Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2023 i Anglers Journal

WE PULL AWAY FROM THE DOCK AND IDLE by a set of ornamental palm trees made entirely of propellers collected from the Homosassa River’s notoriously rocky channel on Florida’s west coast. The effigy is a reminder of local navigational hazards, but I am riding in complete confidence alongside Capt. William Toney, who traverses this limestone minefield with the certainty of an Olympic slalom skier. As we pass a waterfront tiki bar packed with sunburned tourists, I don’t give a thought to that menu’s offerings. I’m bound for an authentic “Old Florida” seafood lunch with no fancy dining room or valet parking — just a tranquil waterside clearing with cedars shading a memorable meal prepared by the same hands that deftly dodged those limestone motor munchers. Running his 23-foot custom Tremblay…

The rain poured down in sheets of gray. The deluge overtook all the typical morning sounds. I couldn’t hear gulls squawking or halyards clanging. Standing under a covered fish-cleaning station beside charter-boat row at Crandon Marina on Virginia Key off Miami, I could hardly make out the boats at the other end of the harbor. Yet somewhere beyond the breakwater, in the thick of the downpour, the crew of Contender One was coming back from a bait run. With the last sailfish tournament of the season kicking off in two days, the team needed to fill their bait pens with fresh goggle-eyes, pilchards, greenbacks and speedos. If you want to compete with the best sailfish crews in South Florida, you can’t sit at the dock. You must keep going, and…

“It was a zoo out there,” Capt. John McMurray tells me on the phone the night before our scheduled outing. “Let’s make it 0100 on the dock.” When a skipper changes a departure time despite feeling every wave in his joints from a nine-day run of offshore charters, you know you’ve got the right guy at the wheel. That extra hour’s advantage can mean the difference between victory and defeat, especially when jockeying against the rest of the fleet. “These aren’t human hours,” he likes to say. Part of what distinguishes a successful tuna fiend is finding one whose rhythm beats in tune with the fish. “I feel like dog shit,” he says as he makes his way to the helm after getting the boat dialed in. It’s 2 a.m.…

The natural world doesn’t give a hoot about the size of your portfolio, the type of graphite in your fly rod or the number of outboards bolted to your transom. We care, but the fish we chase are blissfully ignorant. Change is a constant in our discombobulated world where technology rushes past tomorrow before today has been put to bed. Everything has a shorter shelf life. The old ways? Fuhgeddaboudit. How will this throw-away thinking change our fishing world, which moves to natural cycles, where the gravitational pull of moon and sun on our waters is elemental and essential? I suspect we will continue to get by on those hard outdoor skills we learned coming up through the hawse pipe. How to improvise, jury rig and think on your feet.…

INSTEAD OF BEING MIXED IN WITH ALL THE OTHER SPINNING REELS under the glass counter at Harry’s Army Navy in New Jersey, the Fin-Nor Ahabs sat in their own case trimmed with faux teak and illuminated by tiny interior lights. The reels were presented like Rolex watches, and with price tags north of $300, they were the most expensive spinners in the joint. For a year, I squirreled away money earned washing cars at a dealership to buy a Fin-Nor Ahab. In 2000, I was a senior in high school, addicted to the striper surf and tired of replacing cheaper reels that inevitably broke down after a few months of hard plugging. When the day finally came, I strolled into Harry’s like a gangster with a wad of cash. I…

I BOUGHT MY 1995, 16-FOOT HEWES BONEFISHER IN 2014. I always had an affinity for these skiffs, with their lapstrake hulls and beautiful lines, but the boat was in terrible shape when I got it. There were so many leaves in the cockpit that they had broken down and turned into dirt. Plants were living inside the boat. The Bonefisher was a total restoration project that the seller never started. I think his wife wanted it out of the yard, so I got the boat, motor and trailer for $400. The engine was a 90-hp, 2-stroke Yamaha, which was pretty bulletproof. I cleaned it up, repainted the cowling and ran it for a year. After that, I switched to a Mercury 115-hp 4-stroke. The hull was designed around the 90,…

For years, I had wanted to find a Canada fly-in operation that offered serious kayak fishing. Merging two of my passions — fishing from a kayak and seeking adventures on remote northern Canadian lakes accessible only by floatplane — had never been in reach. In the summer of 2022, finally, my passions merged. Our group of five anglers and a couple of photo/video pros piled into a de Havilland Otter at the Blue Water Aviation floatplane base in Bissett, a small town in Manitoba and a three-hour drive north of Winnipeg. With the co-pilot seat open, I climbed in and was rewarded with a superb view as we winged our way 60 miles north to Shining Falls Lodge. As we made our way north, the flat and generally dry landscape…

SUBSCRIBE TO ANGLERS JOURNAL Call (800) 877-5207 or visit anglersjournal.com. Subscriptions are $29 for one year (four issues: Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall). Please send letters and comments to Anglers Journal, 35 Industrial Park Road, Unit 10, Centerbrook, CT 06409, or email clevine@aimmedia.com. I KNOW THAT PLACE Just looking at the photos, this feature needs no captions to identify the location. Andrew Bartley Editor’s note: “Wind-Scoured Perfection,” our feature about Jurassic Lake (Lago Strobel) in Argentina, ran in the Winter issue. NEARLY MISSED OUT I am 5 years old and an Anglers Journal fan. During a visit to the Florida Keys this past holiday season, we caught an 18-pound mutton snapper out of Key Largo Anglers Club. It was a 50-degree, rainy day, and the trip was almost postponed. I am glad…

“HEY, I NEED ANOTHER PIN. THEY’RE HERE. I JUST LOST MY BAIT,” Sam whispered across the 22-foot skiff. A hushed but audible, “I got you,” replied Alex, who stopped rigging the second rod, reached into the live well, snatched a pinfish and carried it to the bow. The baitfish was carefully transferred from one cut-up pair of hands to another, given a nice piercing through the nose with a 4/0 circle hook, and pitched under the dock to hopefully become what the two teenagers referred to as “snook candy.” Alex and Sam couldn’t remember a time when they weren’t best friends. They rode bikes and swung on the swings at the playground when they were kids looking for a thrill in their stuffy waterfront community of Emerson Estates on Florida’s…

Catching permit on fly is both frustrating and rewarding. You can do everything right, drop a fly smack dab in the sweet spot, and still come up empty-handed. Yet this is exactly why anglers around the world obsess over these fish. Most anglers don’t target permit on fly until they are proficient at the sport, and even then it can be hit or miss (emphasis on miss). But the sense of accomplishment that comes with finally bringing one to hand erases the memory of the many misses. Ask anyone who has landed a permit on fly what the experience was like, and they’ll tell you something along the lines of, “I worked my butt off for it.” Fly-fishing guide and tyer Doug McKnight certainly falls into that category. Growing up…