George was a record-chaser in many ways. You could tell it motivated him. He took plenty of opportunities during boat rides or conversation under the tarp at dinnertime talking about the various records he’d caught and dissect the IGFA procedures for documenting his potential records — a total 39 during his lifetime. You can look […]
It’s difficult to think about fly fishing for carp and not let an overwhelming sense of nihilism creep in. Chances are it already did and that’s how you got here. What switch in a fisherman’s brain trips that pushes them to go after carp? It’s not for the sheer enjoyment of catching fish; otherwise, they’d […]
Is a Clouser minnow a fly or a jig? The pragmatist in me says that because it’s cast using fly line then it is a fly. The puritan in me says it’s presented the same as a jig and therefore isn’t necessarily a fly. If you tipped a nymph with a piece of a wiggler […]
*This entry is a small departure from regular Alaska-based material. A detour, if you will. You can expect more of these moving forward as I’d like for this space to become more about fishing stories from everywhere instead of just from trips to Alaska.* Any place will be associated with the people that inhabit it. […]
*This entry is a small departure from regular Alaska-based material. A detour, if you will* There’s a fine mixture of context that can explain why someone would want to trudge out into near-freezing temperatures to try and catch a fish. Granted, if there was access to coldwater fish like trout then that’s a different story. […]
Around the time I was 15 or so George decided to teach me to fly fish. A few years earlier I killed my first deer with him (I still have a hunter’s orange ball cap that reads “I Killed My First Deer With George P. Mann”) and caught fish in the ponds on their property […]
It’s hard to be in any moment and know what it means. This entire blog is devoted to just that concept. Any moment worth experiencing is going to be pouring over with more goodness and meaning than one would be able to process at the moment. How many times did your grandparents or parents warn […]
I’m no expert when it comes to Southeast Alaska and all that it has to offer. We took a couple of trips there with George and they were indeed life-changing experiences, but there’s still so much about the area and what it has to offer to fly fishermen then what I’ve experienced. Still, that’s not […]
It’s come to my attention that all of the posts pertaining to Tales from East Yahtam are untitled and fairly incoherent as far as any narrative or story arch is concerned. In short, I just started telling random stories as a photograph or memory would prompt me to and I understand how any new — […]
We had one native that visited us continually while in East Yahtam. Whenever dad would finish cleaning the fish for the day he would place the remnants on the rocks of the hightide-creek in front of the camp, and during dinner, we would receive a visit from a big male black bear. “We’ve named him […]
