught me a lot of hard lessons. But going to Sudan was like that to the nth degree. It’s like putting the whole musky thing through a kaleidoscope of LSD." -Russ Schnitzer Thanks to our spon...

I met James Thull in a stuffy room on the second floor of Montana State University’s library. Shaved head, goatee, Gandhi glasses--he looks as though he just stepped off the set of a white-washed kung-fu flick from the 70s. He would have been cast as the gatekeeper of a secret-holding shrine in some mythical land. Depending on whether or not you’re into fishing, his real job might be more interest...

The DrakeCast is a flyfishing podcast put together by the folks behind The Drake magazine. Many thanks to our friends at Yellow Dog Flyfishing Advenutres and Scott Fly Rods for their continued support. This week, we go into the story behind a killer smallmouth fishery in the northern Midwest. But this great fishing might not be around for that much longer. Disagreements between competing interests...

Episode #6 of The Drake Magazine's new flyfishing podcast follows a pack of good dudes through the mosquito-laden farm fields of the upper midwest as they search for fun times and fishes. Along the way, the group of friends find bugs, beers, and big browns. But they also run into a voice from the past who warns them about the future. We also hear from fisheries biologist Dr. James Diana on why bro...

The DrakeCast is a flyfishing podcast produced by the folks at The Drake Magazine. This episode takes us to the great state of Kentucky where we look at our nation's aging infrastructure. We talk to fisheries biologists, guides, and locals as we discover just how difficult it is to keep a river alive when everything seems to be going wrong. This is the story of one dam and one river, but it makes...

The DrakeCast is a flyfishing podcast brought to you by the folks behind The Drake Magazine. This episode of the podcast introduces our listeners to the legendary Clyde - The Drake Magazine's official pimpmobile. We ride with Clyde on a journey from the ice fields of Northern Wisconsin, to downtown Chicago where we hang out with the guys at Chicago Fly, and then continue up to the Pere Marquette R...