Anglers Journal celebrates the best writing, photography, illustration, design and sporting art on the topic of fishing. Come join some of the most prolific fishing editors and writers in the industry for the best angling experience on the water.
Standing on the forward casting deck of a skiff in a maze of mangroves known as the Jardines de la Reina on the south side of Cuba, I turned back to look at the guide on the poling platform. An ex-ballplayer, he did not speak much English, but he could gauge my impatience by the look on my face. He took his left hand off the push pole and made a gesture like he was slowly honking a horn. Relax, gringo. He glanced at the only form of technology on the boat, his wrist-watch, and knew that in a few minutes the tide would begin flooding with more gusto and that the moving water would bring with it schools of tarpon. I made a couple of blind casts, testing my…
Host of the Cut & Retie podcast, Joe Cermele has worked in fishing media for nearly two decades. He’s authored three books and written more articles, blogs, scripts and voiceovers than he can count. The former host of Field & Stream’s Hook Shots video series and podcast, he lives in eastern Pennsylvania and fishes for anything that swims. Joe writes about Keith Thomas, a custom glide-bait maker, in “Worth Their Weight.” Austin Hagwood is a writer, fly-fishing guide and former fire lookout based in Missoula, Montana. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree in nonfiction from the University of Montana, and his work has appeared in Big Sky Journal, River Teeth, Appalachia, Notre Dame Magazine and the National Geographic online newsroom. Austin writes about a creative way to kill…
A DECADE OF ANGLERS JOURNAL I cannot believe it has been 10 years since I picked up that first issue in an airport. Read it cover to cover on a trans-Atlantic flight and stupidly left it on the plane. I subscribed as soon as I got to a Wi-Fi connection and have not missed an issue since. But I wish I still had that first issue! Thomas Bjornsen Congratulations, you have created and continue advancing a great magazine that goes far beyond hooked fish and dock socializing. Keep it going! Ellen Peel Thanks so much for the beautiful 10th anniversary layout. You did an amazing job, as you do on every issue, and I’m glad I got to see many issues that I had missed as I was doing the…
It’s Only Fishing Joseph Jackson Epicenter Press Jackson’s collection of essays written during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic captures the reality of fishing Alaska’s front country. He does some serious bushwhacking for rainbows, and the hours he keeps for salmon and steelhead would make most folks hallucinate, but there is a lot of car-camping and long drives to make sure he’s home for obligations the next day. It’s Only Fishing is one of the few books set in Alaska that makes the fishing feel approachable. There are no boats or bush planes. There is the road system, lots of water and the need to fish. Something many of us in the lower 48 can see in ourselves. The writing is familiar, and while most contemporary authors might shy…
MOST ANGLERS WHO CHASE BONEFISH often seek out exotic destinations: flights to the Bahamas, lodges in Mexico, five nights in Belize. I didn’t have that privilege. When my plane landed in Honolulu this past March, I had a 10-hour layover, not five days. Just enough daylight to hope for the best on the Oahu flats. I was in the liminal space between dirtbag and desk job particular to one in his 20s, with a checking account that totaled two digits. My saltwater skills were on par with my financial ones, but when a guide emailed back to say he could fit me in, hope and self-delusion somehow melded into one word: yes. Ten minutes from the airport, I walked down a dock and met Capt. Chris Wright, a 40-year-old fish…
ONE OF THE EARLIEST LESSONS I LEARNED FROM FISHING was that every living creature eats, and in eating, kills. I once watched three bluegills devour an injured dragonfly bite by bite until only a single, crystalline wing floated on the pond surface. When we fish, we’re casting to feed a creature’s hunger — something we can recognize in ourselves. Who hasn’t looked at a plump worm on a hook and knew no perch could ignore such a meal? That even within the pulsating baitball off the bow your particular herring would be the one to catch the striper’s eye? Sometimes we cast toward gluttony, again something we see in ourselves. Bluefish are the ancient Romans of the piscine world, gorging on pogies until they sometimes barf to keep binging. I…
