Fall 2017

Anglers Journal

A Fishing Life

Anglers Journal4 min read
A Surf-Smashed Home With History
It’s nice to have a place to return to year after year, through thick and thin, from childhood and the teenage years to your single-minded, hard-fishing adult decades and into whatever lies beyond. For me, that place is a mussel bar in southern New E
Anglers Journal3 min read
Contributors
Writer and hard-core surf nut Dave Anderson has been contributing to fishing publications since the early 2000s. He is the editor of the online publication Surfcaster’s Journal and spends his nights fishing for striped bass. In “Fish Funnel,” Dave wr
Anglers Journal1 min read
A Good Fish
Jerk that bitch, urges my guide, and I give my shuddering pole a jerk, hooking the throat of the first steelhead of my life. Reel ’em, he mutters and revs the motor. I horse my pole and reel and horse. The boat’s mascot whines, her claws clicking. Le
Anglers Journal2 min read
How I Got That Shot
When I first imagined this portrait concept, I was thinking of my buddy Shawn, a Florida guide who has a thick beard. But he went and shaved it, so that opportunity disappeared. Fast forward a few months, and I’m on a bonefishing trip at Deep Water C
Anglers Journal6 min read
Made in Mexico
You might consider landing a marlin to be nothing special, but I am English, and this sort of thing just doesn’t happen to an Englishman, let alone to one fishing from a kayak. There were two of us the day the whole thing began, both of us middle-age
Anglers Journal4 min read
The Run
Fall wouldn’t be fall without September. But if you look at it with a cool head, it’s not hard to see that month nine has more to do with August than with October. Hurricanes, sure. But in the southern reaches of our far North we’re still chipping aw
Anglers Journal7 min read
Doctor’s Orders: Fall Steelhead
I’ve been an avid angler all my life, including a 15-year stint as a salmon and steelhead guide on Washington streams, which means my son, Kris Jr., was one lucky kid. When most youngsters learned how to ride a bike or build model cars, he sat in the
Anglers Journal9 min read
Fish Funnel
Years of fishing the Cape Cod Canal have equipped me with a strange ability. I can set the alarm for any time — 2:37, 3:11, 1:55 — and wake up one to five minutes before it goes off, almost without fail. This is a defense mechanism that comes from sl
Anglers Journal11 min read
Trout and Tweed
When I am in need of solace, which seems to be more and more these days, I cast my sights, heart and line toward trout. But not just any trout; my thoughts go to wild brown trout, specifically those found in the lovely small streams that thread throu
Anglers Journal7 min read
A Place Like No Other
The thrum of the diesels, a tropical sun and the boat’s gentle roll had worked me into a mild hypnotic state. I was sitting on the port engine box early that afternoon, sun-blasted, daydreaming, brain on pause, when a blue marlin pushing 400 pounds s
Anglers Journal7 min read
Prime Time
It’s a cold and blustery October morning at Harkers Island Fishing Center as a group of anglers shuffles down a narrow, weather-beaten dock. A dozen or so center consoles tug at their dock lines. Each angler carries a bundle of fly rods against his s
Anglers Journal6 min read
A Fishing Life
The forgotten rods were hung between basement joists. The tackle, trophy and yellowing newspaper speak of a record striper taken nearly 50 years ago. What can you learn about a person from his oncevalued objects left behind? A battered trolling rod t
Anglers Journal8 min read
Drink Like A Fish, Fish Like A Man
These days, the fishing guides in Livingston, Montana, are extremely concerned about the care and upkeep of the lights on their drift-boat trailers. Anyone who has owned a boat and trailer is familiar with the ongoing battle: Electrical wiring system
Anglers Journal6 min read
Shelter From The Storm
Patrick Orth, a Marine combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient, had never sat in a fighting chair. Few of the Marines on the 51-foot sportfisherman that day had. But you couldn’t tell by watching him. Orth looked like a natural, sitting with knees
Anglers Journal9 min read
The Right Ride
It’s a late October morning, and we’re on the hunt for false albacore with a weather-bedamned attitude. “Hold on tight, it’s about to get nautical!” the captain shouts as we punch our way through a 4-foot chop at the mouth of Barden Inlet in North Ca
Anglers Journal2 min read
My Boat My Life
I was 2 miles off the beach in a 15-foot kayak when I spotted three waterspouts howling toward me. Wind whipped the rain sideways and flipped my kayak twice. I lost my paddle. When I finally reached the beach and caught my breath, I decided to buy a

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