Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2022 i Anglers Journal

SUBSCRIBE TO ANGLERS JOURNAL Call (800) 877-5207 or visit anglersjournal.com. Subscriptions are $29 for one year (four issues: Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall). Please send letters and comments to Anglers Journal, 35 Industrial Park Road, Unit 10, Centerbrook, CT 06409, or email clevine@aimmedia.com. Awesome Chuck Many story and photo spread in the Spring issue! John A. TiedemannWest Long Branch, New Jersey RUE THE ROE I appreciated the story about fishing for sturgeon by Henry Hughes [“The Fish That Wasn’t Ours,” Winter]. Many people in the Pacific Northwest don’t even know these fish exist in our rivers, much less are they concerned about preserving them. The article addresses both perspectives. My wife, being Russian, loves caviar, but these days she largely consumes roe from salmon, rather than sturgeon. Fortunately, laws protect salmon…

I am holding a newspaper clip from the sports section of the Miami Herald dated August 26, 1957, stapled to a faded photograph of me at age 6, rod in hand, a fish dangling limply at the end of the line. The snippet of newsprint, rescued from its gentle decay in a folder, is the consequence of a trolling expedition into the past provoked by my father’s death a few years ago. My father was a public-relations consultant with the flamboyance typically associated with that profession, and the piece was his doing. He’d pitched me as an all-too-cute column item to Alan Corson, the Herald’s fishing editor, who rose to the bait. “My favorite fish is a grunch (a grunt),” I told my interviewer. “And,” I added with precocious certainty,…

In the 1970s, I got the bug to catch a sailfish on fly and helped develop the tackle and techniques for offshore fly-fishing with Capt. Ron Hamlin. I actually gave Hamlin his first fly rod, and he became an offshore fly-fishing guru. Together we set the Florida state fly record for sailfish, and he guided me to an IGFA record 73-pound white marlin on 8-pound tippet in 1984 off Venezuela. When I started fly-fishing in New York in the early ’60s, catching a sailfish on a fly rod was considered next to impossible, if it was considered at all. At the time, guys like Stu Apte were just figuring out how to catch tarpon on a fly. The tackle was limited, rods were subpar, and the so-called “saltwater” reels were…

For the past decade, I’ve helped instruct afly-fishing guide school in southwest Montana. It’s a great gig. We help folks hone their fishing skills, teach them how to row a drift boat, give them advice on client management and do our best to get them hooked up with jobs in the industry. One question students consistently ask is: “What happens when people pay me to take them fishing, and we don’t catch any fish?” Often my standard answer is some variation of that worn-out old chestnut, That’s why they call it fishing, not catching. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking more about what exactly it means to get skunked (alternately referred to in Montana as a bagel, a donut or getting blanked). The act of going fishing and not catching any…

Get in! Get in!” Toby Larocque urged frantically as he and skipper Danny Infante slid a Hobie Pro Angler 14 off the panga’s gunwale and into the Pacific’s low ground swell. I put a foot in the middle of the kayak and in one quick motion swiveled to plop my butt down on the seat as Larocque leaned over the side to click a Mirage pedal-drive unit into its slots. Infante stuck a Daiwa Saltiga leverdrag reel in my face. I grabbed it, pushed off from the panga and pedaled hard as I free-spooled away from my lively 7-inch mackerel. I caught sight of motion in the impossibly clear, cobalt water beneath the kayak, my eyes drawn to flashing pectoral fins and tails edged in electric cyan. The extraordinary display…

Shuffling downstream through the mist,boots stirring up nymphs and stoneflies. Suddenly, a gulping swirl and a hard tug.The fisherman sets the hook. The green line tears the surface of the riverlike the sound of paper ripping. The rod tip bows to the brook,heaves and swells. A dragonfly alights on the taut line,while a raven watches from a sweeper. The salmon swings across the current,plows through a stretch of ripples trying to throw the stubborn hook—his silvery sides flashing in the porcelain light. The old man leans back and smilesas line peels from the whirring reel. So early in the morning, there is no one elseon the river,no other sound — only the gray fog rising, the raven’s stoic gaze,and the river’s babbling song.…

We fly over the molten glow of an active volcano, regale ourselves with Reykjavik’s fabulous fish soup and local lager, sleep, rise and head east toward Iceland’s great rift valley and Lake Thingvallavatn. My friend Eugene and I are celebrating Father’s Day and my birthday with a guided trip. “Yes, days to mark,” Björn Pétursson smiles behind the wheel of his cluttered hatchback. “For me,” our guide adds, “it was December 16, 2019. I had two heart attacks, got divorced and gave up drugs.” We nod our support. Pétursson proudly states his direct descendancy from the legendary Viking warrior Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, and I tease him about becoming Björn Eyes-on-the-Road as he digs for his cigarettes, the car drifting over the center line though a serpentine pass. The 34-year-old guide is…

Fishing remote, wild Mag Bay is an adventure. Visitors to Mag Bay Lodge customarily fish on day trips aboard its 37-foot ProKat or 32-foot Boston Whaler. But anglers who love the challenge of DIY action from a kayak can up their game by taking advantage of the lodge’s fleet of pangas with Hobie sit-on-top fishing kayaks (two 14-foot Pro Anglers, three 12-foot Mirage Passports, and one 12-foot, 9-inch Outback). It’s an amazing opportunity for those with experience, but with big waters, big currents and big fish, it’s not the place for newbies to try out kayak fishing. The four anglers on our team were yakfishing veterans; no one experienced any problems at any point, and logistics ran smoothly. While any month can be a good time to kayak-fish these waters,…

The finest fishing boat I have ever owned is my D.R. Radon Signature 29, which I named Gray Light. I have a soft spot for boats built by small shops, so much so that, in addition to Radon, I have owned boats built by Riddle Boatworks, Modutech and Farallon Boats. On the West Coast and in Hawaii, Radon boats stand alone, as they are built to withstand the rigors of commercial fishing yet have the fit and finish of a sport boat. Radon boats are customizable to meet the needs of specific fisheries and are built to be stronger than the crew. Quality materials such as ISO resin and composites are used throughout. That’s important because ISO resin is much stronger than polyester resin. The boat has no screws holding…

If you want to catch a billfish on fly, Guatemala is by far the best place in the world. That’s a bold statement, but here’s why I say it’s true. First, Pacific sailfish hit flies with abandon. These sails are much bigger than their Atlantic cousins and nowhere near as smart. I am a fan of big, dumb fish. Second, you need a place where you’ll raise as many sails as possible; raising 30 fish a day in Guatemala is about average. The more fish you raise, the better your chances of a hookup. There is no place on Earth that has this many billfish. Next, you need an operation with great boats and crews. My choice is Casa Vieja Lodge, but there are several other incredible fly-fishing operations in…

The outer beaches of Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts are the last remnants of coastal wilderness in southern New England. The 33 miles between Nauset Inlet and Provincetown Harbor are an unbroken, sparsely developed sandy shoreline. It’s a wild place, unlike any other I fish. As a striped bass surf fisherman, I only fish at night, and the dark, lonely stretches of beach are often eerie. The wildlife seems bigger and bolder; I’m speaking primarily of the creatures that live in the water, but four-legged ones, too. And the stripers I seek are savage, wild-eyed and supercharged. Some anglers attribute this to the colder, highly oxygenated water. While I won’t argue, I think it’s more than that. Out here, on this spit of land jutting 27 miles out to…

Birds. Boils. No wind. Conditions are ideal. Neither Brian McCarty nor James Manning can believe we have actually found this setup. Five minutes to shotgun. Tournament anglers have spread across the island of Martha’s Vineyard, off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The father-and-son duo of Todd and Aron Cascone are west of us thinking they are dialed in, but little do they know that we are watching a blitz unfold in real time. Maybe I should call them? Four minutes to seven. A fish porpoises right in front of me. Or text them? There are sand eels everywhere. My little surf candy dangles precariously off the leader, perhaps knowing it’s about to get obliterated in this melee. Three minutes to seven. Aron, fish everywhere … I stop mid-text. James pulls out his…

As a third generation, Florida native, fishing runs deep in HMY Yacht Sales Professional Mark Mitchell’s upbringing in the Sunshine state. Mitchell worked his way from the Louisiana Gulf Coast to the scattered islands in the Bahamas, mating and captaining a variety of vessels. Later to join sportfishing operations that traveled to fishing destinations that may bare stories equivalent to the tales of Ernest Hemmingway. Mark Mitchell found himself at the helm and working as a full-time captain when he decided to make the transition to a yacht broker. “There comes a point in time in your life where you have a family and can’t travel as much, and our breed just falls into yacht brokerage. The next best thing to working at the helm is working for a company…