He didn’t crack shad by going louder, he got quieter.
“Painting shad is one of the hardest things I’ve worked on. It’s not about bold colors or sharp contrasts it’s all about really subtle transitions that are easy to miss but make a huge difference,” said Zorba.
Color shifting is the difference maker. 15 years at the bench and it finally clicked. It’s all about the blend…
“The tricky part is that shad don’t really have clean lines. Everything kind of blends into each other soft fades and slight color shifts. You’ll get hints of green, purple, blue depending on the light and angle and that’s incrdibly hard to replicate with pearl paints,” said Zorba.
Photo & Story by U/Mr_Zorba @zorba_baits
The old record was 14 pounds from 1998.
Richard Courtright Jr. was competing in a derby alongside several other anglers when he landed the record-breaking trout. “The drag was really loose so it could do whatever it wanted to” he later told CT Insider. “It felt like fighting a piece of plywood.”
Courtright’s fish was what’s known as a “helper fish” reared at the nearby Kensington Hatchery. Hatchery staff use these aggressive rainbows to encourage more timid Atlantic salmon to feed on high-protein pellets.
Story by @travishallmedia
Montana just reignited one of the biggest public land debates in the West.
The Montana governor’s office now says corner crossing is trespassing, reversing previous guidance and advising game wardens to issue citations to hunters and anglers accessing public land this way.
Now, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers has filed a lawsuit challenging that decision.
BHA President and CEO Ryan Callaghan says it’s time for a real resolution that protects both public access and private property rights. The organization previously helped lead the landmark Wyoming corner crossing case that legalized the practice across six Western states.
“For generations, Montanans have responsibly corner crossed public lands to hunt, fish, and recreate without ever being found guilty of trespass,” BHA said in a recent statement.
Follow Field & Stream for more coverage by @travishallmedia .
One man’s trash is another man’s tool.
Most people throw wine corks away, Craig Caudill sees wilderness tools. Caudill is a federally recognized survival and man tracking expert who has spent decades teaching wilderness survival, navigation, and fieldcraft to U.S. military personnel, first responders, and thousands of civilians through his Nature Reliance School. He’s also completed two separate 30 day wilderness expeditions carrying nothing but a knife.
This is the same Field & Stream survival expert who recently explained how to cook worms on a hot rock in the woods, which probably explains why he notices practical uses for things most people overlook.
And honestly, some of the wine cork uses in his latest guide are so obvious you’ll wonder why you never thought of them sooner including improvised fishing bobbers, fire starters, trail markers, and flotation aids for critical gear during river crossings.
Comment “CORK” for the full guide from Craig Caudill.
Andrew Greene has fished all over the country and spent time in more bait shops than he could count. But there aren’t many places left that feel like Tom’s.
When he stopped in recently, Radar kept saying the same thing: “Buddy, this is the last of its kind.”
Greene wrote about the Morristown hole-in-the-wall in “Put Tom’s On Your Radar,” a grease-under-the-fingernails profile featured exclusively in the newest edition of the Field & Stream Journal, the Traditions Issue; Volume 131, No.1.
Want more stories like this? Become an 1871 Club Member and get the Field & Stream Journal delivered straight to your doorstep.
Story by @andrewgreenefishing
Video by @naturedavee
This monster sturgeon crushed the Minnesota state record after an intense hour-long fight by angler Travis Keating.
Lake sturgeon have rebounded in the Rainy River (which flows out of the Boundary Waters) after years of overfishing in the late 1800s and early 1900s. “With the passage of clean water legislation in the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially the Clean Water Act of 1972, the sturgeon population started to recover, as water quality and habitat conditions improved,” an MDNR press release states. “Now reproduction is successful in most years.”
Minnesota’s previous catch-and-release record for lake sturgeon measured 78.5 inches with a smaller 29.5-inch girth. MDNR estimated that 2019 fish at roughly 120 pounds, a full 45 pounds lighter than Keating’s. The International Game Fish Association last recorded an all-tackle world record for lake sturgeon in May 1982.
Full story by @travishallmedia
Riley Green says growing up in Alabama meant always having dogs around, and that hunting eventually pulled him into labs and duck dog training. He says Carl, Jazz, and the rest of his dogs are family. “I want to take care of them the best way that I can,” Green said.
That includes Carl the Cowboy Corgi, who’s become a regular fixture beside Green everywhere from backstage at concerts to turkey hunts and Alabama farm country. Hunting dog or not, Carl still spends plenty of time outdoors chasing livestock around the farm.
@packprovisionspet was developed for active, working, and sporting dogs, with a focus on performance-driven nutrition rooted in science. The lineup includes dry and wet food, treats, and supplements designed to support dogs before, during, and after activity.
Available nationwide through @tractorsupply and online, Pack Provisions draws from more than 150 years of Field & Stream outdoor heritage to build guide-rated nutrition for dogs that spend real time outdoors.
He makes GIANT plugs to catch monsters.
Gary Soldati has been handcrafting striped-bass plugs that sell out in one to two minutes flat. His Giant Pike lures aren’t just baits; they’re functional pieces of art, built one block of northern white cedar at a time.
At 74 years old, Soldati still suits up in a wetsuit and swims out to barnacle-covered rocks at night, rod in hand, in the name of research. And fun. Inside his workshop, every plug is shaped, sanded, and painted by hand in batches of 80 to 100. The precision in the scale patterns, the lifelike profile, the swimming action; every detail is deliberate. “I take great pride in seeing them swim correctly,” he says. For serious anglers and collectors alike, that pride is impossible to miss.
Read the full story by Ryan Chelius in the newest edition of the Field & Stream Journal, the Traditions Issue; Volume 131, No.1
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Story by @ryan_chelius
Photos by @jesse_burke
Typically, Alaska bush planes don’t offer complimentary lost baggage recovery but Callen Davis is one hell of a bush pilot.
Tent, 7 days of food, glass, gear, extra layers & the sleeping bag still almost got left behind…
@donnie_vincent probably would’ve hunted anyway. That’s part of hunting caribou in Alaska and why he keeps going back. Caribou don’t reward hurry, and they don’t tolerate forcing outcomes. The longer he’s hunted them, the less he worries about controlling the hunt and the more he trusts the country to give something back when it’s ready.
Check out “The Way Back” — Donnie’s film about why he keeps returning north.
On May 7, cancer succeeded in doing what Illinois mobsters, the People’s Army of Vietnam, the Viet Cong, and various Middle Eastern terrorists, failed to do, by ending the life of Philip Caputo. Phil, like Ernest Hemingway, was a major American writer who loved the outdoors, particularly hunting, and wrote about it. Field & Stream was lucky enough to have him grace its pages in many issues. One of his finest contributions, “The Old Man and the Mountains.”
In his 84 years, Caputo wrote about everything. He began as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune in 1968 and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for exposing political corruption. He continued for the Tribune as a foreign correspondent until 1975, covering most of the really unpleasant places in the world, and survived both a kidnapping by terrorists and a bullet in the ankle. He covered the fall of Saigon in 1975, and then retired from reporting to write full time. In the course of his career, he produced 19 books, both fiction and nonfiction, as well as magazine articles that are probably beyond count, and he was much in demand as a lecturer and commentator.
But what he will be remembered for is A Rumor of War, which was published in 1977, and is the account of his combat tour in Vietnam as a Marine Corps infantry officer. It’s been translated into 15 languages, has sold 2 million copies, and is the story of a journey from idealism to bitter disillusionment. Rumor, virtually since its publication, has been acknowledged as one of the two or three greatest books on Vietnam.
Phil was a man of extraordinary courage and limitless talent. May he rest in peace; God knows he’s earned it.
By David E. Petzal // 🔗 in story to read the full tribute.
Throwback to a few unbelievable hawgs from the IGFA record book — some of the biggest bass ever caught.
The kind of fish that still get talked about long after the mounts yellow out. Archival Project // @fieldandstream x @yuenglingbeer
