Six years ago, I spent a season up on Montana’s Missouri River, working at Headhunters Fly Shop as “shop rat.” Days were spent staffing the chicken coop-come-fly shop, running shuttles for visiting guides and anglers, and—in rare moments off—exploring the Missouri and trying to discover the secrets of one of the most famous trout fisheries in the world.
It was a long, hot summer with its fair share of both adventures and misadventures (chronicled here in detail on ChiWulff’S Dispatches From Craig series). I learned a boatload (pun fully intended), carried my camera everywhere, managed my second bout with giardiasis, and slept on an old camping cot in a small studio apartment across from the post office in nearby Cascade, Montana. It was a summer of learning—I listened, I shot photos daily, and I wrote constantly. Really, all there was to do was fish, talk fishing, write, shoot, and anticipate my bi-monthly runs up to Great Falls for groceries.
It was awesome.
It’s been a long, weird road in the six years since that summer. Somehow I’ve now traveled to work on six continents, and photographed things I never would have dreamed of. I’ve walked the back entrance to Petra and slept outside in the Wadi Rum during a sandstorm. I’ve woken to a hippo in the middle of camp at midnight while on assignment in rural Kenya, and marveled at dangerously large night skies wheeling overhead on the northern edge of Australia. The adventures are there if you make them happen, and I’m forever grateful for the incredible people I meet along the way.
There’s something to be said for returning to the familiar places, though. This past weekend I headed up to Craig, to spend some time on the waters I’d learned the summer of ’13. Meeting me up at our old haunts was Jake Gates, who some of you may remember reading about over the years with his trout-savvy Border Collie Marley. Jake and I both worked the shop that summer, and when a skittish stray dog that no one claimed came into our lives, I don’t think either of us would have believed Marley would still be around six years later, still haunting Jake’s steps on the river.
Jake’s lovely parents were in town from Hawai’i, and his girlfriend Lynsey came along as well, crafting a fitting reunion on the banks of the Missouri. We fished for two days, talking about the old times and planning for new adventures (stay tuned… good things in the works!). The Missouri gave us the traditional late-season conditions—technical fish, windy weather and glorious scenery.
One night I sat crouched on the bank, camera held to my eye as I watched Jake cast at a pod of risers. The river behind him was changing from golden to shades of purple as the sun dropped below the horizon. Marley was hunkered not too far up the bank, her gaze fixed on the fish and following the drift of the dry flies with unerring intensity. The wind was whipping and the temperature dropping.
And it was grand.
I’d argue that you can’t really go home. (I don’t know where I’d call home anyway, these days.) But sometimes you can go back. And those moments are special.
It was really fun to pull together this series of social media posts for fly-fishing line, leader, and tippet manufacturer 
I’ve just returned from fishing in the Martha’s Vineyard Rod & Gun Club’s Annual Catch-and-Release Tournament. This was my fourth year fishing in the tournament, and it remains one of my favorite trips of the year, a rare occasion where I can focus more on the fishing and less on photography / work. Here are a few notes from the tournament in years past, originally published in The Drake (images are cell phone shots from this year):
The Martha’s Vineyard Rod and Gun Club annual striped bass catch-and-release tournament takes place every spring, drawing a crowd of local and regional anglers to the shores of the famed island. This year marked the 28th year for the event, which raises funds for the island’s annual Kids’ 
Northeast striper fishermen are a breed apart from their fly-fishing brethren, and the Vineyard is a gathering place for these stripping-basket-bearing anglers. The weekend is physically demanding; angler Paul Fersen, who has fished the area for years, calls it “astronaut training,” a loving epithet alluding to the particular style of exhaustion that comes from fishing both day and night for days on end. Many anglers will scout around the clock in the days before the tournament, grabbing a few hours’ sleep each dawn before starting the process all over again. There’s something intriguing about finding the point of exhaustion where one’s cast improves drastically before rather remarkably falling apart.
And it’s a funny thing, fishing saltwater at night. The water takes on another layer of intrigue; it’s easier to let one’s imagination run wild when thigh-deep in cold, dark water and a horseshoe crab suddenly nudges your wading boot. After all, your brain helpfully supplies, this is the home turf of Jaws. The wreck of the Orca lies around the corner, too close for comfort at 1AM under the light of a waning moon. But then, bump, bump, bump, ha! there’s a fish and all overactive thought about what else is cruising around disappears. A hoot in the darkness somewhere off to the left and the flicker of a red headlamp lets you know your teammates have hooked up too, and suddenly the cold night wind doesn’t seem so cold anymore.
This past weekend I ran off to northern Idaho to join old friend Jake Gates for a bit of rainy-day spring fishing. Jake and I first met six years ago while working the season at 
Last summer I was lucky enough to go spend some time running around 
