Backpacker--March 2010 issue

[midger]

Interesting issue. They get both an attaboy and an ah crap for the same issue. The questionable comes with the Toyota ad in the inside front cover. Lots of dead rainbows laying on a dock, but fortunately they looked like farmed rainbows from the stater brother's frozen food section as the tails of all the fish are hatchery origin, and they are already cleaned like they just came out of the plastic wrap.

For the attaboy, the article "Fish Story" on page 74 where all the identifying information regarding a flyfishing float trip in Alaska is blacked out should be the standard. Folks posting online could learn a lot by reading and emulating this style. The folks had a great trip, posted pictures, and caused no harm in the future to the area. Good job!

I realize flyfishing magazines won't go to this format, as let's face it, the majority of their readers buy the mags for the "kiss and tell" articles.

[Papasequoia]

Yeah, I saw that; just skimmed it when the mag arrived recently. The weird thing was that they are going to do the trip again and are auctioning off slots. Very strange gimmick for Backpacker. I've always thought that their inclusion of readers on trips awarded by who writes the best essay on some subject were pretty cool, but auctioning off slots to the highest bidder? Blacking out the placenames in the article was pretty cool though. I think it is very possible to write up an interesting trip report where the actual names are either not included or replaced with something funny; there are plenty of examples on this board that prove that.