Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2025 i Anglers Journal

There is no better way to wash off the annoyances of airline travel than to step aboard a boat. The long wait outside the Cancún airport and the bumpy stretch of road through the tourism zone in Tulum sailed off in the rearview mirror as we loaded our gear onto the Grand Slam Lodge panga and set off for open waters. A light drizzle fell as the guide, Gaspi, opened up the throttle on the Honda outboard and headed toward a small cut in the mangroves. I glanced over at Corbin Blackford, whom I’d just met for the first time, and he was wearing a wide smile. Blackford, a 41-year-old fly fisherman from Houston, was the lucky winner of this trip to Grand Slam Lodge as part of a special…

In the 1991 film Point Break, actor Keanu Reeves, playing undercover FBI agent Johnny Utah, learns how to surf as a way to infiltrate a gang of bank robber/surfers led by the enigmatic Bhodi, played by Patrick Swayze. Early in the movie, Keanu paddles out, drops in on another surfer and promptly gets assaulted by the guy, a local, who cuts Keanu’s leash and sends him packing to the beach. While the leash-cutting part is a bit of Hollywood fantasy — who surfs with a knife? — the altercation is a pretty accurate, if exaggerated, part of surfing. Fittingly, after punching Johnny Utah in the face, the local’s parting words are: Politeness counts, man. Etiquette, localism and a longing for days gone by are things I’ve been thinking about a…

My hands were a mess — cut, nicked and sore from fishing more than eight hours a day. I had fallen three times, once fording a river swollen with snow melt. My face was burned from sun and wind. My lips were cracked. And I’d stood waist-deep in knee-knocking cold water for hours, casting in winds gusting into the 50s. It is a gift from the gods to fish yourself into such a happy, dazed state of exhaustion — spent, emptied and bone-tired — that you stumble around like you’re tipsy when the fishing ends at dusk. Our physical exertions spent in pursuing enormous rainbow trout left all of us feeling alive — with our hair tingling and our flagons spilling over the brim. For seven days last October, I…

THE STREAM FLOWS SOUTH out of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area through western Montana. A marathon of waters running great distances. The waters cling to us long after we’ve cut off the fly and stepped out of our waders to sit with an exhausted grin. Each day away from this stream, I think of these waters, think on them, playing every whit of their great length. I like to imagine the journey trout make in the hottest days of summer, from the river in the valley rising into the mountains where waters grow colder, narrowing to their source, which of course is our source, too. The blue clarity they assume is akin to what I think the world’s beginning must have been like. It’s along sections of this stream, in…

Moored in a quiet anchorage, Adventurous looks strong and stately as the lone vessel surrounded by Alaska’s vibrant coastline. A 56-foot, expedition-style vessel built by Delta Marine and launched in 1994, she was specifically designed for overnight charters in southeast Alaska. Adventurous is owned and operated by 54-year-old Travis Peterson and his wife, Jennifer. The operation has built a strong reputation forged from decades of experience taking anglers to Alaska’s remote wilderness to put them on the fish of their dreams in a setting that defies imitation. “The size of the vessel is perfect, allowing us to fish on the ocean or tight near coastal bays,” Peterson says. “We work with the U.S. Forest Service and have special use permits to fish the coastal streams and shorelines of the Tongass…

ANGLERS, ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO FLY-FISH, hold common bonds that tie them together like a blood knot: a love of the outdoors, a passion for the pursuit and pull of a fish, the desire to share stories. These bonds bring us together, whether it’s through the pages of a book, or sitting around a table tying flies. The fishing world last fall lost two men who embodied this spirit, author John Gierach and fly-tyer Bob Popovics. Gierach, who penned more than 20 books and thousands of essays and articles, passed away Oct. 3 from cardiac arrest. He was 77. The renowned fly fisherman could capture the spirit of a trout stream with insightful introspection and a knack for moving past the frustrations or snobbishness often linked to fly-fishing. Gierach moved from the…

I GREW UP BOATING AND FISHING IN SOUTHWEST FLORIDA, and the classic, flatback center consoles I’d see always spoke to me. They have a unique, almost workboat look, and because it’s basically a flat-bottom hull, you can run them in very skinny water. They’re beamy, stable and economical. Atlas Boatworks was a small builder in Cape Coral on the west coast of Florida that had a 23-foot center console with the flatback look and ride I like. I spoke to the builder, who was getting older and wanted to sell the company and retire, but he was primarily focused on a 25-foot, lobster-style pocket cruiser that I had no interest in. At the time, I was in e-commerce and distribution for a footwear retailer, but the company made some changes,…

“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”Harriet Beecher Stowe There is a long-held belief among coastal anglers and baymen that if you don’t like the local marine weather, just wait — change is but minutes away. The same could be said of saltwater fishing. The next tide can exasperate the fishing from feast-to-famine, or vice versa. The bulging of the Earth’s waters both toward and away from the moon creates tides. This hydrodynamic phenomenon pushes inward to create high tides, while water pulled in the opposite direction causes outward movement and low tides. The direct…

The scene could have been ripped from a Hemingway story. On a seamount more than 100 miles off Costa Rica, a white-haired salt stood in the cockpit fighting a blue marlin on a fly rod. The battle was as mano-a-mano as it gets in this theater. A 300-pound marlin, pound tippet and a 75-year-old Don Quixote with a 14-weight rod. What could go wrong? One hour became two, and the powerful fish still hadn’t jumped. Instead, it rested far below with its pectoral fins extended horizontally. It’s message: Make me move, old man. After two hours, the experienced angler was wearying; he’d put as much pressure on the fish as he’d ever put on anything — and still it wouldn’t rise. The fish had ripped off a quarter-mile of line…