Innholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2014 i Anglers Journal

“Bonefish are not usually thought of as predators, but a school of tailing fish coming onto a flat during a young flood tide can result in carnage to a resident population of crustaceans. It is a primordial hunt initiated by a celestial calendar. They are benthic predators, feeding on mollusks, crustaceans and worms buried in the grass and marl. Their eyes see all. Prey is pinned to the bottom and sucked savagely into a throat lined with crusher plates and granular teeth. Bonefish show uncharacteristic pleasure when they eat. Crossbands in shades of gray light up across their bodies. The translucent dorsal fills with air as the caudal fin quivers with emotion. It is the natural triumph of predation and survival.” –Jeffrey Cardenas, flyfisherman, author, naturalist (see “On Emerald Flats,” Page…

“Casting menhaden bait for Striped Bass, from the rocky shores of the bays, estuaries, and islands along the Atlantic coasts, constitute [sic] the highest branch of American angling. It is, indeed, questionable — when considering all the elements which contribute to the sum total of sport in angling — whether this method of Striped Bass fishing is not superior to fly-fishing for salmon, and if so, it outranks any angling in the world. The method is eminently American, and characteristic of the modern angler by its energy of style, and the exercise and activity necessary to success.” Genio C. Scott, Fishing in American Waters, 1875…

When Justin Rea first moved from Idaho to the Florida Keys to guide, swapping his drift boat and oars for a pole and skiff, he expected to meet a few veteran captains who might mentor him for a year or two while he learned the trade in the Conch Republic. Instead, he found a lip-locked fishing network that welcomed him much the way a pistol-wielding Nicholas Dance did Thomas Skelton in Tom McGuane’s Keys novel, Ninety-Two in the Shade: “I just wanted you to see what I would blow your head off with if you ever tried to guide out of any dock west of Marathon.” On the Snake Rivers South Fork in Idaho, Rea had been tutored by Henry’s Fork legend Mike Lawson, but he quickly realized that no…

They are the quintessential, wet-footed fishing family. The Jinishians grew up on the water, fooling around with small boats and chasing fish from sunup to well past sundown, in the briny and the sweet. The oldest of the three generations is 94-year-old John Jinishian of Norwalk, Connecticut, a World War II veteran and lifelong fisherman; the youngest is his grandson John, 23, a committed, all-in angler who spent the summer guiding in Alaska and plans on making a career out of his passion. “A fishing family, a water family,” says Russell Jinishian, 61, the oldest son and a national expert on maritime and sporting art who operates the J. Russell Jinishian Gallery in Fairfield, Connecticut. “We always had a rod, a bathing suit, a clam rake.” “We fished like dogs,”…

About 25 years ago, a friend called from the Poconos. The East Branch of Wallenpaupack Creek, which had been private and little-fished for nearly 70 years, was about to open to the public. I was invited to a friends-and-family preview. Here at last was an almost-virgin, freestone stream that looked like the streams that Arnold Gingrich, Ray Bergman and A.J. McClane had written about. With riffles, runs and pools, and ancient trees overhanging its shaded banks, it met all the requirements for kicking off clouds of mayflies to nourish trout that had not yet been educated to the dangers attached to a leader. As it turned out, it was Hendrickson time, the most glorious mayfly hatch of the year on my home waters. On one perfect afternoon (pleasantly warm and…

Muriel Fosters Fishing Diary is a facsimile reproduction of a beautiful fishing diary kept by a remarkable pioneering fly angler, skilled artist and naturalist from 1913 until 1949. In a leather-bound fishing journal, Muriel Constance Foster recorded all her fishing expeditions with entries illustrated in exquisite watercolors. She fished primarily in Scotland but also in Ireland, as well as in Cambridgeshire and Berkshire in England. Muriel was born in June 1885 in the village of Shenley in Surrey, England. She was the eldest daughter in a typically Victorian upper-middle-class family of four girls and two boys. Muriels interests were always allied with those of her brothers, and they included fencing as well as fishing; the feminine pursuits of little girls never interested her, except for embroidery, at which she was…

Mutton snapper” is hardly a prepossessing title. The sheep, from which the name derives, is not much of an animal. No civilized person deals I with him except in chops and stews. To bleat is not to sing out in a commanding baritone; to be sheepish is scarcely to possess a virtue for which civilization rolls out its more impressive carpets. And it is true that the fish is not at all handsome, with its large and vacant-looking head, its crazy red eye and the haphazard black spot just shy of its tail. Yet its brick-orange flanks and red tail are rather tropical and fine, and for a number of reasons it deserves consideration as major light-tackle game. After you’ve been incessantly outwitted by the mutton snapper, you cease to…

As long as men have gone to sea in search of fish, we have also sought a better understanding of the water world beneath our boats. This desire for better fishfinding technology has in many ways driven the rapid evolution of marine electronics. Fifty-something anglers, such as myself, have witnessed a parade of “breakthroughs,” beginning with simple electronic flashers, then paper graphs, monochrome CRT echosounders, color CRTs and finally high-definition color LCDs. These all pale in comparison to the advancements of the last five years. Today, fishermen can electronically detect fish hiding under docks on either side of the boat; see submerged trees, reefs or shipwrecks in near-photographic detail; and with some practice, identify the species of fish targets on the display. And these examples just scratch the surface, as…

“I saw a lot of the world before it got civilized, I always had a fishing chair welded to the deck of my [Navy] ships and caught sailfish, marlin, shark, barracuda and dolphin in different waters. Key West was a little town. Bimini had a couple of fishing shacks. Garden Key at Dry Tortugas was a garden of every conceivable kind of fish and turtles. The Hawaiian Islands, except for Oahu, were very rural. There were few buildings on the big island. The fishing down through the Carolinas was unbelievable. The lagoon at Christmas Island was full of fat lobsters like cobblestones. We used to immerse the meat in pots of melted butter that was sent to the service while families were rationed at home.” — World War II veteran…

Ron Ballanti has worked in the marine electronics and fishing industries for nearly 25 years, and has fished some the world's top destinations with the best captains on the water. An avid angler, Ballanti enjoys sharing his experiences through art ides and photographs. South Florida native Jeffrey Cardenas is a peripatetic fly fisherman, author, photographer, pilot and former Key West guide whose writing has appeared in the New fork Times, Sports Illustrated, Outside, Time and other publications. The former owner of the Saltwater Angler fly shop in Key West, Cardenas enjoys exploring by small plane the out islands of the Bahamas and Caribbean. Jody Dole's award-winning photography has appeared on the covers of the New fork Times, Fortune and Time magazines. His images of the Jinishian family and Muriel Foster's…

Boatbuilders sometimes are invited to fish on one their boats in tournaments (why not?), and John Bayliss, of Bayliss Boatworks in Wanchese, North Carolina, is no exception. When the owner of Dream Time, an 80-footer from 2012, invited him to fish the White Marlin Open in August, he jumped. After all, the boat’s captain, Rob Mahoney, is a good friend, and Bayliss’ son John would be mate. Tournament rules say white marlin brought to the scales must be at least 67 inches long and at least 70 pounds, so small fish net release points, and those crews best at estimating fish size have an advantage. Mahoney heard about some crews measuring fish at boatside — in a word, larger fish — in Wilmington Canyon. “The next day, one showed himself…

Carter had a skiff like Nichol Dances but where Carters would high-center on a shallow bank Nichols would pole in dew and let him drop in those little basins where the fish held faced up tide on the incoming water. Now it was Dances system to fish by the tide like a sniper and time his stops so the fish would come to him or to his chum slick; where Faron Carter fished the flats in the old style poling the skiff from the bow on the edge of the flats in the early flood then dropping back to the mangroves on the high water and looking for the waking fish. But Dance knew the intersections and only touched the pole to set the skiff up and slip the anchor;…

Pamplona has the running of the bulls. New Orleans has Mardi Gras. Martha’s Vineyard has the Derby. The common thread is an allconsuming madness. Other than a winter power outage, no other event ripples so widely across this small island located just a 45-minute ferry ride from Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby, more commonly referred to as the Derby, is an annual five-week fishing binge, one that falls somewhere among a descent into madness, a religious pilgrimage and an Iron Man competition. But one special thing about the Derby is that it attracts anglers of all stripes, from the committed to the casual. Running from early September to mid-October, it is as much a state of mind as it is a contest of who…

Some years before, saddened by the long decline of wild ducks and upland game birds, I had quit bird hunting for good and, except for occasional surf casting from the ocean beach, had gradually lost interest in so-called “recreational” fishing with conventional spinning reel equipment and heavy lures. Then, one summer in the 1980s, the artist Jack Zajac on the Snake River in Wyoming, then writer Jim Harrison on the Yellowstone River in Montana, introduced me to fly-fishing, which I tried in saltwater as soon as 1 got home. John Cole, my former mate on Merlin (and author in 1978 of Striper, a fine book on the striped bass), was spending his winters running a fishing lodge in Key West. In the 1980s, in freshwater and saltwater, I had become…

The greenhorns dead-lift power can’t trip the 3,000-pound bag of scup swinging beneath the gallows frame aft. He can’t yet seize, whip or mend with twine; can’t get his knots to cinch down properly, connecting hook to mono leader. He can’t yet feel the vibration underfoot that says there’s something wrapped in the wheel, can’t tell a codfish bite from the clank of his sinker across cobble bottom. “Jeee-sus, boy, you move like death chained to a freakin’ stump! You gotta put some ass into it,” the captain says, shaking his head in disgust. Two minutes later: “What? Are you tryin’ to break the goddamn thing? Easy, Bubba, go easy …” Fishing is backbreaking labor — bull work of the highest order. Fishing also demands constant discretion, a light touch,…

Merritt’s Boat & Engine Works this year celebrated the family’s 100th year of boatbuilding, a tradition that began at the start of World War I when Roy Merritt’s grandfather went to work at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard as a carpenter building oceangoing merchant marine vessels. By 1929 the family was living in Florida, where Franklin LeRoy Merritt built his first sportfisherman for charter off Fort Lauderdale. This was the 38-foot Caliban with which his son Allen would win his first of eight Cat Cay Tuna Tournaments. Merritt got its start in Pompano Beach, Florida, in 1948 when F. Roy and Ennis Merritt bought 8 marshy acres on the Intracoastal Waterway for a boatyard to service the boats owned by sons Buddy and Allen as well as those of other charter…

“It was late September, and I was free diving off South County, Rhode Island, targeting migrating striped bass with my underwater camera. I noticed gulls and terns over breaking fish, and like so many anglers fishing from a boat, I chased after them only to get there as the fish departed and the last bird flew off. I started making random dives, hoping to be positioned on the bottom when the fish showed up. As sunset approached, they suddenly appeared — a school of stripers, a few dozen fish, all “cookie cutter” size. I fired off a salvo of shots as the bass streamed by. I wanted to convey a sense of time and place to these images, so I broke the surface and shot photos of the setting sun…

AND THE CROWD GOES WILD I must say you have every right to be extremely proud of this magazine. With contributors like C.J. Chivers, Jim Harrison and my old friend Barry Gibson, this magazine is literature. The photography is fabulous; many of the stories are quite moving. This is a magazine for people who, like me, have been a part of the marine world, as well as for folks who are new to it. Reading this, those new folks will understand what all the enthusiasm and, to a certain extent, addiction is all about. Fishing out of Menemsha in the '70s and '80s, I came across many of the Cuttyhunk guides, particularly my friend Donnie Lynch. I had never heard of Bruce Borges, much less a "light tackle" Cuttyhunk guide.…

Marlon Leslie caught his first permit when he was 8 years old. A boatman for his father — the Belizean permit guide Charlie Leslie — he had done as he had been told and waited with the skiff as his father and a client walked the flat and stalked tailing fish. Marlon’s job was to keep the boat from drifting away as the tide rose and to walk the skiff back by its anchor line to the fishermen, usually after the client had blown a cast, so they wouldn’t waste time reaching the next flat and the next permit opportunity. When Marlon saw the huge tail slicing the water in front of him — his father too far away to hear him call without spooking the fish — he did…

In 1987, as the Derby was faltering, a group of fishermen led by Ed Jerome, longtime Derby president and Vineyard school principal, stepped in and bought the Derby from the Chamber of Commerce for $1. Today the Derby is a healthy non-profit led by a volunteer committee that uses the proceeds to give full scholarships to four Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School seniors. “Our goals are simple,” said Jerome in the 2013 souvenir book welcome message. “Give back to the community, preserve and protect our natural resources, and help young people in their efforts to further their education.” HISTORY Over the years, the prize structure and contest species have undergone many changes. For about the first 20 years, the fisherman who caught the heaviest striped bass was the grand prize…

In the early summer of 1954, a powerboat with the most beautiful lines I had ever seen was riding at anchor in the harbor of Rockport, Massachusetts. Her designer turned out to be a local sailmaker who had built her as a tuna harpoon boat; she was the only one of her kind, and she was for sale. The following day I took the helm on a run around Cape Ann, as the owner ran forward to the pulpit and harpooned a small harbor seal (bountied in Massachusetts) with an astonishing throw of the clumsy pole. In Ipswich Bay, giant bluefin tuna were carving circles on the surface, and the sailmaker showed me how to approach them, how much to lead the swiff fish on the throw, how important it…

It is a little after 6 o’clock in the morning, a&d the moon is still up as the 62-foot Maria Mendonsa steams west from Sakonnet Point in Little Compton, Rhode Island, with her brood of three aluminum workboats and a small skiff in tow. The destination is a floating fish trap anchored off Newport. A dozen men in foul-weather gear, some jjjl-eyed, some yawning, sit on the bench lilts or stand in the 30-foot skiffs, talking, smoking, drinking coffee, trying to wake up on the short run to the grounds. The clouds are gray and layered, and there is a bite to the air. Weather is moving in. Crowded into the small pilothouse is the Wheeler family. Patriarch Alan Wheeler, 67, an intense, high-energy waterman whose gaze doesn’t miss a…

At 92, the gait is halting, but Allen Merritts blue eyes still sparkle at the mere mention of going fishing because in his world nothing quite compares to outwitting a snapper or giant bluefin tuna. Fishing for these species is like a game of chess, and one at which this nonagenarian excels. Perched on the covering board of the 25-foot Stormy Petrel — the name an homage to his long-ago friend Capt. Tommy Gifford — the line from his 12-pound spinning rod disappears into a sheen of finely ground menhaden and bunker oil as Ron Davis ladles fresh chum over a patch reef 15 miles north of Florida’s Hillsboro Inlet. It is three days before the full moon. Sea conditions are calm this June evening, perfect for a good nighttime…

“I am a big fan of cold-molded wood construction for quiet running and quiet fishing. The whole point of building these boats is so they can chase billfish all over the world. You can have the fanciest, nicest stateroom and saloon, but if you are not catching them, you’re not going to be having much fun.”— John Bayliss, Bayliss Boatworks “A true fishing boat emphasizes less rather than more. It has unfettered access around the boat, whether its a flats boat or an offshore fishing boat”— Scott Deal, Maverick Boat Co. When the conversation turns to what makes a great sportfshing boat, certain traits rise to the top of the water column. There’s a lot of variation, of course, based on the size and style of boat, the location of…