Category Archives: Home

Woof!

Up to camp during the Dog Days. Siriusly. I recruited (without any trouble, frankly) friend Lou Ureneck to join me. I warned him that the fishing would be poor-to-really-poor, which did not discourage him, which was good because I really wanted him there for other reasons. Lou is the esteemed former editor of the Portland […]

Angling With Al (Einstein)

Einstein. Pretty smart guy, right? In Maine, were he alive today, he’d qualify as wicked smart. I mean, he came up with that amazing formula that explains just about everything: e=mc². I think the e stands for everything. Everything equals mass times speed. Squared. Brilliant. So why am I talking about Al Einstein, brilliant and […]

Flyfishing, Baseball, Ted Williams, and Me

(The Virtual Angler has been in hibernation but has been roused from his slumber by the distant sound of bat striking ball and the unmistakable scent of Spring in the air.) The day after the shock of Super Bowl LII plunged Patriot Nation into a darkness deeper than a CMP blackout, the sun rose at […]

Angling Questions, Fishy Answers

Anglers are forever being asked by non-anglers, “Why do you fish?” They ask it in the tone of voice they might use when picking up a dead mouse, as though it were some disfigurement or character flaw. We anglers have a hard time answering the question, because we cannot fathom how another homo sapiens could […]

A Brief History of Vise

When I first started doing it I did it every chance I got. My father saw me doing it and warned me that if I kept it up I’d go blind. We’re talking, of course, about tying flies. Fly-tyers have been around for a long, long time. Forget about the revered Isaak Walton, the 17th […]

Auld Lang Syne. Whatever.

What New Year’s Eve is really for is not so much to celebrate the arrival of a new year as to blow off the steam accumulated in your boiler under the terrible pressure of Christmas. Yeah, sure, Auld Lange Syne and all that, but the auld acquaintance we’re trying to put in the rear view […]