The following is a photo essay written by Maximilian Werner; photos were taken by Christian Werner.  Maximilian lives in Salt Lake City. His poems, creative nonfiction, essays, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in several journals and magazines, including The North American Review, Yale Anglers’ Journal, ISLE, Weber Studies, Fly Rod and Reel, Sporting Classics, and Columbia. He is also an Academy of American Poets prize winner. Mr. Werner’s essay Anglers’ Ball placed 2nd in the 2008 Robert Traver Fly Fishing Writing Award. His book Black River Dreams won …

Spring creeks are like crack to us hard core dry fly fisherman. We just can’t get enough of their crystal clear waters, their fat and healthy trout, or their prolific insect hatches that seem to bring the trout to the surface no matter what time of year it is. Indeed, they are a magnet for just about any trout fisherman.

I arrived in NC to meet up with some friends and found we were staying at a rental dig that was far nicer than my own home.

One of the perks of this annual trip to North Carolina- other than the fishing, and the fancy digs- is the warm weather.  However, this year, I left 82 degrees in the Colorado to find cold weather with strong winds for the first couple days.  The trip started out pretty grim as the fish were holed up and the catching was slow.
Then the weather …

I’ve never quite understood all the intricacies of time zones.  Sure I get the basic idea of the whole thing, but sometimes when I look at the way the boundaries of a time zone slither across the map, I am reminded of a drunken sailor staggering through town looking for the local cat house.  Nowhere does this seem more apparent than on Canada’s Gaspe Peninsula.  The Eastern Time Zone seems to reach out; as if to support the peninsula and keep it from dropping off into …

For weeks I had been calling one of the forest rangers to get the lowdown on conditions on a couple high country lakes I wanted to fish.  I was itching to get back into the high country.  I kept getting the message that the lakes were snowed in. However, the weather had been so warm that I thought I would chance it.  Figuring it would at least be nice to just get out, I headed up to the area. After tooling around, I ended up at the trail head to …