The day after John Prine died, I drove out to the stretch of river between Alcova Dam and Grey Reef Reservoir to check on a pair of ospreys I had seen two weeks before. The first time I saw them, the female was tending the nest, while the male was fishing the slides and turnouts along the public…
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Springtime fishing in Wyoming is something I always want to share with others. I’ve introduced dozens of fishermen to the North Platte over the years. But this week—in the spirit of social distancing—I had to go alone. My dogs came along, of course, but I couldn’t bring a friend. My friend Dave…
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“This is what we get for catching all of those easy fish in May,” I said to Brent as the gale force winds strafed us. We were crawling over snow-covered boulders in Fremont Canyon trying to reach a pool that looked fishy. It was midday, but the canyon was shrouded in shadow. The sunlight couldn’t…
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What can be said about the shortest days of the year in Wyoming? I survived, I guess. And I avoided financial damage by staying off of the internet fly fishing sites and tossing the glossy gear catalogs immediately into the trash. In one brief lapse of judgement, I found myself in our local fly shop…
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I have to say, it was alarming to see two bulldozers moving material in the main channel of the North Platte River just below the Poplar Street Bridge a few weeks ago. This part of the river has always been a source of mild interest for me. Like many of the fly fishermen who fish out of Casper, my…
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Years ago, when I was wealthy, I had two deer stands that overlooked the North Platte River. They were forty miles apart, one up near Bessemer Bend, and one close to Douglas. Both afforded a great view of the river, each was close enough to the water’s edge to hear the trout sipping flies on those…
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People who know me know my feelings about dry fly fishing on Grey Reef. I’m agnostic at best when it comes to floating dries along the banks of Bessemer Bend or out at Lusby’s. I’ll go along with it, I’ll stand there with my comrades and pretend that, at any minute, the surface of the river will…
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In the mid-90s I lived in a craftsman two-story within walking distance of the University of Wyoming campus in Laramie. The house was so close to the university that frequently errant Frisbees landed in the front yard. My roommate was Patrick Amelotte, a graduate student of English who had just…
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In a nondescript bungalow in North Casper, Tom Loepp stretches canvases, paints, feeds his cat “Squish”, and goes for coffee with some of his lifelong friends. But, mostly he paints. He paints every day. Through luck and by being in the right place at the right time, I met Tom some fifteen years…
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Between the raw spring snowstorms, and the brilliant sunny days that make you believe winter has retreated for good, I received a phone call from a friend in Sheridan. Mark is one of the few people I’ve met through writing. He and his group of bird hunters saw an article I wrote for Wyoming…
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