Falling into place: Autumn brings abundant hunting and fishing opportunity

I don’t think I’ve ever caught a fish on a Fall Favorite — one of the classic steelhead flies.

Still, I’ve always loved the pattern. With an orange wing, red hackle and tinsel body, it’s sparse but stunning at the same time — not unlike the season it’s named for.

It reminds me of the fiery brightness of leaves that will soon change color and the way light shimmers as it bounces off of water on autumn afternoons. It makes me think of fall days fishing for steelhead on the Clearwater River, frosty mornings trailing my dog through a patch of birdy-looking habitat and the way Western larch needles spiral as they fall to the forest floor while I still hunt whitetail deer.

The name also invokes this Ernest Hemingway quote.

“Best of all he loved the fall … the fall with the tawny and grey, the leaves yellow on the cottonwoods, leaves floating on the trout streams and above the hills the high blue windless skies. He loved to shoot, he loved to ride and he loved to fish.”

Papa wrote that for a friend who had died but many people posit that he was thinking as much about his own life as his friend’s.

This magazine is dedicated to the love of fall and its abundant sporting endeavors. New this year is the addition of fishing to what in the past has been a collection of stories dedicated to hunting.

In it you’ll find some tips and tricks for catching fall chinook and coho; a feature on hunter education instructor Dave Owsley, who has been passing on the hunting tradition to youngsters for more than four decades; a discussion exploring the threat of technology to fair chase hunting; and an elk-hunting essay from my friend and former Tribune reporter Ralph Bartholdt.

Give it a look and here’s hoping you find favor in all your hunting and fishing adventures this fall.

— Eric Barker