Indholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2019 i Anglers Journal

An early morning mist rises from the waters, revealing what lies below. As if on cue, a worker at the Quinebaug Valley State Trout Hatchery breaks the surface and the stillness with a long-handled dip net, pulling up maybe a dozen rainbow trout from a circular tank. He weighs the fish, then hands the net to a colleague, who heaves the load into a truck. It goes on like this, net after net, for nearly an hour, until the truck is brimming with about 2,000, 1-pound fish on their way to the big leagues. Hatcheries like this one in Central Village, Connecticut, exist to support sport fishing’s 60 million anglers. There are about 809 hatcheries and fish culture support facilities that raise fish for stocking. Some solely provide fish for…

My long-departed friend and mentor Russ Wilson used to tell me: “You know, if you tied a 15-pound bluefish tail to tail with a 30-pound striper, the bluefish would drag the striper around until it drowned.” Russ was old school, a lifelong bass man of wide repute. He had a way of explaining things that was both profound and down to earth, and he was certainly not above using a slight exaggeration from time to time. He had the greatest appreciation for bluefish, as near an apex predator as you’ll find on the inshore grounds and, in his estimation, a gamefish deserving of praise. And why not? Blues are tough customers: fast, strong, tenacious, acrobatic and rarely hesitant to attack lures or baitfish only slightly smaller than their own size.…

I doubt there is a fish more accommodating than the mutton snapper. They grow to almost 20 pounds, provide outstanding table fare and can be caught everywhere, from 200 feet of water to the flats. They are common throughout the Florida Keys and Bahamas, and the variety of ways to catch them is almost endless. In 1971, I was stationed in Key West with the Navy. I had a 17-foot skiff and was more than a bit obsessed with learning how to flats fish. I hadn’t been there but a few months when I was fishing on a flat just north of Boca Grande. I spotted a stingray, and it looked like there was something following it, so I put a cast directly on the ray and hooked up. I…

I went to Alaska in late August, for the very first time, hoping to catch silver salmon. A longtime fly fisherman, at 68, I was almost the last of my fishing pals to make the pilgrimage. In the early morning chill, I boarded a floatplane in Anchorage and headed for Riversong Lodge on the Yentna River, 70 miles into the northern interior. From the co-pilot seat of the de Havilland Otter, I looked out at the illuminated, snow-mantled Alaska Range. It was like something from a fairy tale. We passed over the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet, and I hoped to get a glimpse of Denali, far to the north. As I peered down on the braids of the rain-swollen Susitna River, I had mixed feelings. I was fired up,…

Silver Creek is often referred to as the graduate school of fly-fishing for trout. Located in a sagebrush prairie in south-central Idaho, the spring creek is flanked by willows, farms and ranchland. Think barley, alfalfa, cows, sheep and a tiny, down-to-earth town named Picabo (pronounced Peekaboo), which means shining or silver waters in a Native American dialect. The creek is steeped in history. Ernest Hemingway spent years hunting and fishing it. If not for his son, Jack, The Nature Conservancy would not own what it does today: more than 874 acres of land along the upstream reaches of Silver Creek, all open to the public and referred to as The Silver Creek Preserve. A former Idaho Fish and Game Commissioner, Jack Hemingway was a staunch advocate for protecting the unique…

Andy Mill met George H.W. Bush in 1987, the year before Bush was elected president. For the next 20 years, the two fished together often. Bush would call Mill with unmistakable inflection in his voice: “An-DY? What are you doing two weeks from tomorrow?” And they’d make a plan. “He was one of the greatest enthusiasts I’ve ever fished with,” Mill says. Bush was a first-light-to-last-light kind of angler, never deterred by bad weather or getting skunked. “I never heard that guy complain about anything, ever.” There was always hope for tomorrow. Mill, a two-time Olympian in downhill skiing and one of the most decorated tarpon anglers in the world, remembers Bush as a saltwater fanatic. He chased bonefish, but his dream was to land a tarpon in the Florida…

In the bayous of southeast Louisiana, there’s an old school redfish camp called Bourgeois where the gastronomic influence of New Orleans hangs like Spanish moss. Lean in, and you’ll hear the Cajun guides bantering about tides and flies in one breath, and in the next, how to cook frog legs (deglaze your pan with bourbon, of course). I came here not interested in cuisine, but to fly-cast for tailing redfish, which, when conditions are right, can be spectacular in the shallow bays and passes that stretch to the horizon. Alas, the weather gods snookered us. The night before, the jagged blue edge of a cold front descended, and temperatures plummeted. By daybreak, northwest winds scudded across the flats, churning and muddying waters. I stood on the bow of a bay…

It was my second day in the Alaskan bush. Light rain accompanied us downriver as the salmon made their way upstream. We pulled our raft into a swirling eddy at a confluence with a big tributary. I hopped out of the boat and waded up to my knees. I began my cast, and the heavy conehead of the black-and-white Dolly Llama fly pulled against my 7-weight rod as the Mylar flash rippled through the air. The fly landed on the edge of the seam. I made several strips until I felt an aggressive tug, then yanked back to set the hook. The fish danced and jumped as it pulled line off my reel. A few minutes later, I had my first coho. As I stood in the water holding the…

It happened on the last day of the Boothbay Harbor Tuna Tournament in early August 1978. We were aboard my old Shark II, a 34-foot lobster boat I had rejigged for the charter trade, and we were drifting on a flat, pewter-colored sea about 6 miles south of Seguin Island in the Gulf of Maine. The mood was pretty melancholy, as we hadn’t had a legitimate tuna strike all summer, and we had just pulled the hook on a big thresher shark that had picked up a bait and rocketed to the surface. My vision of receiving the Largest Shark trophy and $50 prize — to thunderous applause, no doubt — evaporated into the humid air. But the little yellow balloon closest to the boat suddenly popped, and 130-pound Dacron…

Long ago, I learned a vital angling lesson: Never leave home without a fly rod. In my travels, I’ve often stumbled on fishable water by chance — in Nigeria, say, where as a Peace Corps teacher I hooked a carp-like creature fit for the television show River Monsters in a muddy creek. So when I moved to Ireland to pursue the woman who’s now my wife, I packed my four-piece travel rod in case the River Liffey, so dear to James Joyce, held trout. I rented an apartment in the leafy Ballsbridge neighborhood of Dublin, not far from St. Stephen’s Green and the city center, and tried to work on a book I owed my publisher. Instead, I spent hours wandering around my new neighborhood, stopping as necessary for a…

I’ve never been a fan of the term bucket list, which exploded into instant overuse after the tear-jerker movie of the same name debuted. Suddenly, everyone felt compelled to tell you exactly which things just had to be experienced before he or she caught the big bus. I suppose this phenomenon reflects an extreme manifestation of the innate human need to rank things. We all do it, and we all seem hell-bent on telling other people about it. Here are my favorite songs, my favorite foods, my favorite movies. As if other people really care one whit about, say, our preferences regarding truck brands. But since we’re talking about ranking things, let’s talk fish. One particular species doesn’t stand out above all others on my list, but I do have…

Small V-wakes form on a glass surface, almost unnoticeable to the untrained eye. After hours of squinting through salt-stained sunglasses, I’m unsure that what I’m seeing is real. Maybe rays, maybe porpoise — I don’t want another false alarm. But as we get closer, dark backs materialize, and the heart rates aboard skyrocket. “Twelve o’clock! Twelve o’clock!” I scream as half-asleep anglers on beanbags scurry to grab 8-foot rods with giant spinning reels hanging off the butt sections. Nine-inch poppers and stick baits fly in the direction of the fish. Like someone dropping a grand piano into the water, there’s a violent explosion as a fish smashes the plug and white water erupts. And then time stands still. What follows is a pure adrenaline dump. Hundred-pound braid screams off a…

A stiff easterly mashes sets of frothy green waves into the sand of Island Beach State Park in New Jersey. To our right, beach grasses dance in the breeze atop 30-foot dunes that the wind has scrubbed for a millennium. Aside from our southbound tire tracks in the sand, I imagine the place looks almost identical to what explorer Henry Hudson saw more than 400 years ago. Fly-tying legend Bob Popovics likes to come here and scan the waves for mullet during the fall run. “It’s best when the sun illuminates the waves from behind so that you can spot the mullet riding down the fronts of those waves,” says Popovics, who is 70. “Let’s head down to the inlet and see what’s happening.” We pace up and down the…

In early 2007, my dad purchased an 18-foot Eagle flats boat to fish Sebastian Inlet and the Indian River near his house in Palm Bay, Florida. I found the boat on eBay and instantly fell in love with her. The hull could not be missed, with its dark green flanks and recessed, eyelid-shaped running lights. I checked the bids daily, then hourly as the auction neared its end. When all was said and done, she was ours. The boat was in Riviera Beach, Florida. It was a 2001 model with a 115-hp Yamaha, so it wasn’t all that old, and I thought we were getting a good deal, as we nabbed it for $8,500. The guy at the shop put a set of earmuffs over the water intakes, turned on…