For the few hours that it gets dark in Alaska during the late summer, it gets really dark. Remember, there’s an almost guaranteed chance that it’s either raining, or the sky is overcast so there’s almost no chance you’re going to have any moonlight. It’s at that moment that you realize just how dark a […]
There’s so much that can go wrong when trying to catch a fish on a fly rod. There’s at a minimum 4 knots that connect the fly to the reel. Hook sets are critical to fly fishing as well, and they can be very species specific. You certainly don’t set the hook the same way on trout […]
At times I can hardly distinguish what characteristics actually define the person or the place until I arrive at the singularity where George and Yahtam are really just one and the same. I’ve mentioned before that George and Bo Jackson were good friends. They bow hunted together, and apparently while Bo was at Auburn, […]
I can recall our first return trip from Yahtam being a roughly two-hour boat ride in the steady rain. It wasn’t thick sheets of rain, but each drop was fat and consistently beat on the outer shell of your clothing like a deep rhythmic bass drum so persistent that it became almost impossible to focus […]
It’s difficult not to philosophize when discussing fly fishing. The mixture of science (objectivity) versus art (subjectivity) demands it at a certain point. In the beginning, it feels like a black art. The cast seems like something only a sorcerer could master. The mind hardly even knows where to begin at this point. The […]
There’s a hard bend in the back corner of the harbor opposite the houseboat that upon initial approach isn’t obvious. Once you make it back to farthest and westernmost point of the harbor it’s possible to see the bend cutting back to the north. A grim reminder of the harshness of navigating the waters sat […]
“Y’all did alright today, but just wait until tomorrow. We’re going to hike up through there and hit the honey hole,” George told us as Dad was cleaning the day’s catch. The term “honey hole” is widely used in fishing lore. To keep it within the realm of fishing, it’s the proverbial end of the rainbow […]
George’s explanation as to what the name means was fairly simple, “Yahtam means ‘nothing’.” The name literally means East Nothing. I can only imagine part of the reason how he came up with the name being he didn’t want anyone knowing anything about where he was fishing. This isn’t particularly uncommon amongst anglers. If you […]
I’ve recently felt very nostalgic about my past trips to Alaska. I genuinely hope to go back and fish there again someday, but I understand better now than before that I won’t be able to do what we did 10 years ago ever again. George Mann was a friend of my father and an accomplished […]
I’ve decided to change the name of this blog. For years it has — mostly sat dormant — gone by the title On The Fly. I still like that name. It makes as much sense as it did 6 years ago, although I’m not entirely convinced there aren’t tens of others out there going by […]
Tales from East Yahtam 