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.
The bluefish is one pugnacious character in an ocean of biters and fighters, where big fish eat little fish and those sporting a good set of choppers have an edge. Longtime fisherman Bob McGinley described his love for bluefish as colorfully as anyone. “I like catching a fish that wants to bite my face off,” said McGinley, a 50-year veteran of the New Jersey surf, who died in 2017. Fishing photographer Tom Lynch, who deserves credit for keeping his friend McGinley’s words alive, is also a big bluefish fan. “I love’em,” says Lynch, who runs a gallery in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, and targets blues each spring. “Ten- to 20-pounders — I love them in that range.” I’d love to run into a school of big blues this year,…
Bill Barich’s 10 books include Laughing in the Hills, A Pint of Plain and Crazy for Rivers. He has written about fly-fishing for The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated and other publications. In “American Summer,” Bill explains why he could never love a largemouth bass the way his father did. Topher Browne is the author of Atlantic Salmon Magic and 100 Best Flies for Atlantic Salmon, and is co-producer of the Spey-casting DVD Spey to Z. A resident of Maine, he fishes for Atlantic salmon in Quebec and steelhead in the Great Lakes, and is working on a book about Spey casting. Topher writes about Atlantic salmon in “An Acrobatic Prize Fighter.” Outdoor writer and photographer Gary Caputi specializes in fishing and boating. From his home in New Jersey, he fishes…
FOR THE LOVE OF LANGUAGE I wanted to take a moment to say how much I appreciate Anglers Journal. I love words, fish and photography, but there are other sources for those things. AJ revives the notion that the reason we take time to write the right word, to find and fool fish, and to capture something in two dimensions is because we’re trying to reconnect with the moment. I, for one, need encouragement (or, rather, permission) to slow down. Comparing AJ to other fishing periodicals is like comparing The Walker’s Cay Chronicles to other fishing television. Flip Pallot talked about the moment; he didn’t present a dressed-up infomercial with an 837-to-1 gear ratio. The things you do and the decisions you make matter to me — and to many…
The tackle box opens to three flights of stairs:rusted Daredevils, half-naked Hula Poppers,one-eyed Jitterbugs, cracked orange floats.It’s heavy, heavy laden with sinkers and the vintage lures, wood-carvedwith barbed treble hooks, bodiesflaking lead paint - crazy baitshaped creatures from deep ocean trenches,the bio-illuminati of dark alien depthscast out to lure and snag men by the lips. Today, they’re worth something on eBay. Rattling across the cattle guard, the rust-belt Vega,hatchback, dark maroon, slows downwaiting for the dust to catch up. Terry had rigged the pulley in dad's garage,swapped out the engine. Yanked it himself.Dropped in a rebuilt. I wasn't there to help. But now, at least, we can go for the black-eyed grasshoppersslapping wings like baseball cards on bicycle spokes,squirting tobacco on our hands. We hook the thorax,cast them into the…
Brook Trout and the Writing Life By Craig Nova ENO Publishers The celebrated novelist Craig Nova understands that a striking association between two unlike things is often the most gripping. Because of their differences, when a bright thread is sewn between them, the revelation opens an epiphany in the beholder. Nova weaves the connection between his life and those of the brook trout swimming in the tributaries of the Delaware River so closely that they are inseparable. Brook Trout and the Writing Life is a short memoir that tumbles through Nova’s early marriage, fatherhood and writing. Living on a writer’s salary in the woods near miles of small streams, he honestly and vulnerably wrestles with commitments to his family and art while simultaneously being tempted and renewed by the brook…
Growing up in Texas, Ronnie Green’s great-grandmother taught him to fish. She’d wear a dress and go after crappie, bluegills and gasper goos (freshwater drum) with a spinning rod. When Green, a professional bass angler and the host of World Fishing Network’s A Fishing Story with Ronnie Green, interviewed African American fishing pioneer Alfred Williams, it turned out that Williams’ great-grandmother had taught him to pull channel cats out of the Pearl River with a cane pole as a boy in Mississippi. America’s fishing history has an underrecorded chapter of Black women fishing the lakes and rivers of the South since well before the Civil War. “Native American women taught a lot of African American women to fish. It was a means to get food,” says Green, who is 53…
