Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2024 i Anglers Journal

ABOUT 20 YEARS AGO, I stepped aboard Capt. Tony Murphy’s Contender 31 Open, Key Limey, in Key West, Florida. That boat cut through a 3-foot chop at 35 knots like nothing, but it was her utilitarian beauty that got me. The hull’s sleek, smooth, purposeful lines set it apart — it just looked badass. I fell in love and was never able to move on. I’ve been running my 2000 Contender 31 Open, One More Cast, for 15 years, and we’ve been through an awful lot together. I’ve given her beatings that I didn’t think any boat could withstand, and she’s never let me down. I have a small fleet now out of Oceanside, New York, including a Contender 36 Open and a 27 T, but I believe the 31…

The guide and the angler walked beside a lovely stream on a clear, cold day on the cusp of winter. The temperature was in the mid-20s, and ice hung from the steep bluffs, leaving me with the impression of walking through a natural cathedral. Instead of religious iconography, however, the pools and pews held muscular steelhead, a gift for the handful of hardy believers who were streamside, murmuring fish prayers and waiting for a take. I’d driven nearly eight hours to Dunkirk in western New York to fish for steelhead with Alberto Rey, a 63-year-old, Cuban-born guide and retired art professor who in 2021 was selected as the Orvis Guide of the Year. I’ve known Rey by way of phone calls and emails for several years, when he first started…

Sitting on the flybridge with Capt. Brad Philipps at the wheel, pulling baits and teasers across Guatemala’s offshore grounds — the most productive billfish waters in the world — I keep thinking about lions. “You don’t want to be a male lion,” the 53-year-old South African had said the night before as we ate fresh wahoo under a palapa at his Billfish Inn. Young male lions are pushed out of the pride and forced to live and hunt alone or in small groups, Philipps explained. Half of them don’t reach adulthood. If they do survive, the males will seek out an alpha to battle in hopes of taking over a pride. Alpha males must fight for their standing day after day. Their time on top is brutal and brief. While the…

Owen James Burke grew up fishing and working on Long Island Sound and has chased fish, waves and stories around New Zealand, Fiji and Southeast Asia as a freelance writer. He has written for several publications, including The Atlantic, Outside, Surfer and Men’s Journal, and is a contributing author of The Ocean: The Ultimate Handbook of Nautical Knowledge. Owen profiles pro surfer and tarpon nut Evan Geiselman in “Surfing to Fish.” Michael Carr is an English teacher and writer from New Jersey who chases stripers with a fly rod whenever and wherever he can. He is working on a collection of fishing essays in the off-hours between hikes, pond trips and driveway hockey with his sons. Michael meets author-angler John Gierach to talk about fishing, friends and the written word…

WHEN I FIRST TOOK UP FLY-FISHING, it seemed life would be complete, or nearly so, if I could fish those places that enthralled anglers in the pages of the popular fishing publications of the day. I wanted to double-haul into the teeth of a Patagonian wind like Joe Brooks, or lay down a dry fly on an English chalk stream, its grassy banks as carefully clipped as the 15th hole at Augusta, or offer up a few deceivers like Lefty Kreh, shoehorning back casts between passing cars speeding along a bass-filled Everglades canal. As a fishing journalist, I was able to fulfill many such dreams: Christmas Island bonefish on Christmas Day, Atlantic salmon in the aquamarine waters of Iceland’s Midjfardara, tarpon at sunrise in the Marquesas. It wasn’t until the…

ANGLERS JOURNAL AND GRAND SLAM LODGE HAVE PARTNERED to offer one lucky angler the trip of a lifetime: a four-night, three-day adventure to one of the world’s best inshore fisheries, Mexico’s Ascension Bay. A chance to win this dream trip, valued at nearly $2,700, can be yours by entering via the code below. As the editors began working on the 10-year anniversary issue of Anglers Journal, the team wanted to create a vacation sweepstakes as our way of giving back to readers, and the crew at Grand Slam Lodge was happy to host us. Editor-in-chief Charlie Levine will join the winner, and an article about the trip will appear in the magazine. Should the winner want to bring a friend or spouse, that can be arranged at a discounted price.…

Is there ever a perfect time to start a family? Or to launch a new fishing magazine? Timing matters, and some years are better than others, but you only see that in the rearview mirror. Anglers Journal debuted smack dab between the Great Recession of 2007-2008 and the 2020 Covid recession. Embarking into either of those economic storms would have likely scuttled our efforts. The timing was fortunate. The magazine is now 10 years old, a healthy adolescent still growing and winning readers amid the plethora of fishing content swirling in from all corners of the media world. We are optimistic there will long be a place for a quality fishing journal that above all else values storytelling, photography and design. “When I die, this one rod is going with…

For a short time, my life felt as perfectly balanced as the 11-foot surf rod riding on my shoulder as I clomped along a beach in waders, a converted Army surplus plug bag bouncing on my hip, a piece of pot warp found on the sand serving as a shoulder strap. I could pick up the rod in my sleep, open the bail and uncork a cast that traveled straight and true into the night. I was catching well and was as comfortable in my skin as I’d ever been. Acclaimed columnist Pete Hamill wrote an ode to tools and the men who use them in an essay in The New York Times titled “Tools to Smooth the Grain of Life”: Men carried their tools to work in the dark…

From the trolling cockpitI watch you riselike a prayer to the surface,pull you from the sea,slide the hook from your jawyour silver body in my handsgasping in the shock of air.I lay the bowing arc of youon the plywood table to be cleaned. The cannery says I must bleed youwhile you’re still alive.I slice an arteryyour blood pools thick and red on deckslit your long white belly, pull outyour luminous organs, heavy with herringstroke your scales — ask forgiveness — sluice your belly with seawater untilyour bones glisten white and startledagainst pink flesh and the water runs redbut your body knows still what to dohow to move in the bright water. Down I lay you on the wet deckempty and shiningand the wing of your tail strokes the woodas you swim…

At 8 years old, James Luce is all smiles, teeth and energy, a fishing whirlwind happily focused on catching another fish worthy of a video for his YouTube channel. For the last three years, his life has revolved around fish: freshwater stripers, largemouth bass, catfish and plenty more. “It’s fishing over anything,” says his 59-year-old father, Wade Luce, of Peoria, Arizona, who trailers the 17-foot family fishboat, takes video of his son’s catches and commentary, and somehow finds time to coach James’ baseball team. His 17-year-old sister Gaby edits and posts her brother’s videos. James also has a 4-year-old sister, Samantha, who occasionally appears in his videos. When Wade was his son’s age, he was as crazy about baseball as his son is over fish. James plays third base for…

The stream is cool through my waders. The moving water makes me feel clean again. Aches from the day are dulled by the heavy water from yesterday’s thunderstorm. Most other anglers are gone. I’m tired from a long day’s work and readying myself for another. My family is away, and there’s nothing but an empty house, leftovers, Netflix and the last cold beer waiting for me a few miles from where I stand, relishing the cool, evening air and the abundance of insect life that has suddenly emerged. The bugs are grayish white. I’m sure they’re caddis flies, but entomology has never been my strong suit. I pick out a size 16 white, dry fly tied by my friend, artist C.D. Clarke. I asked him what it imitates. “Nothing,” he…