Category: Out of Bounds

I put the fly rod away this spring, temporarily, so I could hone my conventional tackle skills. There's a small lake near the house full of largemouth bass, and I went to work with a drop shot rig, sorting out a technique that isn't as different from fly fishing as it might seem.

My preferred plastic baits are cucurbit-colored Yamasenkos — pumpkin, watermelon and green pumpkin.

Many youngsters mistake this grinning screen shot of Robert Redford for Zach Galifianakis. The scene comes from the 1972 movie "Jeremiah Johnson," in which Redford plays the part of a mountain man in a story loosely based on the life of Liver-Eating Johnson.

I'm getting pretty stir crazy so I decided to review a "hunting" movie. This is sort of a "hunting" movie. There's certainly hunting in it. It's also sort of a good movie. Enjoyable, but not perfect.

I curled up with a good book the other day: “Dale Burk’s Montana.”

Here’s my look back at the book. It was published in 2002, but it's filled with content that dates back at least two decades earlier.

Burk’s Montana is the Montana I never knew, first hand at least. The Montana Burk describes, writing in the late ’70s, was gone before I arrived in 1992. But I learned of that Montana in other ways, from friends and later in-laws when I married into a Montana family with roots dating to the early 1900s. And I learned about that Montana from Burk himself. I went on to lay my own, tentative, Montana roots. My twin daughters were born in Missoula, one graduated from the University of Montana, though neither live in the Treasure State today.

Work keeps pulling me away, but whenever I’m not in the nation’s greatest state, I’m plotting my way back, either for the summer, or hopefully some day, permanently. 

“Dale Burk’s Montana” is available at https://www.stoneydale.com/.

I wasn't initially a fan of the movie "A River Runs Through It." The book it's based on is one of my all-time favorites, so I judged the film rather critically. Maybe unfairly so. With time and repeated viewings, I've come to love the movie as well.

We're social distancing, staying indoors, all to fight the deadly coronavirus. That's mostly bad news, but there remains a silver lining. Cooking for family has never been more important. Click here for my pozole recipe.