Introducing a new partner for www.ariverneversleeps.com

British Columbia and Alberta do not have a monopoly on great fly fishing, but those of us lucky enough to live there know that it just doesn’t get much better.

There are clean, cold rivers, with wild trout and steelhead that can strip your line to the spool - and keep running.

There are rich lakes where you can hook into rainbows as big as salmon. Marshy ponds that hide gigantic Northern Pike and soupy, low level lakes that have bass sulking under floating patches of weed, just waiting to ambush a popper.

There are Arctic grayling.....and did we mention the salmon runs of the West Coast? Coho come in from the ocean from the fall through December. Which means you start casting for them wearing a t-shirt and shades - and end up catching the last of them in a snow storm. Before that the big chinook have muscled into the rivers where fly fishermen can reach them - at their peril. There are schools of pinks, and chum and sockeye.....and, though we wish it wasn’t so, sometimes an Atlantic salmon or two.

The West grows great fish. So perhaps it is no surprise that it produces great fishing publications too.

The latest arrival is Home Waters, a quarterly publication that’s produced by Jeff Mironuck, based in Calgary, and a team of contributing writers and photographers from throughout the West. The first time we saw Home Waters we liked it. And it keeps getting better. The latest edition for this quarterly focuses on steelhead, with features on the Gold and Thompson Rivers. There’s a photo essay by David Lambroughton, an American photographer who came to B.C. fishing some years back, and found he just couldn't leave.

We know why.

There’s an article offering the insights of fishing guides, some beautiful fly patterns - and a section that lists guides and lodges throughout the West, just in case you want to get in on the action.

Jeff started Home Waters for a simple enough reason - because he thought he could do a better job than the established magazines that were out there.

So there you have it, a homegrown publication that has staked out as its territory what may be the best piece of fishing real estate in the universe.

Two years ago, A River Never Sleeps.com got going for pretty much the same reasons.

We thought the usual fly fishing publications were a) getting pretty stale and b) not doing a very good job of entertaining and enlightening. We didn’t see any fiction, or poetry or crazy columns - and we didn’t see any web site that knew how to play a great picture. So we sprang to life.

Not many people would give our small publications much hope of surviving, up against the big, entrenched magazines and web sites.

But we came to the game with a different view. Perhaps it’s because we grew up in the West, where you have to wade big water and fight big fish. For whatever reason, we looked at the daunting level of competition - and figured it wouldn’t kill us, it would just make us stronger.

A River Never Sleeps. com and Home Waters have decided to team up. The magazine will be our print partner, running material from our web site when it seems appropriate - while we’ll be giving international exposure to Home Waters stories that we think our readers will like.

You will never be able to confuse the two publications, each of which is determined to hang on to its individualism. A River Never Sleeps.com won’t try to change into a print publication. We like our existence in cyberspace too much. We’ll continue to be fun and unpredictable, and in keeping with the World Wide Web which is our home, we’ll continue to have a global outlook while staying true to our roots in the West.

Sometimes you’ll be able to find some of our work on the printed page at Home Waters, and some of their work will show up here.

But don’t wait to discover Home Waters here. Ask for the magazine at your fly fishing shop or bookstore. And check out their web site at www.homewatersonline.com

If you like it, order a subscription. It will be a vote of confidence in the spirit of the West, and if you don’t live here, it will be a step towards coming for a visit.

We look forward to seeing you on the water.