Innehållsförteckning för Spring 2021 från Anglers Journal

Cappy tore apart the shack searching for his favorite, salt-stained, tattered hat, barking at us when we stepped over rods or taunted a gull. We’d never pack a banana, or rename a boat, even when it was Misty. Oldtimers warned of redheads, women and whistling, and she was all three, boarding left-footed in her green bibs and starfish sweater, conjuring gentle swells and the season’s biggest bluefin. She fought that fish for three hours ’til we gaffed — hook flying free — and hoisted. Her arms and back relaxed, her glowing hair dropped to dusk. You’re a lucky gal, Cappy praised, best he could. Watching that tuna beat out its last song, she looked wistful and blue, like a mermaid farewelling a friend.…

Three albacore move through the water as if they are flying, canting their bodies, graceful as terns. Several flying fish are pursued by a mahi-mahi, and a pair of marlin streak past. The creator of these scenes is Dwight Hwang, who specializes in the traditional Japanese gyotaku method of fish printing. “The gyotaku process is very simple,” Hwang says. “Ink is brushed onto the fish, and then paper is rubbed onto it, transferring the inked image to the paper.” Easier said than done, especially working with quick-drying ink and irregular-shaped fish with pectoral fins and other protrusions. Hwang created the gyotaku print for the cover of the Spring issue of Anglers Journal using traditional black sumi ink and a sheet of Japanese washi paper. Careful hand rubbing captured the image…

I am a fly-fishing guide and a photographer with a long-term project of taking portraits of guides anywhere I find myself with a camera and a fly rod. So far, that has ranged from my home turf in Sun Valley, Idaho, to Argentina, Cuba, New Zealand, Honduras, Chile, Mexico, Montana and beyond. the guides shown here are just some of the 50 or more whom I’ve been fortunate enough to have spent time with — some in salt, some in fresh. Many are longtime friends; others welcomed me into their homes in faraway places having never met me. Guides bring people to the fish, but they are far more than just taxi drivers — most of the time. They also tie knots, spot fish, read the water, suggest flies, offer…

Anyone who has fished the autumn false albacore and red drum runs off Cape Lookout, North Carolina, during the last 15 years has likely come across Kary Via and his center console, Natural Fly. Via seems to have a knack for being where the fish are biting, which earned him the nickname “Wizard” from local guide Capt. Brian Horsley. He also is known as “Natty” on the VHF, a shortened version of his boat’s name. A Garner, North Carolina, resident, Via is a dyed-in-the-wool fish nut who scours the waters around Cape Lookout for several weeks each year aboard his 20-foot May-Craft when he is not running his commercial insulation business. the 53-year-old grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina, and took to fishing before he could ride a bike. “My…

Photographer Tony Arruza picked up a camera in his late teens to document a life that revolved around the ocean, surfing, fishing and scuba diving. That symbiotic relationship led to a career that has spanned more than four decades and resulted in world travels and numerous awards. Tony took the photo for the “Caught Out” opening spread. Henry Hughes is an Oregon Book Award-winning poet and the author of Back Seat with Fish. He edited two Everyman’s Library anthologies on fishing literature, and his articles and reviews appear regularly in Flyfishing & Tying Journal and Harvard Review. A professor at Western Oregon University, Henry wrote the poem “Luck” for this issue. A former editor-at-large with National Geographic, Cathy Newman writes for The Economist, NPR.com and The Wall Street Journal. Though…

He had giant hands. Fingers the circumference of quarters. Scarred, scratched, calloused and rough. Shaking his hand was like shaking a catcher’s mitt. But somehow he could tie intricate fishing knots. He could fix damn near anything, and whether it flew, floated or rolled, he could drive it. He opened an autobody shop at age 16 and stayed in business until he passed away last November at 78. He built tow trucks and dump trucks. He dabbled in real estate and restaurants. He served for decades as a volunteer firefighter. And he fished harder than anyone I knew growing up. For 35 years, he lived with my mom. Though they never officially married, I called him my stepdad. The stepparent thing can be a roll of the dice. I lucked…

Rivers are round, naturalist Aldo Leopold said. He meant the seamlessness of life and continuum of energy flowing from sun to plants to insects to trout. For John N. Maclean, the round river that connects now and then, and family and friends, is the Blackfoot. The Montana river, which flows near his family’s cabin in Seeley Lake, starts with a slide down the west slope of the Continental Divide, meanders through flats, then quickens and hugs the east flank of the Garnet Range before yielding to the Clark Fork near Missoula. It’s a river given prominence by his father, Norman Maclean, the author of A River Runs Through It, a dark poem of a book about rivers and fly-fishing, but more intimately about a troubled brother who lived at full…

There’s a passion for adventure within many of us, a force that drives some to push the boundaries and explore places far off the beaten path. I guide wilderness fly-fishing trips in Alaska for a living, yet I still yearn to discover special places where few anglers (if any) have fished before. When I visited the 49th state for the first time eight years ago, it unlocked in me a compulsion to seek out pristine rivers. A person could spend a lifetime exploring Alaska and barely scratch the surface. Every couple of years, my business partner, fellow adventure junkie and longtime friend Pete Jaacks and I plan a trip into the unknown in hopes of finding untouched Alaska rivers with extraordinary fishing. Finding these waters requires research, planning and waiting…

Migrations are a study in movement and endurance. The petite Arctic tern, for example, travels as many as 44,000 miles between Greenland and Antarctica each year. Or consider the eastern monarch, a butterfly with a microscopic cluster of brain cells that somehow each fall navigates 2,000 to 3,000 miles from the United States to forest groves in the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico. There are, of course, marathon migrators in the fish world, too. Atlantic bluefin are known for their far-reaching wanderlust, as are striped bass, many varieties of salmonids, eels, herring, shad, sturgeon and hundreds if not thousands of other species. Another fish that belongs on this list of long-distance wanderers is one of the most sought-after gamefish in the world: Megalops atlanticus — the Atlantic tarpon. The silver…

As a charter captain, Chris Sheeder caught more than 35,000 billfish, an unimaginable number. The average captain is lucky to catch a 10th of that in the time it took Sheeder to reach that milestone. The 37-foot Merritt he skippered, Release, caught 57 sails on fly in a single day. He won tournaments, set world records and made hundreds of friendships as a charter skipper. When Sheeder died of pancreatic cancer earlier this year, the big-game-fishing community went into mourning. A big, jovial soul whose smile beamed down from the captain’s chair, he was 48. Sheeder grew up in Hawaii and as a young man crewed on boats out of Kewalo Basin in Honolulu, learning the intricacies of rigging lures and live-bait fishing for blue marlin and ahi tuna. “We…

Many people think that our days of exploring are mostly over. The frontiers are vanquished, we’ve walked on the moon … there’s not much new ground to cover, right? Dr. Trent Talbot, a physician-entrepreneur, begs to differ. His company, The MediSearch Institute, has joined the ranks of medicine’s modern pioneers. The American healthcare system suffices for simple illnesses. However, our method for handling very serious, complex, or rare medical conditions is severely lacking. A patient with a life-threatening diagnosis who can’t find a single working treatment can expect to spend fifteen to thirty minutes with his doctor—the same amount of time a doctor would give to a patient with a sore ankle. Why? Today’s medical workers must see more patients and fill out more paperwork than any previous generation of…

Somewhere along a remote Pacific Baja beach, a man in knee-high boots walks to the water’s edge early in the morning. The tide is full, and the surf is head-high and breaking on both an outside bar and an inner one. He studies the waves and white water for a few minutes, looking for places where snook are likely to be prowling and ambushing bait. He turns and picks up a silver jig with a single treble hook tied to a length of heavy monofilament coiled on the sand. The lure is about 6 inches long and weighs 6 or 7 ounces. And with the ease of a basketball prodigy shooting his 10,000th free throw, Carlos twirls the lure around his head three or four times and releases it. The…

Imagine you’re in a Hell’s Bay skiff on flat, calm water. The sun is high, and shadows of darting fish are easily perceived along the sandy bottom, floating “with the current, unresisting,” as Hemingway famously wrote. But you’re not in the Florida Keys or the islands. And the fish are not bonefish or permit. They’re striped bass. You stare to your right at a mansion on the hill, one of the dozens that dot the landscape around Gardiners Bay at the eastern end of Long Island, New York. This has been the land of the rich and famous since Capt. Kidd buried his gold on Gardiners Island in 1699. You’re at the end of Long Island. And you’re sight-fishing. In the breakers below the mansion, a blonde surfer with years…