Next to speaking at the grade-school career day, the family camping trip is one of the best avenues for parents to embrace the notion that, when it comes to kids, what's the point in having them if you don't mess with them.

Excuse me, can I have your attention? Everyone? Please?

Redefining the lower boundary of the upper Rogue River in the post-Gold Ray Dam era may seem like a simple job, but it turns out that all the potential solutions bring different sets of problems.

Parents looking to take their kids fishing for the first time mistakenly believe the most important things they need are rods, reels, hooks and worms. Anyone who has survived this cat-herding exercise knows that Band-aids, candy, extra sets of clothing and insurance co-pays are just as necessary.

Over and over, Colby Pearson casts a lure meant to imitate a blue-back herring into Expo Ponds — not intent upon catching a bass in White City's urban waterway but to envision a strike and a hook-set in waters 2,300 miles away.

For a two-week stretch last month, fly-fishing guide Josh White and his clients couldn't get out of the way of winter steelhead on the Applegate River, even if they wanted to.

Among hunters, they are called "hair tags," and they represent a world of choices for archers and muzzleloaders who routinely get them in Roosevelt elk hunts in the west Cascades.

The Rogue River's salmon runs and a project meant to improve them received some unique face time last Friday from President Obama, who reaffirmed the universal credo that neither fishermen nor politicians will let the facts get in the way of a good story.

More than 1.6 million fall chinook salmon are in the ocean and finning their way toward Northern California's Klamath River, and that's the best news Southern Oregon offshore anglers could hear this year.

The camouflage and neoprene crowd long has known a good IPA or even a few Coors Lights can be just the ticket for washing down the fresh fish and game meat they bring home from Oregon's woods and waters.