Anglers Journal

I’ve met all types of people while fishing: fanatics, dabblers, uberwealthy, independently poor, loudmouths, quiet and reserved, drunks, adrenaline junkies, gearheads, attention seekers and a long list of solid, good-natured men and women who have be

ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHERS STRIVED TO ESTABLISH what they called summum bonum, “the greatest good to which all human effort in life should be directed.” I learned this from a 78-year-old angler who described himself as an Epicurean. My wife, Leigh, a

PLACE TIES US TO ONE ANOTHER, STITCHES OUR MEMORIES TOGETHER with a fine hand. It stands, like a witness tree on a long-ago family farm, marker to love and death and loyalty. For the last decade, we’ve made a pilgrimage together, father and son, to a

GROWING UP IN NEW JERSEY in the 1990s, I didn’t fish for tautog, or blackfish, and rarely heard them mentioned. This member of the wrasse family has thrived from Maine to Virginia for thousands of years, but they were largely associated with a blue-c

Capt. Peter B. Wright was quite possibly the best heavy-tackle captain of the modern era. The IGFA Hall of Famer was born in 1944 and grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. At age 11, he started working on boats and wired his first marlin in the Bahama

As temperatures rise and the days lengthen, striped bass flood coastal waters from the Mid-Atlantic to New England. The traditional early spots see the first fish, but word spreads quickly as informal, overlapping networks come alive with news that s

ABOUT 16 YEARS AGO, Paul Guard, the founder of Action Craft boats, called and said he was selling the company and had a 17-foot skiff that he could sell me cheap. I had been running Action Crafts for years, and he gave me a great deal, so I bought th

Chunkers are viewed as the bottom-feeders of the fishing world, the polar opposite of the refined and finesse-obsessed fly fisherman. Chunkers are seen as beer-drinking, cigarette-smoking, white-bucket-wielding Neanderthals whose only goal is to harv

BUNKER SPOONS ARE THIN pieces of curved metal shaped like a tear drop with lead keels and an 8/0 to 10/0 hook fastened to the rear. Trolled behind a boat, the metal lures come alive and have fooled many large stripers over the decades. Big striped ba

The sun rises over the Royal River in Yarmouth, Maine. Photographer James Manning is next to me in the boat, sipping coffee and deciding whether to put his camera into its underwater housing. It is our second day fishing in Maine, and the air is mild

As we run south, away from the launch ramp at C.S. Lee Park in Geneva, Florida, the narrow ribbon of dark water begins to burst open into a massive floodplain. My eyes adjust to the vast, wide-angle landscape as I slowly turn my head, letting my mind

It was a hot, sticky August morning in south Texas as we motored at idle speed through the darkness. The only sound we heard were surface slaps rippling out from a massive bait ball and periodic explosions as pelicans dive-bombed into the fray no far

As a Cape May native, chasing billfish runs deep in the upbringing of HMY Yacht Sales Professional, and Viking expert Jeff Thiel. We had the opportunity to sit down and discuss who Jeff really is and how his passion for fishing led to careers in the

I stood on a windy hill on an early April evening, smelling the rain blowing off the sound as it moved up the river valley, shrouding it in sheets of mist. At that moment, I made up my mind that, unlike the previous season, I would spend as many days

My father gave me my first fly rod 70 years ago, and I came to know of Joe Brooks not long after that [“Last Chance,” Winter]. Though I never met the man, I admired and respected Brooks. I will always be grateful for his ability to inspire so many of