Innholdsfortegnelse for The Traveling Angler 2025 i Salt Water Sportsman

We’re betting on you. This is the year you book that fishing trip that everyone’s been talking about in the group chat. Maybe with your buddies. Very possibly your family. No matter what, you’ll be wetting a line for a species you really want to catch in a place you don’t call home. ¶ The stock market grew 25 percent in 2024. According to some estimates, 790 million tourists traveled internationally in the first seven months of 2024. That’s basically back to pre-pandemic levels. It’s your time to go. ¶ But what fish to catch? We did things a bit differently at Traveling Angler this year. Everyone has at least one species they’ve never caught but sure as hell want to. So that’s how we organized the magazine. Look up…

FEATURED LOCATIONS Chesapeake Bay; North Carolina WORLD RECORD 135 lb., 9 oz. A pelagic species most often found in open, warm-temperate to tropical waters of the western and eastern Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific coast of Japan, cobia make long seasonal migrations. Along the Eastern Seaboard and in the Gulf of Mexico, cobia move south in winter and north for the summer. They have a lifespan of 15 years or more, and grow as long as 78 inches and as heavy as 172 pounds. Very curious by nature, cobia frequently show little fear of boats. Their brute strength, dogged fighting style and delicious flavor make them a top target of coastal anglers. CHUMMING THE CHESAPEAKE When I was a kid, my dad…

FEATURED LOCATION Baja, Mexico WORLD RECORD 28 lb., 10 oz. Better known among American anglers as leopard grouper or cabrilla (pronounced ka-bree-ya), the golden grouper is the junkyard dog of the Baja coast. Cabrilla love to chase and eat artificials, and these structure-loving fish can be found around rocks, reefs and submerged pinnacles. ¶ A cabrilla resembles its cousin, the gag grouper of the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, but with a deeper brown and more mottled pattern. At times, it changes to a striking orange during a unique color phase. Most catches average 4 to 8 pounds, but schools of 10- to 15-pounders are the bread and butter of cabrilla fishing. A trophy fish is 20-plus pounds. Local Slang: Anglers refer to the golden grouper as “la reina” or the queen…

FEATURED LOCATIONS Belize; Florida Keys WORLD RECORD 60 lb. A permit swimming in the shallows, with its black scythelike tail visible, can truly frustrate fly-fishers. And what a mix: a picky eater and a spook roaming the flats of our dreams. Permit prefer clean salt water, hunting shrimp and crabs on pristine flats in countries such as Mexico, Honduras, Belize and the Bahamas. This area has become world-famous for its permit fishing, with hundreds of shallow, turtle-grass-covered, classic-style permit flats. UN-BELIZE-ABLE Permit roam the flats of Earth. But from the Florida Keys to the Seychelles, Belize takes the cake, offering some of the best flats fisheries in existence. A quick breakdown of the top spots: Ambergris Caye: Running parallel to the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, Ambergris Caye is the largest of the…

FEATURED LOCATIONS Guatemala; Florida WORLD RECORD 221 lb. (Pac) / 142 lb., 6 oz. (Atl) “I mean, is there a point when you’d get tired of catching them and watching them jump?” That question came from a friend considering options for a Pacific sailfish trip. The emphatic answer is “No!” ¶ Sailfish take the cake when it comes to exciting battles, especially when you’re fishing light tackle. It’s a sprint, rather than a drawn-out test of wills. As soon it feels the hook, a sailfish goes berserk, leaping and flailing frenetically in every direction. Heck, they’ve been known to charge the boat and jump aboard, as if they’re trying to stab somebody. ¶ Beyond being an awesome adversary on the end of the line, sailfish are very cool fish. Although they…

FEATURED LOCATIONS Florida Keys; Freetown, Bahamas; Piñas Bay, Panama WORLD RECORD 132 lb., 4 oz. The snapper family comprises many fish similar in habit and appearance. With the exception of immature gray snapper common to mangrove country, most inhabit offshore reefs, rocks and other structure. ¶ Most snapper run just a few pounds. The yellowtail snapper of South Florida and Florida Keys reefs commonly hits 4 or 5 pounds; the popular mutton snapper averages 5 to 15 pounds; the coveted red snapper can top 20 pounds; and bruiser cubera snapper on the reefs can scale up to 80 pounds. Snapper family members are voracious feeders with the teeth to back it up, and they will hit cut baits, live baits, shrimp, lures, and a careless angler’s fingers. But in clear…

FEATURED LOCATIONS Croatia; Ireland; UK WORLD RECORD 1,496 lb. Various tuna species swim in oceans around the world. The Atlantic bluefin tuna is the grandest of them all—huge, sleek, warm-blooded, the king of Atlantic waters both warm and cold. Yellowfin and bigeye round out the oceanic trio of elite big-game tuna that are top-notch table fare. DESTINATION: EASTERN ATLANTIC Some places are known for big tuna: North Carolina’s Outer Banks, the Canadian Maritimes and the Gulf Coast, for example. But what if we told you the northeastern Atlantic, including a surprising number of European countries, is seeing a complete bluefin tuna revival in recent years? Dubrovnik, Croatia: It would have been an unthinkable sight 20 years earlier: a forklift making its way along a Croatian waterfront with a 577-pound, 8-foot-9-inch…

FEATURED LOCATIONS Ireland; Scotland; Sweden WORLD RECORD 79 lb., 2 oz. Hop on a plane with your travel fishing gear to Europe toexperience exceptional fishing for Atlantic salmon that’s arguably the best in the world. This lone Atlantic salmon species is caught in Maine and Canada, but a slew of countries on the other side of the pond offer higher numbers of fish and hold current world records. Atlantic salmon are anadromous gamefish that begin life in fresh water before migrating to the ocean. They grow big, to more than 70 pounds, but even 40- to 50-pounders are considered giants. Catch them in open ocean waters or lakes, rivers and streams. The choice is yours. IRISH PICKS Ireland offers everything from big-city river fishing in Galway to sight-fishing in isolated, rural…

FEATURED LOCATIONS Costa Rica; Florida WORLD RECORD 87 lb. A distance-swimming pelagic superstar, dolphinfish patrol the tropical and subtropical waters of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans eating anything that fits in their jaws. Consider the fish with many names nature’s gift to offshore fishermen. Called dolphin, dorado, dodos, mahi or mahimahi depending on the region, this fast grower can eat nearly 15 to 20 percent of its body weight daily in ideal conditions. That’s an absurd level of feeding activity. ¶ Mahi are a worthy adversary on the troll—with high-flying and unpredictable jumps—and a welcome sight around drifting flotsam. All dolphin reach sexual maturity within a year of growth, sometimes as early as four to five months. Let the small peanuts go so they can spawn a few times…

FEATURED LOCATIONS Texas; New York WORLD RECORD 22 lb., 4 oz. It’s the most popular freshwater fish in North America. And anglers in every state have caught them, although Alaska’s largemouth bass catch still remains an oddity. Largemouth bass aren’t native to all states, but they’ve found their way into fresh waters across the US. They grow big, due in large part to their ravenous appetite. Because of their popularity, entire fishing and tournament industries have grown around them over the decades. ¶ Probably the most attractive feature of largies is their willingness to bite so many different types of lures. A spinnerbait, topwater frog, plastic lizard, flipping jig and crankbait all catch the same species. Fish deep, shallow, in the weeds, under trees and docks, or around the rocks.…

FEATURED LOCATIONS Louisiana; North Carolina WORLD RECORD 94 lb., 2 oz. Redfish, often called red drum or simply reds, have to be the most versatile inshore fish on the East Coast. Available throughout the entire Gulf of Mexico and as far north as Chesapeake Bay, their range is expansive. Reds roam all different types of waters, thanks to their life cycle. Juveniles hunt in the marshes, backwaters and shallow flats that make up many states’ inshore waters. These underage redfish are known as puppy drum in North Carolina. But once they reach maturity, redfish head for open Gulf and Atlantic waters. Anglers target these mature fish in open bays, passes, inlets and along the beaches. Often, the drum are there to spawn. The best way to catch them? Sight-fishing and…

FEATURED LOCATIONS Alaska; Oregon WORLD RECORD 97 lb., 4 oz. Salmon are probably the most famous anadromous fish. Images of the iconic silver fish leaping up waterfalls to reach their native spawning grounds are synonymous with nature’s bounty. ¶ Each species of salmon has its personality—some taste good, while others might be the hardest fighting. Kings (chinook) are the pinnacle, and silvers (coho) with a hooked jaw are aggressive, a perfect target for conventional and fly-fishing. Alaska Rainbow Lodge provides access to 30 of the most productive salmon-fishing waterways in the Frontier State. LODGE SPOTLIGHT: ALASKA RAINBOW LODGE, BRISTOL BAY Each summer, like clockwork, a half-dozen species of salmon return to the rivers around Bristol Bay, Alaska, and Chip Ferguson from Alaska Rainbow Lodge is in the middle of the mecca.…

FEATURED LOCATIONS Northeast US; Northern California WORLD RECORD 81 lb., 14 oz. Stripers define an entire culture of anglers in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. Migratory and anadromous, this popular gamefish moves into nearshore waters in the spring following their spawning in Chesapeake Bay, the Massachusetts Bay and Cape Cod area, the Hudson River and the Delaware River. Viable populations also persist on the West Coast, from San Francisco Bay to southern Oregon, the remnants of fish transplanted in 1879. ¶ Stripers are taken by casting, drifting and trolling, and they respond to a variety of live, dead and artificial baits on a range of tackle. While their maximum weight exceeds 80 pounds, most catches run 20 pounds or less; a 50-pounder is a trophy benchmark enough for a lifetime angler…

FEATURED LOCATIONS California; Bahamas WORLD RECORD 184 lb. Like torpedoes, wahoo seem purpose-built for speed and power. Their streamlined bodies and forked tails burst to highway speed for short distances, allowing them to run down high-speed lures pulled at 15 knots. These hard-charging, tiger-striped predators hunt open oceans in packs. Expect chaos on deck when doubles and triples burn drag. With weights into the triple digits, wahoo are offshore favorites for the fight. What’s more, they are absolutely delicious. In Hawaii, they call them ono, which means “good to eat.” "At times, these wahoo feeding frenzies get so aggressive that they’ll strike just about anything you cast in front of them."—Mike Murciano SLINGING LURES ON THE SLIDE Wahoo are in no way unique to the fishery out of Southern California, but…

FEATURED LOCATIONS Florida Keys; Bahamas WORLD RECORD 16 lb. Ankle-deep, you wade slowly, eyes scanning a vast white-sand flat in search of movement through sun-dappled waters. A streak of nervous water draws the eye. Then you see them, shadows of gray ghosts hunting the shallows. ¶ Bonefish and the rise of sight-fishing the flats with a fly rod go hand in hand, and as your hand strips line off the reel in preparation for what must be a perfect cast, you feel the same anticipation renowned fly-fisherman, writer and artist Lee Wulff did when he first encountered these fish in 1947. ¶ “We who fly-fished the flats for them knew that a fish hitherto modest in reputation would soon move into the ranks of the most respected gamefish,” Wulff wrote.…

FEATURED LOCATION Seychelles WORLD RECORD 160 lb., 7 oz. Known as “the gangster of the flats,” the giant trevally is a dogged scrapper with considerable size, a recipe for heavyweight fights on fly or topwater poppers for anglers willing to mess with this ill-tempered jack. Even though the species isn’t available to mainland US anglers, tales of the heroic battles have spread among US fishing circles, inspiring journeys to epic locales like the Seychelles, Australia and Madagascar. ¶ The IGFA all-tackle record GT weighed 160 pounds and was caught near Tokara, Japan. That’s bigger than the largest amberjack ever landed, and it’s more than double the size of the largest jack crevalle ever recorded by the IGFA. LODGE SPOTLIGHT: ALPHONSE ISLAND, SEYCHELLES With its private airstrip, beachside bungalows and garden…

FEATURED LOCATIONS Hawaii; Costa Rica; Texas WORLD RECORD 1,402 lb., 2 oz. Widely renowned as the strongest species of gamefish in the world, blue marlin are the most iconic billfish in sport fishing. Everything about them is the stuff of angler dreams, from their willingness to crash trolling spreads to their majestic leaps and long, grueling battles on the line. What would you expect from a fish that reaches weights of more than 1,000 pounds and never backs down in a fight? ¶ Blue marlin are found in tropical and sub-tropical seas worldwide and make incredible migrations of thousands of miles across oceans to the shorelines of distant continents. Likewise, anglers in search of a grander must have a penchant for travel. There’s a chance at a grander any month…

FEATURED LOCATION Gulf Coast WORLD RECORD 17 lb., 7 oz. The sleek, silvery spotted seatrout might look more ballerina than linebacker when compared with its drum-family cousins—the redfish and black drum. However, looks can deceive as even the tiniest of these dancers willingly slams a topwater lure more than half its size. Spotted seatrout, also called speckled trout or specks, offer yearlong action to inshore anglers from the mid-Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico. When the bite turns on, live bait such as shrimp, presented under a float or free-lined, produce double- and sometimes triple-digit catches of schooling fish. The Holy Grail for trophy-trout die-hards is a 30-inch fish, a fish that many anglers strive for. The absolute best place for a chance at a unicorn is Port Mansfield in the…

FEATURED LOCATIONS Spain; New Zealand WORLD RECORD 44 lb., 5 oz. Among the trout species widespread in streams and rivers all over the globe, brown trout are widely considered the most predatory. Early in life, they feed on a diet of primarily aquatic insects just like other trout species. However, once they reach a certain size, they become primarily piscivores and feed on high-protein packages, like smaller fish and crayfish. Sure, you can catch brown trout on a dry fly, but if you want to hang into the largest brown, you better throw meat. A brown trout’s appetite makes them a great target for fly-fishers who enjoy stripping baitfish streamers, as well as for conventional anglers armed with crankbaits. Sure, you can catch brown trout on a dry fly, but…