Innehållsförteckning för Summer 2019 från Anglers Journal

“What a @#$%! racket,” I mumble to no one in particular, as I take in the massive southward sky, a dome of high cloud centered directly overhead, everything bending down and in toward the horizon and into the drink. To the north, the Rhode Island mainland floats on a shimmering band of bent light. I, the “nature boy,” confirm that everything’s set, as my boss rounds up for a quick pass over a little cluster of boulders, cobble and mussel beds off the south side of Block Island. I feel the 35-foot Down Easter slide out of gear and, on force of habit, pluck my rod out of the holder, tuck it under my left arm and swing the rig up for a final inspection. We glide for a second…

Jim Harrison’s death in 2016 still darkens my days. I knew him for two decades. It’s a loss felt not just personally, but also by a worldwide audience that a friend aptly called the “Tribe of Jim.” Even the world-wandering celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain once confessed that he wanted to be Jim Harrison, proof positive, I guess, that Jim was in a category all his own. Seven months after Jim died, I arrived in Livingston, Montana, for a celebration of his and his wife Linda’s lives. She died Oct. 2, 2015, and he grew physically weak, emotionally bereft, too stubborn to give up chain-smoking and drinking, despite recent attempts at moderation. Five months after Linda passed, Jim died, on March 26, 2016, in the middle of composing a poem at…

Randolph Smith grew up old school, in an outdoor family in which his father hunted, fished and collected arrowheads. When they moved from Michigan to South Florida in the mid-1950s, his mother turned the boy and his two siblings outside to burn off energy after school and during the summer. With his younger brother in tow, Randolph often fished for bluegills and largemouth in a nearby rock pit quarry. When it was time for supper, their mother blew a conch shell, and the kids came running. The boy was big for his age. In grade school, a jock stuck him with the nickname “Bouncer” after watching him dribble a volleyball. It was meant as a slight, but the name stuck, and today Capt. Bouncer Smith is one of the best-known…

“Shiny and black. Look for shiny and black,” Val Atkinson says with an easy tone. His eyes project downward on the dirt two-track path we’re walking along. We are on Hat Creek in Northern California, heading out to fish and look for arrowheads. Val is carrying a fly rod—the one rod between us for the day—and a camera with a small, fixed lens is slung across his shoulder. He’s wearing lightweight fishing pants and a long-sleeve fishing shirt. The noted fishing photographer is now 73. “See all of the broken shells and this mound over here?” he asks, pointing what might look like, to the casual observer, a pile of dirt. “This is a midden. People were living here thousands of years ago.” Along with arrowheads, Val is hoping we…

In the mid 1980s, I moved to the Jersey Shore for a job with The Fisherman magazine, and my bass boat wasn’t going to cut it anymore. As an outdoor writer, I had been invited on a number of junkets by the folks at Mako Marine, one of the leading builders of center consoles at the time, and I got to thrash various models on trips from Florida to the Bahamas. We had great times fishing and putting the boats through their paces, and to say I was impressed would be an understatement. I just had to have a Mako. After the Miami boat show in 1989, I visited the Mako facility to discuss my desires with Brett Schwebke and his father, Bob, the company founder. Our conversation centered around…

It is 3 o’clock in the morning. A Saturday. No work looming. Warm sheets. Swollen, tired eyes. The iPhone’s alarm pulses in my ears. Even though the vast majority of the world will remain soundly asleep for the next four or five hours, it has never been easier for me to wake up. I peel out of bed. Toes kneading the carpet, I take the first few strides toward the door. There’s fishing to do, and I have three hours and nine minutes until sunrise. As the coffee maker gurgles on the kitchen counter, there is a wrestling match occurring between my brain, running on four hours of sleep, and my body, running on adrenaline. I have a checklist to get through: rods, tackle boxes, water, sunscreen, snacks. My two…

I caught the movement from the corner of my eye, visible just above the water. A good-sized fish was tailing. “Trigger,” my guide and I said at the same time. I crept sideways, foot crossing over foot, deliberate yet soft in each step, bent over so as to not be seen, stalking with eyes never leaving the target. Water lapped at my waist as I moved closer to the deep drop along the edge of the flats. Taking a long, slow breath in and out, I cast 40 feet to the fish, intent on connecting. Stripping by inches, I let the crab fly rest to get attention. When the triggerfish took the fly, the strip set was automatic. Off we went into the dance, with me praying my knots would…

I clicked on the link the biologist sent me from his cabin in Iceland. A column of trout swam past a counter he had set up to record the spawning fish: for the most part, huge males, with fierce kypes and red spots the size of dimes. If you find yourself dreaming about big trout—very big trout—and you want a shot at a hook-jawed brown that’ll take you way down into your backing, then Iceland’s Lake Thingvallavatn belongs on your bucket list. It is the fly-fishing equivalent of pulling to an inside straight, coming up with a royal flush and then doing both again. Thingvallavatn is this small country’s biggest lake. It sits on the exact spot where a widening rift between North America and Eurasia rips through the moonlike…

Abbie Schuster gazes out the window of her old, red pickup truck at beaches swamped with anglers during the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby. Her black Lab, Rupert, is seated beside her. Clouser minnows, squid patterns and sand eels adorn the headliner, and there’s enough sand in the foot wells for a small beach. Rumor has it that if a client is a good caster, Rupert sits on the angler’s lap on the way home. As we roll along Beach Road, passing through Joseph Sylvia State Beach on the island’s east side, Schuster points to the spot where she learned to fly-fish as a kid with her father. Her grandmother lived on the island off Massachusetts year-round, and her family, who lived in Connecticut, visited often during summers.…

I didn’t want to use it at first. Then I thought, no, it would give up secrets and bring me luck—that’s what I needed then. Besides, he’d left it behind for me to use when he went swimming that time. Shortly afterwards, I met two women. One of them loved opera and the other was a drunk who’d done time in jail. I took up with one and began to drink and fight a lot. The way this woman could sing and carry on! We went straight to the bottom.…

The image shows tail-churning waves of sun and river, as a salmon meets a swinging fly. “Look at those loops—that’s a poor mend,” I tell Paul Gentry in his disheveled studio as we sit drinking vodka and flat 7Up from smudged glasses. Gentry lifts a cat off his lap, gets up and eyes the moist print hanging from a grungy clothesline. “Yeah, he might miss that strike,” Gentry says. “I’m rooting for the fish.” Salmon Rising is one of a dozen images Gentry engraved and printed for two collections of angling literature that I edited for Knopf’s Everyman’s Library series. His work as a furniture maker, potter, photographer and painter have earned him local attention, and his wood engravings are national treasures. Several universities and institutions, including the Nelson-Atkins Museum…

We were cruising up the Río Orinoco from Inírida in a 15-seat water taxi headed toward Tucunare Lodge, 107 miles away. The landscape was familiar: coffee-colored water, high sand banks with trees toppled by the annual 40-foot rise in water levels during the rainy season, and on top—jungle. On the east bank was Venezuela, on the west, Colombia. The midday heat was impressive even for a Floridian, but we were after one of the most incredible fish on the planet—the payara—so no one cared. Tucunare Lodge is the only permanent lodge in this part of Colombia and one of the few places anglers can count on having shots at payara, a jungle creature that looks like a monster from a horror flick and is nicknamed “Vampire Fish.” The lodge exists…