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Ryan Sparks

Ryan Sparks

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Gear

Protect Ya Rod! How to Build Bulletproof Fishing Rod Tubes for Under $20
We’ve all been there. You try to sneak in a couple hours of fishing after work, but in the rush to get to the water your rod gets slammed in the car door, a guide breaks from bouncing in the truck bed, or your reel picks up a few new dings. For less than $20 you can build a durable rod tube that will prevent this from happening and keep your rods in mint condition for years to come.
The most important material for making your own rod tube is ABS...

Freshwater

Hidden Honey Holes: How to Hunt and Fish the Margins
“You can’t understand wilderness unless you’re familiar with the 40-acre wood lot.” -Jim Harrison
Marginal, small, under-the-radar patches of habitat offering fantastic hunting and fishing opportunities exist across the continent. These places often go unnoticed, hidden in plain sight. Hunters and anglers usually gravitate toward large wilderness areas or big lakes and rivers, thinking there will be less competition and more game—or so the...

Fly

No New Nose Piercings: How to Fly Fish in the Wind
Wind is one of fly fishing’s biggest challenges. Whether fishing fresh or saltwater, the breeze make casting difficult and at times impossible. With spring on its way in many parts of the country, fly anglers are eager to get outside, but howling spring winds cause many of them to compulsively check the forecast and wait for a calm day instead. After a long winter anticipating lakes and rivers thawing, there’s no reason to stay inside. Learning...

Restore Cork Handles and Bring New Life to Your Fishing Rods
Dirt, fish slime, blood, sweat, stink bait— chances are your fishing rod’s handle has all those things rubbed deep into the cork. Throw in hours of sun scorching, slamming in rod holders and beach spikes, occasional drops, or perhaps the teeth of a new puppy, and it’s easy to see why the cork is dried out, cracking, and chipped. Some anglers take pride in their handle’s battle-worn appearance and fish it until it crumbles in their hand like a...

Freshwater

How to be a Fish Bum: Lessons from the Best
“If you’re too successful to fish whenever you want, one could argue that you’re not really a success.”  -John Gierach
John Gierach coined the term “trout bum” in his 1986 book of the same name. He used the phrase to affectionately refer to hardcore anglers who devoted all their time and money to fishing for trout. “A trout bum,” Gierach wrote, “is someone who has made fishing the center of his life. Everything else is secondary...

Upland Birds

How Not to Act Around Someone Else’s Bird Dog
I grew up around bird dogs. As a kid, my dad bred and trained English pointers. We had anywhere from five to 10 dogs at a time, and I’ve had a dog of my own since the fourth grade. Having a good bird dog is like owning a boat or a prime whitetail lease—you get to pick who tags along. I’ve hunted with a variety of people, from first time hunters to seasoned veterans and everything in between. The first thing to understand about most dog owners is...

Freshwater

The Future of Mom-and-Pop Fishing Shops
I’ve always loved hometown tackle stores. The kind of places with “Beer, Bait, Ammo” advertised in neon out front. Some of them stick to the basics: hooks, sinkers, bait, and licenses. Others are highly specialized tackle warehouses with unique lures for local waters and up-to-date intel on what’s biting and where. They’re places where you can grab what you need and go, or hang out, talk fishing, and not feel pressured to buy anything. Sadly, I...

Cooking Techniques

Stop Using the Word “Gamey”
My wife and I rarely buy meat from the grocery story, instead opting for the variety of game meat and fish stored in our freezer. When we have people over for dinner, we might cook quail, deer, duck, goose, pheasant, some of the fish we’ve recently caught, or any number of wild things most Americans aren’t accustomed to eating. In my mind, our chest freezer is a literal treasure chest and I’m always excited to prepare wild game for uninitiated...

Freshwater

Make Your Own Damn Lures
When I moved to Ontario, our neighbor’s teenage son helped us unload boxes. Spying copious boxes labeled “fishing,” the boy looked at me with excitement. He said he had been fishing almost every day that summer, and I told him to pick out something as a gift for helping us.
He was a little confused when he opened the first box and found wads of flamboyantly colored feathers and semi-preserved animal skins.
“What is this stuff?” he asked
I...

Fly

How Fly Fishing Made Me a Worse Fisherman
Bowhunting sparked my interest in fly fishing. When I first picked up a bow as a teenager, it brought a new set of challenges and added depth to a sport I already loved. When I bought my first fly rod some years later, I knew absolutely nothing about fly fishing, but assumed it would be the bowhunting equivalent to fishing, and, in many ways, it was. I quickly spiraled down the long-rod rabbit hole. Fly fishing became an obsession, one that...