Author: douglaspaton
The posthumous adventures of George Graw, fly fisher
•
George Graw and I started fishing together about two months after his death. Although neither of us knew it at the time, George and I met towards the end of his life. We met through our local fly fishing club and got to know each other better once I joined…
My side of the mountain
•
Sometime around the time the shooting started, I realized I lost my net. Everything happened so fast and my only thoughts were around trying to avoid getting shot, not picking up all my gear. As intense as that was in the moment, it passed quickly. A few blasts from my…
800,000 words later…
•
Sometime around my last post, things got busy. I was getting more writing work than ever, and it was great. But, it meant that the time and energy I had to spend on writing for the blog dipped, which wasn’t so great. Time passed. I wrote… …and wrote… …and wrote……
Three days in Alberta
•
Life has a funny way of repeating itself. This summer, as I was getting ready to visit Southern Alberta for a fews days off fishing with my brother, my wife turned to me and said, “Do you know what you were doing on this day 9 years ago?” After a…
One Last Cast
•
A few years ago, a friend and I got together for what would become the first of many fishing trips together. We did some research, found a place to stay and booked our trip. Both of us were pretty excited about the trip and in the moths and weeks that…
Golden Stoneflies – My Six-Legged Obsession
•
As I slowly become a better angler and better at things like reading the water and paying attention to what’s going on around me, I’ve started to develop an appreciation for some of the flies that I’ve had in my box for a long time, but never used. Few flies…
In Need of an Anchor
•
I have been in need of an anchor lately. It was something that I hadn’t really realized until I read this post by my buddy Walt over at Rivertop Rambles, but as soon as I started I realized that’s what I had been experiencing. Winter does that to anglers. The…
A Creek of One’s Own
•
When I was about 12 years old, my best friend’s dad bought a house on the opposite end of the island we were living on at the time. When I asked him why his dad had bought the place–they already had three places that I knew about–he told me that…
Chasing Rumours
•
The fishing season is winding down and, as tends to happen, my thoughts are drawn to the year’s fishing. As I’ve talked about in the past, it was a bit of a funny year. Forest fires, courses, backcountry closures, smoke and everything you can think of made getting out on…
The Road Block
•
Exploring, and the activities that go along with it like fishing, is a funny thing. You can plan and plan and plan out your trek to the Nth degree, cover every square inch of the area you’re in with your map book, Google Maps and prior knowledge and still not…