Winter 2019

Anglers Journal

A Fishing Life

Anglers Journal4 min readEarth Sciences
Chasing Shadows
I am at home on a beach late in the season, in the dark, alone, keeping the cold at bay. Alert for a light, a sound, a smell. Anything out of the ordinary. I It is during these last vestiges of fall fishing that I feel as if I am living close to my b
Anglers Journal3 min read
Contributors
Outdoor writer/photographer Gary Caputi specializes in fishing and boating. A founding member of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, he fishes his New Jersey home waters, and his travels have taken him throughout the Americas. Gary writes about winter
Anglers Journal5 min read
Mail
Good magazines are like good knots: They have to hold together. Some copies of the Fall 2018 issue of Anglers Journal were damaged, so subscribers were sent a second copy. If your Fall issue was damaged and you didn’t receive a replacement copy, plea
Anglers Journal7 min read
Fish Pimping
It’s late July in Livingston, Montana, and I’ve just picked up my clients. We’re heading out of town, my raft trailer rumbling behind my truck, a plume of dust rising from the gravel. It’s the final day of a four-day run with this group — Texas oil a
Anglers Journal7 min read
Reading the Water, Reading Each Other
Boulders dwarf my father as he casts to the green water on the far side of the plunge pool. The current has carved the rock the way a bone is worn by time, divoted and eroded by use, easing the flow of snowmelt. A brook trout appears from the crease,
Anglers Journal3 min read
Yarn One: Sweet Taste of Victory
My admiration for yellowfin tuna started when I was young and fished with my father. It’s relatively rare to catch yellowfin off Florida, at least consistently, but we caught one quite by accident, and Dad was elated. He liked nothing more than eatin
Anglers Journal4 min read
Yarn Two: ‘Goodnight! It’s All Off!’
I would lift him and wind him up a hundred feet or so, and then he would take the line away from me. It happened so often that it must have looked funny. All of a sudden my tuna started to sound. He did not run. He just plugged down and down and down
Anglers Journal6 min read
Creatures Of Habit
A cold snap brings strong northeast winds that whip the western boundary of the Gulf Stream into a rolling countercurrent. Small craft warnings are raised, and locals used to warm-weather pampering scurry to find appropriate clothing. This is the tim
Anglers Journal2 min read
Beyond the Comfort Zone
The night before my arrival in Chile was restless. A collection of nerves and a contracted case of airport plague kept me awake for all 30 hours of travel. The drive into the campo was more dramatic than expected. The company of a Montanan friend, a
Anglers Journal2 min read
Full-Contact Fishing
You might say that my 30 years of fishing in Patagonia have been one big pilgrimage to the south in search of bigger water and huge trout. To be sure, all of Patagonia — from the Montana-like landscape of the northern rivers that Charles Ritz and Jos
Anglers Journal2 min read
Toast To A Bygone Bar
There is no town in Argentina that epitomizes the character and soul of Patagonia quite like the sleepy town of Río Pico — a small, frontier settlement of a thousand or so people, perfectly situated in the middle of the best trout fishing in South Am
Anglers Journal2 min read
Heavy Winds, Big Fish
In 1998, I went to the southernmost point of South America to fish for sea-run brown trout that reportedly reached 30 pounds. Before my trip, I spoke with Larry Dahlberg, who had been there recently filming an episode of The Hunt for Big Fish at Esta
Anglers Journal2 min read
Countries in Contrast
Last April, in the heart of autumn, I took a trip to Argentine and Chilean Patagonia. It was my first time visiting both countries during the same trip. One was arid, expansive and windswept. The other was lush and rugged, with relatively short river
Anglers Journal2 min read
Friendship Born Of A Fish
I was introduced to the Futaleufú River by my fishing partner Adrei Gallardo, a retired Chilean ranger who patrolled on horseback the cordillera, which is the high, remote mountain border between Chile and Argentina. Adrei looked after the interests
Anglers Journal2 min read
If Their Eyes Could Talk
They say the blitzes in Montauk, New York, have gone away with the tides. The acres of frothing stripers that once rounded the point — seemingly on a daily basis during autumn just a few years ago — are now a fading memory. With them have gone the In
Anglers Journal7 min read
Drug Of Choice
We roll out of the campground toward Long Key with the windows open. Bleached shells and limestone gravel crunch under the Westfalia’s tires. Birds make their vibrant predawn racket, a symphony in stark contrast to my brain’s lethargy, stymied as it
Anglers Journal4 min read
Smelt Camp
The moon rose, the wind dropped off and the sharp sound of fracturing ice reverberated through the evening as the tide pushed up the brackish Cathance River in Bowdoinham, Maine, smelt capital of the Pine Tree State. Somewhere out there, schools of r
Anglers Journal5 min read
True Believers
Any last hope we had of catching a summer steelhead on a dry fly that cold morning late in the year evaporated when we encountered two fishermen on their way downstream. Bomber, my longtime fishing partner, and I had driven through the predawn, throw
Anglers Journal2 min read
On the Outskirts
These images depict life in the small fishing village of Stonington, Maine, during a four-year period starting in 1989. You don’t have to look hard to see the bone-weary tiredness of long days on the water. A fisherman holding his head in his hands.
Anglers Journal2 min read
About The Artist
Jeff Dworsky, who took the photos in this story, moved to Stonington, Maine, in 1973 when he was 17 years old. The place was everything his childhood home wasn’t: rural, working-class, gritty. He fit in more than he ever had in Cambridge, Massachuset
Anglers Journal2 min read
My Boat My Life
I never intended to buy a new boat. I figured others could deal with depreciation and working out the kinks. And then I broke my never-buy-new rule. I had owned a Sailfish 2660, a 26-foot, 2-inch center console I bought when it was two years old. I’d
Anglers Journal12 min read
Growing Up viking
It was the second day of the Stone Harbor Yacht Club White Marlin Invitational, and I was with Pat Healey aboard a Viking 72C, fresh out of the company’s facility on the Bass River in New Gretna, New Jersey. The morning began with a 120-mile run to T

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