I love to fish for trout, and I rarely fish for anything else. Sometimes I fish for bass—and I have a blast when I do it—but on those cold, sleepless winter nights when I stare at the spots on my ceiling and dream about summer, I think about trout, not Read more…
When someone asks why I release nearly every fish I catch, I have a friend who says “Tim likes to play with his food.” I didn’t always do it this way. Much like Howell Raines, I was schooled in the Redneck Way. Sure, fishing was fun, but a bucket full Read more…
Last night I had a dream. I dreamed that a three-day rain transformed a famous river into a raging torrent, and when the river finally receded my friend Mike took me fishing. I dreamed that we didn’t catch a fish the first morning, and while we ate lunch along the Read more…
Michael Delp The Mad Angler Poems Deep Wood Press In the dreamtime, millennia ago, the Aboriginal Ancestors in Australia sang up the country, literally walked the landscape and sang it into being. Last night a bird from one of those ancient songs fell into my sleep and left a Read more…
In 1983 John Syrgemaki shot a 400 pound black bear while hunting near his home in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Still wearing a blaze-orange vest with the words DON’T SHOOT, I AM A MAN stamped across his back, John described his kill to a reporter from the region’s lone television station. “I Read more…
Michael Delp The Mad Angler Poems Deep Wood Press You pray for a second coming, the sky to open for people to be carried off, raptured. I pray each morning for whole counties to vanish, the boardrooms of big water and big oil to warp out of existence, cities Read more…
But it required a few years before I perceived what a science teacher’s job really is. The goal should be, not to implant in the student’s mind every fact that the teacher knows now; but rather to implant a way of thinking that will enable the student, in the future, to Read more…
In the sprawling territory between Princeton and Cornell, a storied river cuts and bends its way through land that is as wild today as it was when John Voelker called it “a forgotten region which was virtually ignored in the westward surge of population.” The river is home to the Read more…
A strong emergence of drakes for three straight days. Then, finally, a warm evening. Love was in the air. (click on the photo to enlarge)
I’ve read that a little brown bat eats as many as 1000 mosquitoes in an hour and a dragonfly eats hundreds per day. Some bird-house manufacturers have claimed that Purple Martins eat thousands per day, but that turns out to be a not-so-subtle deception intended to hoodwink desperate consumers into Read more…
A little humor for a Thursday: In case you haven’t seen the inspiration, here’s one of the commercials:
Here is a brief review of the first year of Madness and Magic in a video slideshow set to the tune of Upstream from the excellent album Fishing Music by Ben Winship and David Thompson. I look forward to documenting more of the adventure in 2012. For better viewing select Read more…