Happy New Year to all my fishy friends & family! 🤘 If you're reading this on New Year's Day, I'm likely in the car headed back down south. I'm taking the scenic route through Virginia, Tennessee, & North Carolina to do a little scouting of new to me waters for 2026. May even fish one of them along the way, it's supposed to be almost 50 degrees on Friday & Saturday in western North Carolina.

Merry Christmas!Hoping you got everything under the tree (and at the end of your line) you were wishing for! Happy Holidays! *Pre-Photoshop components “liberated” from Explore Rentals & Movieweb.com This is a continuation of the series of poorly executed and sporadic “Festive Fly Fisher” Photoshop posts previously found HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE. This is old school copy, paste, and magic eraser sorcery. No AI was used in the desecration of these images.

Man, this December's been a grind. I look up and it's already the 20th! What the heck?!? An inflatable cow at a local Chick-fil-a Work has just absolutely taken everything out of me this year. But thankfully, ecommerce "Christmas Cutoff" is pretty much upon us, so I can at least use the actual Christmas holiday as an opportunity to unwind, chill out, even if only for a day or two.

I snuck out last weekend to hit a pond I like to fish on occasion. I haven't fished it in a few years as there's been a lot of development in and around it, and it's not quite as easy to access. That said, with some nice weather, I thought it would be a good opportunity to try out that new…

Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! It's an honor to have you stop by this corner of the internet. I hope you're all able enjoy today with friends, family, or doing whatever brings you happiness. As for me? Lilly & I are currently watching the National Dog Show before the two of us and K.C. head over to the in-laws for dinner (& to watch football) later this afternoon. Just how the pilgrims did it. 🦃

Well, "amazing" might be an overstatement, but it was fun getting some packages at the door again... Thank you Mr. McFeely! Remember when I said I had one more in me? I guess I didn't. Work reared its ugly head the Thursday and Friday I had hoped to escape to the hills, and it just didn't happen. Maybe I'll sneak another trout trip in before the end of the year.

Enter for a chance to win more than $4,500 in gear and more! Anchored Outdoors has put together a great giveaway with gear to win from Abel, Skwala, YETI, Terns, Water Master, Airflo, Rick Hinderer Kn...

Cheeky Fishing recently released a pretty bold version of their popular Burst reel. The Bodacious Burst has a very '80s neon pink spool that sits inside a black frame and definitely stands out in a sea of otherwise boring black and silver fly reels. The drag knob and reel seats also feature a contrasting "pop" of color too. It's kind of similar to what…

It was a nice little surprise to see Ben Smith from Arizona Wanderings pop up in my socials last week. Ben's a talented writer, outdoorsman, and most importantly, a T! Party alum. 🤘 As such, it was cool to see Ben featured on Dave Stewart's Wet Fly Swing Podcast talking about trout, carp, and other outdoor pursuits that he enjoys in Arizona.

Enter to Win the Cast and Blast Giveaway!!

I feel like I should be owning every single piece of merch in RepYourWater's "Squatch & Release" collection. I could pretty much roll into the office wearing something different everyday, right? Santa, I've been very good (I swear) and really like trucker hats and lightweight hoodies...

Time to award(?) another ASTTDSC mention. Today, it goes to friend of Troutrageous! and a super fun and fishy guy, Justin Carfagnini. Or as most probably know him, CARF. CARF is one heck of a funny dude, I've been reading his blog CARF OUTDOORS forever and in more recent years, as is the trend, following his socials. His Instagram account…

In yesterday's post I alluded to some new-to-me flies I'm adding to my fly boxes. They're a bit in shambles following the summer, so a bit of rehab is necessary if I'm going to head north in a few weeks. These two beadhead soft hackle patterns were bought, not tied myself, but I'm excited to give them a go... Brent's Warbird…

It's a fairly famous meme, but it's also how I feel right about now... Typically, my trout fishing season shuts down in mid October as work starts to really consume most of the energy in my life and I begin to focus on just getting through the rest of the calendar year in one piece. Retail can be a particularly stressful occupation, especially in November & December.

Haven't done one of these in a while. Actually haven't watched many fly fishing videos either, so I've got more than a few videos to list today! In my ongoing homage to the The now discontinued Orvis News blog (R.I.P., the old URLs don't even work anymore) and it's Friday Fly-Fishing Film Festival posts, here's this week's sampling of fly fishing or otherwise fishy films.

I enjoyed this episode of The DrakeCast podcast very much. I think you will too. It's about the stocking of salmon in Alaska, the impact on the ecosystem, and other facts and miscellany. Rather than a typical "interview style" podcast (there is a tiny bit of that at the end), It's actually a print article read aloud by author George Rogers, a writer who splits his time guiding in Alaska and teaching in New York state. Give it a listen.

At times it makes me a little sad that blogging isn't much of a "thing" anymore. Sure, there are still really good blogs out there to read, (even good fishing blogs). For example check out the Good Reads links in my site navigation for some standouts. I am really happy that Jason Tucker decided to regularly chronicle his 2025 Hunting Journal…