End of the Year Round-Up: Best of 2023
Highlighting the essential reads from the past year's lineup of fly-fishing articles
January 2024
We're closing the books on another year and, as always, we like to highlight the stand-out articles. Here are some of our top articles, plus our favorites from this year.
Not interested? Only looking ahead? Check out our early line up for 2024 and be sure to check back in for even more!
Your Favorites
- Timely for winter fly fishing, our top article reviews tips for how to safely walk the water. Wading, at times, feels like repeatedly falling over and over again in slow motion, so it's always good to get more ideas on how to safely wade. Find that article here: The Three Unforgivable Sins of Safe Wading.
- Next, we took a closer look at sculpin distributions across Colorado and the greater West. Perhaps surprisingly, sculpin flies sometimes work even when no sculpin are present, so we dug into the geography behind that baffling experience. Explore here: Phantom Sculpins of the South Platte
- Rounding out the top articles, we broke down some scientific findings where researchers set out to understand how fish react to other fish getting hooked. Depending on the species, the reaction varies. The researchers' methods are clever and include some awesome figures explaining their approach. Plus, the findings are fascinating for anyone who has ever repeatedly brought to net fish from the same hole. Read it here: Do Other Fish Know When a Fish Gets Hooked?
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Our Picks
- Vision is the portal to behavior, and anglers should be clamoring over more info on fish vision. At least we do... So you might enjoy revisiting this article about bass' vision, which may even have implications for other species. Trust me when I tell you this is something we're going to dig into further in the future, so keep an eye out. Find out more: More Clues on Fish Vision (Bass Edition)
- What's better than one tailwater? Two (obviously). Read here about the curious geographic phenomenon of the double-tailwater which consistently produces the largest trout across the West: The Double Tailwater Phenomenon
- Want something to chew on? Delve into the overcrowding series that covers how we ended up with crowded rivers and what we can do about it. This topic inspired a whole book's worth of info, which we broke up into 11 installments. If you just read one installment, this might be the one to start with: Overcrowding 4) How Did We Get Here? Flawed Icons.