Innehållsförteckning för Fall 2017 från Anglers Journal

Fall wouldn’t be fall without September. But if you look at it with a cool head, it’s not hard to see that month nine has more to do with August than with October. Hurricanes, sure. But in the southern reaches of our far North we’re still chipping away at the same resident fish that came home with the June moon, the main charge of the Chesapeake’s broad-headed, deep-bellied wonder women: stripers built the old way, a pound an inch. September’s the last of our plan A tactics and A-list grounds. Late in the month, the fronts start queuing up like 747s in the Thanksgiving-eve sky over JFK. The first or the fifth easterly gale spins ashore with a little extra right english and dumps monsoon rains. The surge arrives, backing…

When I am in need of solace, which seems to be more and more these days, I cast my sights, heart and line toward trout. But not just any trout; my thoughts go to wild brown trout, specifically those found in the lovely small streams that thread through Devon in England’s West Country. Though not lunkers, as many overfed, blimplike, stocked rainbows that need to be forklift ed out are in some U.K. and U.S. fisheries, Devon browns are extraordinarily wary and challenging, which makes them great fun to pursue, despite their modest size. I once caught an 11-inch fish and was perfectly thrilled. Salmo trutta, as the naturalist Carl Linnaeus dubbed the species, are native to Great Britain. They practically have a Union Jack tattooed on their pectoral fins,…

It’s a late October morning, and we’re on the hunt for false albacore with a weather-bedamned attitude. “Hold on tight, it’s about to get nautical!” the captain shouts as we punch our way through a 4-foot chop at the mouth of Barden Inlet in North Carolina. A stiff west wind stirs up a long fetch, and an outgoing tide piles on the pain. It’s a day when most recreational boats stay home. We play in the snot, so to speak, weaving our way through foaming curlers while ducking blobs of blowing spindrift. The Jones Brothers 23 center console delivers us to thick pods of feeding false albacore just off shore and then keeps us in the game for the rest of the day. Much like an artisan woodworker might rely…

I’ve been an avid angler all my life, including a 15-year stint as a salmon and steelhead guide on Washington streams, which means my son, Kris Jr., was one lucky kid. When most youngsters learned how to ride a bike or build model cars, he sat in the front row of a drift boat learning how to back-bounce large clusters of cured salmon roe, waiting for massive chinook to inhale his offering. He learned just how to feed the beast and set the hook at the perfect time to ensure solid hookups. Between my guide buddies and me, he was spoiled with the kind of fishing excursions in most boys’ dreams. Pink salmon invade our home river every other year in numbers that would boggle your mind. When they are…

The thrum of the diesels, a tropical sun and the boat’s gentle roll had worked me into a mild hypnotic state. I was sitting on the port engine box early that aft ernoon, sun-blasted, daydreaming, brain on pause, when a blue marlin pushing 400 pounds surfaced in the spread and snared a 3-pound tuna bridled to an 18/0 circle hook as easily as a tall boy plucks an apple from a tree. The line snapped from the rigger, and I rocketed into the glorious, chaotic here and now; the sleepy cockpit erupted in a chorus of indecipherable English and Spanish. I was on my feet, rod in hand, pushing the drag lever forward on the 50-pound outfit. The next thing I remembered was standing in the port quarter of our…

These days, the fishing guides in Livingston, Montana, are extremely concerned about the care and upkeep of the lights on their drift-boat trailers. Anyone who has owned a boat and trailer is familiar with the ongoing battle: Electrical wiring systems installed on a piece of metal that you frequently dunk in the water are prone to failure. As guides, we abuse the hell out of these things, backing them down steep, rocky riverbanks and rattling them in high-speed runs down washboard roads. Going an entire season without a trailer-light issue is a minor miracle. And it seems as if at any given time there’s someone in the group who’s in the parking lot in the evening trying to figure out why his left taillight is flickering. Having a trailer light…

I was 2 miles off the beach in a 15-foot kayak when I spotted three waterspouts howling toward me. Wind whipped the rain sideways and flipped my kayak twice. I lost my paddle. When I finally reached the beach and caught my breath, I decided to buy a boat. As I was growing up, my dad had a series of boats, including a 20-foot Bertram and a 24 Albemarle. Early on, I learned the value of solid construction and a soft ride. Fishing out of Virginia Beach, I needed a boat that could go from backwater to off shore in any weather. I settled on a short list of builders based in eastern North Carolina, where snotty seas and talented craft smen come together to build tough, handsome boats. At…

You might consider landing a marlin to be nothing special, but I am English, and this sort of thing just doesn’t happen to an Englishman, let alone to one fishing from a kayak. There were two of us the day the whole thing began, both of us middle-aged gentlemen from a small town in the middle of nowhere. It was October in England, and it was raining, as is the norm in our part of the world. The conversation turned to fishing — kayak fishing, which is what we do. “I wonder if anyone from England has ever caught a marlin from a kayak,” Steve said. He knew fine well where his musing would lead, and so did I. About eight months later we boarded a plane at London’s Heathrow…

Years of fishing the Cape Cod Canal have equipped me with a strange ability. I can set the alarm for any time — 2:37, 3:11, 1:55 — and wake up one to five minutes before it goes off, almost without fail. This is a defense mechanism that comes from sleeping next to a very understanding wife. I think my subconscious knows that her understanding hinges largely upon the fact that I rarely wake her. Whether I’m coming home from the surf or leaving for the canal, the ungodly hours I keep are ignored, so long as they don’t affect her. The Cape Cod Canal is a 7-mile, man-made shortcut between Buzzards Bay and Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts. The differences in tide timing and height between the two bays send…

It’s a cold and blustery October morning at Harkers Island Fishing Center as a group of anglers shuffles down a narrow, weather-beaten dock. A dozen or so center consoles tug at their dock lines. Each angler carries a bundle of fly rods against his shoulder like a soldier with a bayonet-tipped rifle marching off to battle. One aft er the other, the fishing boats speed out into the sound toward Barden Inlet. Just beyond, a storm of seabirds targets a pack of false albacore that is pummeling a ball of bait. Sheets of baitfish fly in a last-ditch attempt to survive. Anglers cast flies into the melee, and a chorus of fly reels erupts into song. Rods bend deep into the water, and huge grins pop out from behind foul-weather…

Patrick Orth, a Marine combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient, had never sat in a fighting chair. Few of the Marines on the 51-foot sportfisherman that day had. But you couldn’t tell by watching him. Orth looked like a natural, sitting with knees slightly bent, leaning forward, throwing his weight back with each rhythmic pump of the rod. A vast expanse of ocean stretched in every direction. Up came the mahi-mahi. The mate leaned over the side of the Forbes, gaffed the fish and sent it wheeling into the fishbox. “That your first mahi?” the mate asked. “This is my first time being on a sportfishing boat,” said Orth, a 31-year-old former Marine Corps lance corporal from Asheville, North Carolina. Orth got up from the fighting chair and joined the…