Announcing what should be one of our most fun projects for the season – The Drive.

Two fly fishermen.

A 1983 CJ7 with a top road speed of 45 mph, no working gas gauge and a soft top coming apart the the seams.

Almost 2100 miles of open road from Montana to Texas.

Two weeks to do it.

The 11 Commandments for The Drive:

• Thou shall fish every day.
• Thou shall strive to fish every fishable water en route.
• Thou shall treasure smaller waters.
• Thou shall treasure native fish.
• Thou shall drive no more than 15o miles per day.
• Thou shall record  only HD video.
• Thou shall drive only on back roads.
• Thou shall not push the Jeep beyond 45 miles per hour.
• Thou shall seek out local expertise, fly shops and good fellowship.
• Thou shall not discharge thy firearms unless absolutely necessary.
• Thou shall survive without a radio in the jeep.

More blathering about the project here on Chi Wulff.

Tags: Out and About

It’s been a while since we’ve thrown something up on the blog.  Damn, it’s almost been 6 weeks!

The late winter / early spring weather here in the neighborhood hasn’t felt very spring like, though the sun has just come out (it’s almost noon) and it looks like there’s a fair amount of new snow in the hills from the latest storm.

Runoff has dampened a bit on the area waters – driving by the Gallatin (near Four Corners) yesterday evening revealed much improved water that was quite a bit lower and stained a bit but not that dirty.  It looked eminently fishable.  Probably not so this morning given the heavy rains through the night and new snow melting as we speak.

Doesn’t really matter – there’s always some fishing to be done somewhere.

We’re pretty pumped about some new stuff we’re working on for the late spring and summer.  We’ve been shooting and will continue to work on a complete update of our Rivers in Motion series – our goal is to have the bulk of the field work wrapped up by the 4th of July of weekend.

For a variety of reasons that include both play and work (note the order of placement) part of our team is headed to the Lone Star state for a while.  Jake was down scouting recently along the coast in Rockport and Port Aransas and grabbed a pic of a gulf shrimper coming back in – he opined that the bikinis made up for the wind and haze at the beach than day.

Though not being discussed a great deal right now, it appears that tarpon have returned in decent numbers to the southernmost Texas coast – we’ll be down there filming this summer.  We’re also working on a documentary project looking at how the oil disaster in the gulf is impacting and will impact fly fishing – we think we’ll going to focus primarily on Louisiana, though by all indications a great deal of the coastal gulf could be changed for a long time.  To quote Henry Fonda in Spencer’s Mountain – damn, damn, triple damn, hell.

Southern Montana is a whole ‘nother universe compared to Central and Coastal Texas.

No doubt the food is a lot better down south (doesn’t some genuine Texas ‘que sound great for lunch?) and the bikini season is a lot longer in Texas than here.

More to come.

Tags: Out and About

Spring can sometimes seem a long time coming here in southwestern Montana.

This morning finds a fresh layer of snow on the ground with more falling now (as it has most of the morning).  The weather gurus say it’s 37 degrees with a bit of a breeze from the north right now.

St. Patrick’s Day (just two days ago) found us basking in the sun with the high 64 at my house; the lion’s share of snow in town, at least in areas with any sun exposure, had melted.

A quick run up Gallatin Canyon that afternoon proved that the early spring melt was elbowing it’s way into the lower elevations – it was a toasty 55 or so in the Big Sky Meadow.

We caught a cascade of water pouring off the roof of a local resort south of Big Sky….

Tags: Out and About

Spent a bit of time yesterday afternoon running over to the Missouri (target Craig) with Jake and my wife to do a bit of scouting.

Fewer fishers out that expected – it was breezy (yep, it’s the Missouri), in the high 40s with filtered sun.  The few boats we saw typically had one fisher fishing and one bundled up looking pissed – see below….

There was more than just a bit of new green growth around; bankside bushes are budding and critters are waking up….

Looks like the Mann Gulch Memorial near the Wolf Creek bridge has a new coat of paint.

If you’ve not read Young Men and Fire (by Norman Maclean who authored “the book”) you must.  He offers a great account of the men and the circumstances that led to one of the most impressive disasters in the history of fighting forest fires in the US.  Exhaustively research and thoughtfully written it’s well worth your time.

We’ll be back on the Missouri soon (maybe next week) for a film shoot……

Tags: Out and About

Video equipment check on the lower Madison today – nearly 50 with diffused sunlight.  Damn nice.

Tags: Out and About