Anglers Journal

I can’t tell you the name of the first girl I ever kissed. I don’t recall who won the Super Bowl two years ago. I don’t know all of the names of my kids’ teachers. Some things, while seemingly important at the time, slip through my mind like sugar sand through your fingers. Other tidbits stick like glue. I can tell you about the first fish I ever caught entirely on my own with vivid clarity. It was a yellow perch. We were in upstate New York at a little state park. I dug up worms with my bare hands and put them in an empty coffee can. When I had a few squiggly slimers in the bottom of the can, I walked down a path till I found a…

DOGGONE GOOD I had just returned from a two-week family vacation in Iceland and was thrilled to read “Dog Days” in the Summer issue. William Sisson did an excellent job capturing feedback from a variety of captains who chase elusive summer cows. As always, the storytelling and photos capture the vibrant and passionate nature of the captains you spoke with, as well as the writer’s own desire to catch summer striped bass. Numerous veteran captains have texted me with feedback about the article. I also appreciate that he mentions my late father several times in the article. His passing this past February has been weighing heavily on me; seeing his name in print brought a tear to my eye. You have my heartfelt thanks. One of my father’s best friends…

Monte Burke is the author of the New York Times bestseller Saban, a biography of University of Alabama head football coach Nick Saban. His other books include 4th & Goal, which won an Axiom Award, and Lords of the Fly: Madness, Obsession and the Hunt for the World Record Tarpon. “Power Play” is an excerpt from Monte’s latest book, Rivers Always Reach the Sea. Outdoor writer and photographer Gary Caputi specializes in fishing and boating. A founding member of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, he fishes his New Jersey home waters and has traveled throughout the Americas. Gary digs into the minds of anglers who are obsessed with doormat flounder in “Fluke Fanatics.” Photographer and surf fisherman Tom Lynch’s images have appeared in The Fisherman, On the Water, Big Game Fishing…

River Stories By Henry Hughes  Everyman’s Pocket Classics Editor and writer Henry Hughes has again shown his curating skills with River Stories. The stories within this clean, compact volume were written across centuries, and all have the common theme of being by, on, in, over, near, across, down and up a river. A maniacal angler himself, Hughes of course must include some fishing tales. From the foreword, Hughes writes: “[Rivers] flow through wilderness and city, through countries and cultures, inspiring the rhythms, settings and symbols of some of our greatest stories.” Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy and Mark Twain join Harriet Beecher Stowe, Zadie Smith, the Roman poet Ovid and others to complete the bill and populate sections titled “Freedom on the Water,” “Drama and Danger,” “Love and Loss,” and “Mystic…

SITTING ON A ROCK BY THE RYNDA RIVER ON RUSSIA’S KOLA PENINSULA, the tall man with tousled gray hair and big blue eyes greedily feasts on a piece of rare Moscow beef, the juice running down his fingers. He has spent the morning making graceful casts with his double-handed fly rod. His private MI-2 helicopter, a relic of the Soviet era, is perched on a ridge behind him, the pilot ready to whisk him off to the next salmon pool after lunch. Two quiet Russian fishing guides are hunched over a campfire, cooking him potatoes. “You know,” says the man, with a smile. “It’s good to be at the top.” In Stockholm, James Prosek, the artist and author, and I board the chartered Embraer 145 jet, bound for Murmansk, with…

Tautog (Tautoga onitis), or blackfish, are a wrasse unique to a stretch of the East Coast from the Canadian border to South Carolina. These bottom dwellers prowl waters ranging from shallow boulder fields to offshore wrecks. Dining primarily on crustaceans, mollusks and gastropods, they’re brutish adversaries that die-hard aficionados are woefully addicted to. And it’s not just the challenge of catching blackfish they adore; it’s eating them, too. Highly favored as table fare, the fillets have a firm, mild, white meat that is often referred to as poor man’s lobster — a tired but true comparison. Capt. Jon Azato grew up fishing in Delaware and has spent 20 years tangling with tautog, but he’s seen their popularity skyrocket in the last seven or eight years. I also grew up catching…