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Journal
A FISHING LIFE

ART
SURF
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ADVENTURE
CONSERVATION

Stu Apte might be the best pure tarpon

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Downpour
Blue Marlin
Costa Rica
Photo by Pat Ford

“When he hit the water, he sent up a

splash like the flying surf on the reef.”
Zane Grey

10 Anglers Journal
Anglers Journal 11
 AJWanderer

Portuguese Man-of-War
East of Block Island, Rhode Island
Photo by John Lee

“No one could write truthfully about

the sea and leave out the poetry.”
Rachel Carson

12 Anglers Journal
Anglers Journal 13
 AJ Doused
Surf Caster
Shark River Inlet, New Jersey
Photo by Tom Lynch

“Long, unrolling scrolls of white water

thundered on the rocky shore, and the
warm half-gale in our faces was laden
with the aroma of seaweed and salt.”
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14 Anglers Journal
Anglers Journal 15
Anglers
FALL 2020
Contents

Journal
A FISHING LIFE

10 OPENING SPREADS
Downpour, Wanderer, Doused.

20 BETWEEN FISH
Can you ever have too much of a good thing?
It’s not easy to walk away from fish-after-fish
action, but sometimes it starts to feel old.
By WILLIAM SISSON

30 STRIPER MOON
As the aspens turn gold, the striped bass
migration passes through the heart and soul
of a transplanted New Englander living in
Montana. By DAVE STALLING

36 MIDLIFE KNOCKING
With middle age beckoning and stay-at-home
restrictions easing, a headboat trip to the
Dry Tortugas was the perfect way to set the
world aside and celebrate my 45th birthday.
By CHARLIE LEVINE

42 PAIN RELIEF
What was I thinking when I signed on for
a brutal 90-mile hiking-and-fishing adven-
ON THE COVER ture in Idaho’s Bitterroot wilderness? The
Legendary fly fisherman Stu Apte trout more than made up for the torture.
is home on the flats. By HENRY HUGHES
Photo by Pat Ford

The Merritt 42 Picaflor is ready for

another long run after a major refit.
Photo by Jessica Haydahl Richardson
16
46 FULL CIRCLE
A self-proclaimed “fly-only guy” grapples with
the thrill of releasing a fish taken on a fly he’s
tied over using live bait to bring home supper
for his young family’s table. By JAKE OLIVER
Anglers Journal
You don’t have to enter high stakes tournaments to feel like a
champion. Making memories with friends and family puts everyone
in the winner’s circle.
 Contents

52 THE OFFSHORE LIFE

From rigging baits and minding the spread to
leadering fish and cleaning up at day’s end, per-
haps no one on board is busier than deckhands
on tournament days. By CHARLIE LEVINE

58 TAKING THE PLUNGE

Nick Mayer’s taxonomic fish paintings
combine his passion for angling with his
background in science. His circuitous path
to full-time artist landed him in Vermont,
where he’s been stalking a monster muskie.
By KRISTA KARLSON

64 ALL-STARS
How baseball legend Ted Williams and
fly-fishing great Stu Apte became friends is
among the anecdotes in this excerpt from
Lords of the Fly, a new book about a time
when the world’s top fly anglers gathered in
Homosassa, Florida, to catch world-record
tarpon. By MONTE BURKE

70 OVER THE RAINBOW

If you’re looking for a place where fat rain-
bows happily eat flies, look no farther than
Lago Strobel in remote Argentine Patagonia.
By PAT FORD

78 BUCKTAIL BELIEVER
The original bucktail jig isn’t much more than
a bundle of deer hair tied around a lead jig
head, but John Skinner is a master at wielding
it against fish. By MARK ROBICHAUX

84 A LONG RUN
The Merritt 42 Picaflor is an iconic fishing
boat with a rich history. At 51 years, her
Thoughts turn to fall trout future is as bright as her paint and stem-to-
when the leaves change.
Photo by Sammy Chang
stern restoration. By KARL ANDERSON

96 MY BOAT MY LIFE
Pete Shea has owned a bevy of boats, but
Irish Fin, a custom 23-foot Glenn Brad-
ley center console, is perhaps his favorite.
By GARY REICH
18 Anglers Journal
 ALL ABOUT

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 AJ
Between Fish
By William Sisson
Never Enough
F
all is the hungriest season. Migrations are in full swing, and
creatures by the score are on the move and feeding intensely
— from the 11 sanderlings scurrying up and down the steep
beach face as I walk with surf rod in hand, to shoals of fish
trailed by hundreds of gulls just a few miles offshore.
Fishing this time of year is often feast or famine. When it’s good, it
can be crazy good. Can you have too much of a good thing?
I fished obsessively through my 30s and 40s; looking back, if I suf-
fered one sin, it wasn’t greed or pride or envy. My fishing partners and
I didn’t covet the fishing boats or catches of others. We were satisfied
with our little boats and lives. My sin was gluttony. As many fish as I
caught, I wanted more or larger or both. I was a less annoying version
of Augustus Gloop, the chubby kid in Charlie and the Chocolate Fac-
tory who was looking for a chocolate river without end.
I was fishing for silver salmon in Cordova, Alaska, five years ago as the
season sped to a close. The first snow fell on the high peaks the day after
I arrived. The locals call it “termination dust,” meaning the end of sum-
mer. A few days later, I flew 42 miles east of Cordova in a Cessna 185
floatplane to a remote, clear-flowing stream chockablock with migrating
silver salmon. There, I fished with a family of four from Pennsylvania.
I walked downstream to a quiet back eddy, where I tossed a pink
floating salmon fly known as a wog. It was a memorable morning. The
water was clear, and as the foam-rubber fly walked and talked, you’d
see the vee wakes left by amped-up silvers closing in on it like mad.
Right away I caught a half-dozen fish. My pulse raced. I thought, This
just might be paradise.
Then I rushed a feisty salmon that hit almost at my feet and was still
green. I pinched the line against the rod as I reached for the leader. The
fish turned, spurted, and the 8-weight fly rod broke in two places. My
time catching salmon on a surface fly — which some consider the holy
grail of coho fishing — was over too soon. I retreated upstream, rigged
my light spinning rod and joined the Pennsylvania spin contingent.
One of the anglers had a method of keeping score that I didn’t notice
until we were waiting for the floatplane to return. For each fish he
landed, the young man put a small pebble in his wading jacket. He
counted out more than 50 stones. Between us, we probably caught
about 200 silvers that day. Too many?
Fast forward to last fall. I was running late, and the last bit of light
20
was disappearing behind the horizon. I walked up a steep dune and
met a stoked surfman coming off the beach who tried to tell me where
to find the fish. “Look for the nervous water,” he kept saying. “Just look
for the nervous water.”
I understood what he was saying, but it was getting too dark to spot
fish. At every place I’d found fish in the past, I stopped and made a
couple of casts, then frantically kept moving. Where was the nervous
water? In the end, I found the fish where I thought they would be all
along — in a jumble of rocks that marks the end of the sand.
The tide was low enough to reach a large, flat rock covered with
wrack weed. I laid my rod horizontal, threw one leg up and boosted
myself aboard. It was a familiar perch and a great place to cast. And
it was low and flat enough to easily slide a fish onto it with the help
of a breaking wave.
The first 15 minutes produced nothing. Then came a bump, followed
by a good hit, and soon it was fish after fish — and like that, the fall
striper run bloomed for several hours under the stars. I had it to myself.
The fish ranged from 20 to 30 inches, a lot of fun on a light 12-foot
rod. The surf built with the tide, and it wasn’t long before I’d gotten
pretty wet, despite waders.
I caught around 35 fish — maybe more. My hands were chafed and
cut. I was wet, cold and sandy, and I wanted to leave, but I had the free
will of a barnacle.
I gave myself a familiar talk: In three weeks or three months, you’ll look
back on the night and berate yourself for not staying longer. Why did you
leave when the fish were still there?
I made myself a deal. If I went five consecutive casts without a fish
or a hit, I’d pack it in. The action was slowing, and I finally got my
wish. I sloshed ashore and staggered off the beach, feeling like Jethro
Tull’s Aqualung.
The next night, I was back on that same rock and took another 20,
give or take.
JODY DOLE
We want to hear from you.
Please send your comments to editor-in-chief
Bill Sisson at wsisson@aimmedia.com.
Anglers Journal

Karl Anderson has won
awards for his writing and
video work, including a
Telly for the film Stu Apte’s
Quest for Giant Tarpon,
and has guest-hosted a
number of national fish-
ing television programs.
When he’s not fishing, he
captains several boats,
including 63- and 72-foot
Merritts. A member of The
Billfish Foundation and
International Game Fish
Association, Karl writes
about a 51-year-old Mer-
ritt 42 in “A Long Run.”
22
Monte Burke is the author of
the New York Times best-
seller Saban, a biography of
University of Alabama head
football coach Nick Saban.
His other books include
4th & Goal, which won an
Axiom Award, and Sow-
belly: The Obsessive Quest
for the World Record Large-
mouth Bass. A contributing
editor at Forbes, Garden &
Gun and The Drake, Monte
writes about legendary
tarpon fisherman Stu Apte
in “All-Stars,” an excerpt
from his latest book, Lords
of the Fly.
AJ
Contributors
Pat Ford is a retired Miami
lawyer, award-winning
fishing photographer and
intrepid angler who has
held two dozen world
records during decades of
fishing. Pat’s work appears
throughout this issue,
including the cover photo,
and a story and images
about giant rainbow trout
in Argentina’s Lago Strobel.
Oregon Book Award-
winning poet Henry Hughes is
the author of Back Seat with
Fish: A Man’s Adventures
in Angling and Romance.
He edited two Everyman’s
Library anthologies of
fishing literature, and his
articles and reviews appear
regularly in Flyfishing & Ty-
ing Journal and Harvard Re-
view. A professor at Western
Oregon University, Henry
takes us to the Selway-
Bitterroot Wilderness for a
10-day hiking and fishing
adventure in “Pain Relief.”
His poem “Lobstering” also
appears in this issue.
John Lee works on a pilot
boat out of Point Judith,
Rhode Island, delivering
harbor pilots to inbound
and outbound ships. Dur-
ing the past 30 years, he has
worked on swordfish, squid
and research boats, as well
as an oyster farm. Through
all of this, his love of sport
fishing has never waned.
John shot the “Wanderer”
opening spread at the
beginning of this issue.
Photographer and surf
fisherman Tom Lynch is
the owner of Angry Fish
Gallery in Point Pleasant
Beach, New Jersey. His
images have appeared in
The Fisherman, On The
Water, Big Game Fishing
Journal, Sport Fishing, Fly
Fisherman and American
Angler, among others.
Tom’s photos appear in
“Striper Moon.”
Anglers Journal

Bill Moulton is a photog-
rapher, director, graphic
designer and all-around
art maker with a 20-year
background in commercial
creative work. He also
owns and operates Greenie
Supply & Tackle in Green-
port, New York, a treasure
map vending machine
business. He resides on the
North Fork of Long Island
with his wife and daughter,
and spends his free time
standing on rocks, waiting
for the tide to change. Bill
shot the photos that illus-
trate “Bucktail Believer.”
Anglers Journal
Florida native Jake Oliver
works as a citrus harvest-
ing supervisor, estimating
crops and managing crews
all over the Sunshine
State. He spends every
possible weekend hunting
or dragging his modest
skiff around to fly-fish the
many corners of Florida,
from Mosquito Lagoon to
the Lower Keys. You can
read about his adventures
at fishngrits.squarespace.
com/blog. Jake wrestles
with the fly/spin conun-
drum in “Full Circle.”
AJ
Contributors
Jessica Haydahl Richardson
loves to capture life unfold-
ing before her camera lens.
Growing up on the ocean
in Vancouver, British
Columbia, her passion for
photography and nature
grew into a profession. She
has worked with the Van-
couver Canucks pro hock-
ey team and Getty Images,
and has been published in
several fishing magazines
and other publications.
Jessica’s work accompanies
“A Long Run.”
Mark Robichaux is a Cajun
who learned to fish, hunt
and make gumbo in Louisi-
ana. These days, the writer
and former Wall Street
Journal reporter lives an
hour from New York City,
near Long Island Sound,
where he chases striped
bass and gator blues in his
20-foot Key West center
console, Bayou Belle. Mark
writes about the ubiquitous
bucktail jig and the man
who has mastered using it
in “Bucktail Believer.”
Tom Spencer is a sportfish-
ing photographer whose
creative eye has gotten
him invited to a number
of premier East Coast
tournaments, including
the Big Rock Blue Marlin
Tournament in his home-
town of Morehead City,
North Carolina. “I’m just
having a damn ton of fun,”
says Spencer, the founder
of Fish Hunt Photo. Tom’s
photos accompany “The
Offshore Life.”
Raised along the coast
of Long Island Sound in
Connecticut, Dave Stalling
served in a Marine Corps
Force Recon before mov-
ing West, where he earned
degrees in wildlife biology
and journalism. He lives
in Missoula, Montana, and
writes about wildlife, con-
servation and natural his-
tory. Dave yearns for New
England’s fall striped bass
run in “Striper Moon.”
23
 Anglers
Journal
A FISHING LIFE

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF WILLIAM SISSON Fall 2020 Vol. VII, No. 4

CREATIVE DIRECTOR ERIN KENNEY
SENIOR EDITOR MICHAEL LABELLA
MANAGING EDITOR GARY REICH
EDITOR-AT-LARGE DANIEL HARDING JR.
PRESIDENT GARY DE SANCTIS
STAFF EDITORS STEVEN JYLKKA, KIM KAVIN
VP, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR WILLIAM SISSON
SENIOR DIGITAL EDITOR JOHN V. TURNER
VP, MARKETING AND EVENTS JULIE JARVIE
VP, MARKETING INNOVATION ERIC DALLIN
FINANCIAL ANALYST CHRISTINE NILSEN
PRODUCTION MANAGER SUNITA PATEL
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS/EDITORS
SENIOR PRODUCTION COORDINATOR AMY RALEIGH
KARL ANDERSON, MONTE BURKE, NOAH DAVIS, PAT FORD, HENRY HUGHES, KRISTA KARLSON
TRAFFIC COORDINATOR SAMANTHA BRENNAN
CHARLIE LEVINE, JAKE OLIVER, MARK ROBICHAUX, PATRICIA KOLLER SISSON, DAVE STALLING
GROUP CIRCULATION DIRECTOR DANA RAVEN
CIRCULATION, FULFILLMENT MANAGER CERISSE CARPENTER
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS/ARTISTS
DIRECTOR, ACCOUNTING SHARED SERVICES KELLY BAUMGARDNER
KENNING ARLITSCH, SAMMY CHANG, PAT FORD, CHRIS INGRAM, JOHN LEE, TOM LYNCH
DIRECTOR, RETAIL SALES SUSAN A. ROSE
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IT SUPPORT COLLIN DEHNERT
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 AJ Mail
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Call (800) 877-5207 or visit anglersjournal.com. Subscriptions are $29 for one year (four issues: Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall).
Please send letters and comments to Anglers Journal, 10 Bokum Road, Essex, CT 06426, or email wsisson@aimmedia.com.
A PICTURE IS WORTH …
I am enamored with Anglers Journal. It is,
quite simply, the best. I think of this image I
took a few years ago when I look at the beau-
tiful photography in every issue. It was taken
at dawn, during autumn, just north of Port
Aransas, Texas, while tossing out a line with a
live shrimp on the end. Pure bliss and the awe
of Mother Nature.
Christopher Brundage
San Antonio, Texas
NEVER ENOUGH
I’m new to your magazine, and I absolutely
love it. The quality is outstanding. Having
worked for Capt. Al Anderson (“Skippy”)
for many years, I love the quote about a few
floppy fish in Bill Sisson’s “Here and Now” in
the Summer issue: “It’s amazing what a few
floppy fish will do for your spirits.”
I learned a great deal from Al over the years
and had the pleasure of fishing Point Judith
Pond with him on my boat after he got rid of
his. As soon as we’d finish and get in the truck
to go home, he’d turn to me and say: “Do you
think we might be able to catch a few again to-
morrow evening?” He could never get enough.
Capt. Steve Tombs
BLUEWATER TROLLING
I bought your magazine at Kittery Trading Post
in Kittery, Maine. I haven’t bought a magazine
in 30 years, but AJ caught my attention, partly
26
because of the name, the cover artwork and
the subject matter, but also because of the
quality, which is exceptional. I’m thinking of
at least a dozen five-star anglers who should
get a copy.
My wife and I were both born and raised
into the boating community, so living on
boats and fishing is normal to us. We kept a
powerboat in the Bahamas for three years.
We’ve had it since 1986, and it’s mint. In 1998,
we bought a sailboat, and in 2000 we sailed
from Maine to New Zealand over a six-year
period. When talking to people about how we
pulled it off, we say, “With a 50-pound bag of
basmati rice and some fishing lures, you’d be
amazed.” You have to like fish when crossing
oceans, and if you don’t, you will. The boat
has 32 passport stamps, and we have literally
Freeport, Texas. It took me a year to build up
the confidence to make the first trip. I wrote
this poem about the experience.
The spar rig keeps him up at night.
120 miles from shore and almost 400 miles away
from where he lie dreaming, but not sleeping.
Floating in just over three thousand feet of
water like an iceberg, off-gassing flames that
light up the night sky. Like a destination in
the middle of nowhere on another planet,
nothing could be farther away.
fished everywhere, with a specialty toward
Four times he attempted the trip in his 26-foot
hunting octopus and spearing squid.
boat, hardly long enough to be considered safe,
Rob Morin
his crew excited and hopeful, fully aware of
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
the danger, yet intentionally unaware.
RUNNING TO THE RIGS Only on his first attempt did they boat two
I have been a subscriber for years, and I love of the powerful fish. Trophies so rare repeated
your magazine. I grew up on the Gulf Coast attempts seem the only sensible option.
in Corpus Christi, Texas, and have been fish-
ing my entire life, although I still consider Lingering euphoria blending with feelings of
myself a novice. I now live in Austin and longing and doubt into a cacophony of
STEPHANIE HURST (RIGHT)
tow my boat 250 miles to the coast to run thought and emotion.
offshore. Finding a good weather window is
challenging, and returning without fish makes The spar rig keeps him up at night.
for a long drive home.
About once a year, I make a trip to the “float- Robert Braglia
ers” — two spar rigs 120 nautical miles off Austin, Texas
Anglers Journal
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First Light
By Noah Davis
The Armchair Angler
Early Love and Brook Trout
By James Prosek
The Lyons Press
This fall, return to James Prosek’s coming-of-age
rendition set in the entangled world of woods, water
and affection. The “Audubon of Trout,” as Prosek
is known, leads readers through the tenderness of
mentorship, first kisses, first fish, first kills and first
friends in Early Love and Brook Trout. Paired with
Prosek’s world-renowned paintings, the text’s layout
is reminiscent of a children’s book. Illustrations oc-
cupy entire pages, and the font is plus-sized, eliciting
an air of innocence that fades like a brook trout’s red
belly after minutes out of the water.
Prosek catalogs his intimate relationships — with riv-
ers and with women — with reverence and humility,
understanding his shortcomings and recognizing the
riffled beauty he still must find. For those of us in the
early age of love and fishing, we have only just begun
to understand the truth Prosek paints and writes. For
others who have fished more water than us, they al-
ready know that “sometimes memories go bright and
dim like a day does when clouds pass before the sun.”
Casting Into Mystery
By Robert Reid, Engravings by Wesley W. Bates
The Porcupine’s Quill
Career newspaperman Robert Reid shifts his writ-
ing beat to the rivers and streams of the North in
a memoir entwined with a life full of fish, litera-
ture and good whiskey. From his native waters
in Ontario to the rivers of the Adirondacks and
North Carolina on this side of the Niagara, Reid’s
encyclopedic recall of fishing literature argues the
interconnectedness of all fisherfolk. The adage
of all poems speaking to all other poems rings
true, and Reid is here to extend the community of
anglers probing for what we cannot see: “I confess
I wrote this book for the poets among fly anglers
and non-anglers alike, whether or not they have
written a line of verse.”
I would be remiss not to acknowledge the beauty of
Wesley W. Bates’ engravings texturing Casting Into
Mystery. They are the type of art every angler who is
enthralled with fish, birds and moving water would
want to sate their longing when rivers are far away.
28
Blood Knots
By Luke Jennings
Skyhorse Publishing
From haunting the worn canals of London for
pike to stalking roach on the willow-draped
shores of ponds and casting silk lines to rising
brown trout on chalk streams, Blood Knots is the
account of British angling every person who owns
a rod should read. Beginning with Luke Jennings’
discovery of his desire to fish — “to catch one of
these magical creatures and to hold it shimmering
in my hands” — and unspooling into an examina-
tion of post-war England, this memoir encom-
passes the rise and fall that adolescence and young
adulthood provide.
Like any season on the water, this is a book bal-
anced on joys and sorrows. Violence and the idyllic
are never far apart, as most anglers know. Fish
landed and admired, new skills learned, friends
loved and lost. This is a book that will move you
closer to whatever water and people you hold dear.
The Angler’s Book of Favorite Fishing Quotations
By Jackie Corley
Hatherleigh Press
“All Americans believe that they are born fisher-
men. For a man to admit a distaste for fishing
would be like denouncing mother-love or hating
moonlight.” This John Steinbeck quote is one of
the many that Jackie Corley deftly chose for The
Angler’s Book of Favorite Fishing Quotations.
Anglers are people of pithy wisdom. Sparse phras-
es help us endure the heat of an August day or the
cool spray of autumn surf. Corley has compiled
some of the greatest names in fishing and literature
in this pocket-sized collection of quick quotes,
which is sure to make every angler smile. With
such luminaries as Roderick Haig-Brown, John
Gierach, Thomas McGuane, Izaak Walton, Edward
Abbey, Herbert Hoover, Norman Maclean, Jessica
Maxwell and Henry David Thoreau, the topics
range from mystery to humor to our connection
with water. “There’s a fine line between fishing and
standing on the shore like an idiot,” Steven Wright
so bluntly articulates. We anglers are rich with a
quick wit that Corley captures.
Anglers Journal
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First Light
By Dave Stalling

Striper Moon
A TRANSPLANTED NEW ENGLANDER LIVING IN MONTANA FEELS THE
TUG OF MIGRATING STRIPED BASS WHENEVER AUTUMN ARRIVES

The moon’s tidal pull affects fish

and anglers alike. Harbor Light,
Edgartown, Massachusetts.

I was 17 and on my way to pick up a date for a high school dance when I caught seriously, I dozed to the rocking waves and
a glimpse of a rising moon on a cool September evening. Bright and fat as a peach, it stirred woke to the sound of drag singing as my dad
me. I rushed home, grabbed the keys to Dad’s boat and headed out in search of striped bass. In fought a big striped bass, working the fish
my delirium, I forgot my date. True story. It was, after all, a striper moon. close enough to the boat to gaff. When he
The incident inspired my oldest brother to create a collage of images clipped from magazines. hoisted the striper over the gunwale, I was
VINEYARD COLORS

On a beach in the foreground stood a beautiful woman glancing longingly out to sea. Far in immediately enchanted by the long, pearly-
the distance was a figure fishing from a small Boston Whaler like my father’s. The caption read, white giant scribed with black stripes, its
“Oh well … I guess he’d rather chase bass.” sharp-edged dorsal and sweet, pungent odor.
One of my earliest memories is of a dusk-to-dawn fall striper foray. Still too young to fish Later, I came to savor the white flesh. As I
30 Anglers Journal
 grew older, my passion for stripers teetered
on obsession. Even after hours of pursuit,
their mysterious ways taunted and baffled me.
But I was learning.
Stripers have the power to take you over.
“That is the magic that rides the striper’s
shoulders as it swims through the ageless pat-
tern of its autumnal migration, south along
the shore and deep into the souls of the men
who live on it,” wrote John N. Cole in his
1978 book Striper. This book was a revela-
tion. Although I was a senior in high school,
Striper was the first book I truly read and
enjoyed. Cole tells of his passion for stripers
and fishing and how both shaped his life, his
values and his thoughts. I could relate. I had
spent a childhood chasing stripers along the
shores and islands of my coastal Connecticut
home and had fallen under their spell.
From spring through fall, from shore and by
boat, mostly at night and on rainy or over-
cast days, I madly pursued these fish as they
migrated between their spawning grounds in
Chesapeake Bay and the Hudson River and
their summering grounds as far north as Maine
and Nova Scotia. Along the way, I caught blue-
fish and weakfish, dug clams, trapped lobsters,
netted blue crabs and jigged for flounder. But
always, stripers swam through my thoughts,
particularly when autumn breezes arrived and
the leaves turned crimson and gold. That’s
when my desire reached its pinnacle.
I cast hefty plugs from the surf. I drifted eels,
sandworms and chunks of mackerel from the
boat. I anchored off islands and live-lined
3-pound bunker among the wrack-covered
boulders where I hoped a huge striper lay. I
constantly hounded my father with questions:
Do you think the cows are coming through?
Where’s the best place to fish tonight? Can you
leave work early? Can I skip school?
Stripers push you to extremes. There was the
night the surf slammed our small boat onto
a reef, swamping it as we struggled, close to
hypothermia, for our lives. Once, a wave filled
my waders, stole my breath for a moment and
pulled me under. Balky engines left me drift-
ing at night and in rough, foggy conditions.
That went with paying your dues and learning
the ropes. There also were countless crisp,
TOM LYNCH

bright nights flanked by sunsets and sunrises; Obsession is rewarded when a

the salt spray, sun and wind; the clamorous nice fish comes over the rail.
cries of gulls and terns.
Anglers Journal 31
First Light

Stripers have the power to take you over.

“That is the magic that rides the striper’s
shoulders as it swims through the ageless
pattern of its autumnal migration.”

Between fishing, I slept on the deck of the
boat or on island beaches rife with sand fleas.
Napping on the boat during one four-day
striper binge, I was awakened by the Coast
Guard, whom my distraught mother had
called, convinced I was lost at sea. Thereafter
I was confined to shore for a while but still
managed to fish the surf.
In an area otherwise congested with human-
ity, the beaches, islands and bass were my
wilderness. Later, I recognized my pleasure
in Thomas McGuane’s collection of essays,
An Outside Chance, in which he tells of fall
fishing for stripers in Sakonnet, Rhode Island,
within casting distance from mansions. “And,
to a great extent, this is the character of bass
fishing from the beach,” he writes. “In very
civilized times it is reassuring to know that
wild fish will run so close that a man on foot
I remember one night when my father and I
were anchored along a narrow reef stretching
nearly a mile from a sumac-covered island
to a pile of rocks exposed only at low tide. It’s
an unusual reef because the tide flows over it
in the same direction whether it’s coming or
going. The trick is to stay close to where reef
meets island as the tidal current flows through
the eelgrass carrying food to waiting bass.
Suddenly my bunker began to splash along the
surface. In the moonlight, I could see the fins
and wake of a long, lean striper slice toward
my bait. There was a brief chaos of sound and
flying water as though a flat rock had fallen
from the moon. Then silence and a dead rod,
my bunker floating motionless.
When I began to reel it back to the boat, my
father hissed, “Wait!” Soon we saw a swirl, fol-
lowed by a large dorsal and then a tail. Like a
several seconds as I fed it line, then flipped
the bail and drove the hook into the bass’ jaw.
Sometimes it was hard to miss the fall
action, as flocks of gulls and terns dove on
schools of breaking fish. I’d cast surface and
swimming plugs into the action, and I well re-
member the adrenalin as fish swirled, boiled
and struck. Sometimes the bass vanished as
quickly as they had appeared, leaving me to
wonder where they had gone and why. So
much mystery, so much to learn.
Happy that I shared his passion, my father
taught me the most promising spots to fish
during certain seasons and tides. His knowl-
edge was based on a lifetime of working this
shore and keeping meticulous notes, always
searching for patterns. He might have caught
a good fish under the full moon off the south-
east corner of a rocky island in late October,
TOM LYNCH

and within earshot of lawn mowers can touch cat playing with a mouse, the big bass stunned when the tide was two hours out. Or he might
their wildness with a fishing rod.” the bunker, picked it up and ran. I counted off have found a school of big fish off a grassy bar
32 Anglers Journal
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First Light

A school of mullet nervously

anticipates the future.

the first week of June as the tide began to turn

and rise. So we studied tide charts and calen-
dars and fished those spots when conditions
seemed right. His tattered old calendars were
full of scribbled notes: Oct. 28, 4 bass, 20-40
lbs, NE corner Goose Island, tide 2 hrs out,
1-3 am … The stripers weren’t always there,
but we found them often enough to keep us
hungry to learn more.
In 1985, after a stint in the Marine Corps, a
forestry job brought me to Montana, where
I became intrigued by the fall rituals of
rutting bull elk. I love the wild country and
rivers still large and clean enough to sustain
wolves, grizzlies and bull trout. But when the
larches and aspens turn gold and the haunt-
ing calls of elk echo off high canyon walls,
I close my eyes, take a deep breath of cool
autumn air, and remember the salt spray —
TOM LYNCH

as stripers swim through my heart and soul.

34 Anglers Journal
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First Light
Story and Photos by Charlie Levine

Midlife Knocking
A HEADBOAT TRIP WITH NO CELL SERVICE AND NO NEWS WAS
JUST WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED FOR THE WRITER’S BIRTHDAY

The Gulf of Mexico was cooperative for the

10-hour steam to and from the Dry Tortugas.

The sun had gone to bed hours ago in a sea of oranges and yellows spread a two- or three-day trip on the boat and the
across the sky. Constellations and planets winked at us as the Gulf of Mexico flattened out like drive home. I didn’t have that kind of time.
a slick, black puddle. Classic rock tunes that I know every word to rang out of a head-high At a fisheries meeting last November, I sat
speaker. My best friend stood next to me, cracking jokes and talking smack. And every time my next to one of the captains who works at
bait hit the bottom, it got bit. SeaTrek Fishing, an operation in Fort Myers
Surely this must be what heaven feels like, especially after being stuck at home for weeks with Beach, Florida, that takes small groups of an-
dreams of adventure flooding my thoughts. But this was no dream. This was real-time, and I had glers south toward the Tortugas on multiday
just flipped another keeper over the rail. trips aboard a 65-foot headboat. He told me
Last fall, I decided I needed to do something special for my 45th birthday. I’d always wanted to when to go, what to bring and what to expect.
fish the rich waters of the Dry Tortugas, a small group of islands about 70 miles west of Key West. A few friends and I reserved our space for
The Tortugas don’t see much in the way of boat traffic, and the fishing, especially bottom fishing, is June 30 to July 2, paid an extra $10 a head to
legendary. I figured 2020 was the year to make it happen, and I went about putting a trip together pick our bunks, and let the anticipation build
to celebrate my catapult into middle age. I knew of a boat in Key West that fished the Tortugas, over the next several months.
but getting there would entail a 10-hour car ride and an overnight before departure, followed by If you’re unfamiliar with the term “headboat,”
36 Anglers Journal
 ABSOLUTELY

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but I have never been more
impressed and satisfied than with
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First Light

it’s probably not what you’re picturing. Some

folks also call them “party boats,” but that
does not paint an accurate picture, either. Any
partying on these boats entails cheap cans of
beer, day-old sandwiches and a few seasick
patrons chumming over the rail. The boats are
usually beamy, aluminum jobs with plenty of
room on the side decks for fishing. They chug,
rather than cruise, and the captain’s plotter is
chockablock full of coveted fishing spots.
I grew up fishing on headboats and have
fond memories of running out to the codfish
grounds aboard the Hel-Cat in the thick of a
New England winter. The boat hailed from
Groton, Connecticut, and it sported heated
rails, with engine exhaust running through
the hollow piping, to keep hands and gear
from freezing and sticking to the cold metal.
The vessel reeked of stale cigarette smoke,
greasy egg sandwiches and cut squid. I know
it sounds miserable, but I loved it. The cama-
raderie among fishermen. The different walks
of life taking their spots on the rail. But most
of all, the big cod that the boat put you on
back in the day. That was the reward for wak-
ing early and fishing in nasty weather. Mates Callum (left) and Robbie prepare the baits en route to the Dry Tortugas. Relief captain Austin
Headboats aren’t for everyone. They’re short Collins (below) landed a whopper of a mutton snapper.
on frills, but if you want to spend quality
time with friends and family and carve out a and upchuckers to the rail. There was none of
memory or two (good and bad), headboats are that on this voyage. After our briefing, my four
a worthy platform. Fishing a headboat with a friends and I found a shady spot to enjoy the
group of buddies is akin to sitting in a duck 10-hour steam to the grounds. The captain had
blind or camping off the grid. And in the case his sights set on some live bottom more than
of this Tortugas trip, there’d be no cell signal, 100 miles offshore. Beers were cracked, as were
no news headlines, no interruptions. And jokes. Before long, my sides hurt from laugh-
that was a big part of the appeal. A chance ing, a feeling I hadn’t experienced in weeks.
to unplug, have some laughs and fill a cooler As we chugged along, the deckhands — two
with fresh fillets. 30-something guys named Robbie and Callum,
Then came the pandemic. Life shut down. who answered to Cole, Tallum or anything
Charters were canceled. You know the story. close to his South African name — filled the
The fishing trip was not my top priority, but I bait buckets with squid strips and other cut
secretly hoped we could still pull it off, albeit bait. They went through everyone’s tackle, ty-
safely. As Florida began reopening, the SeaTrek ing on top shots of mono or advising a change
folks assured us they were taking extra precau- — new countertops in the galley, fresh paint on in weight or hook size. Then they set a diving
tions and that the boat would sail. I was incred- the bulkheads and a whiff of disinfectant in the plug over the stern on a trolling outfit, as the
ibly grateful, as I needed the trip more than ever. air. We were told to wear masks in the cabin at boat traveled at 10 knots, an ideal speed for
We met the boat at 8 a.m., paid our balance, all times and drink lots of water, and we were wahoo. Massive schools of flying fish skittered
had our temperatures checked and began the shown where to find life jackets. across the glassy surface. Dolphin played in
loading process. First tackle, then coolers, bags I’d never seen the Gulf of Mexico so flat. the wake. The crew caught a nice kingfish on
and personal belongings. We threw lines at 10 The forecast called for zero to 2-foot seas and the plug and followed that with a 50-pound
a.m., and after motoring past the entrance of light winds, and it held true, thankfully. The wahoo. I regretted not bringing a trolling rod.
the channel, the crew began the safety briefing. top-heavy SeaTrek is known to bury the bow We made it to our first fishing spot around
This headboat was cleaner than any I’d been on in big seas, sending coolers sliding to the stern dark. With only 18 anglers on the boat, there
38 Anglers Journal
First Light

was ample space to put distance between

ourselves, and the company rotates the prime
spots on the stern so everyone gets time in the
hot seat. The anchor went down, followed by
the baits. After 15 minutes with no action, my
buddies began to doubt the captain. “Well, you
can always catch a buzz,” I said, digging a cold
one out of the cooler.
The next stop — and the one after that, and
the one after that — told a different story.
Lines stayed tight, fish came up from the
bottom, and photos were snapped. That first
night, my friends and I had the stern. Rob and
his 14-year-old son, Aiden, were constantly
doubled up, laughing, sweating and hugging.
Steve and I hooked one yellowtail snapper af-
ter another, and my other buddy Matt landed
a trophy yellowtail, the biggest I’ve ever seen.
At nearly 6 pounds, it’s what we Floridians call
a “flag” because of the bright yellow stripes
that extend down its flanks. They’re beautiful,
fun to catch and great to eat.
We also got to know some of our neighbors
Buddies Steve Wright and Rob Gatton are in the hot seat at the stern during a yellowtail snapper bite.
on board. The mates kept referring to an older
gent who never left his spot on the port side
as “Uncle John.” I asked him about the name. per began to bite. Nice fish, too. The relief tell he was fading. After a shark bit him off,
“I’ve been fishing this boat for 30 years,” he captain, who’s also a rep for Accurate fishing he whispered that he was going to shower.
said. “I’ve watched these guys grow up.” reels, hooked into a whopper that weighed 20 The boat holds 1,000 gallons of water, so each
Turns out John has an interesting back story. pounds. The world-record mutton was caught person is allowed only one shower. You don’t
Now in his late 70s, he was a songwriter and in these same waters and didn’t weigh much want to waste that ticket, and Steve was first
musician in a doo-wop band in the early 1960s. more. We also found a large school of blackfin to break the seal. I kept fishing. When he
He met Martin Luther King Jr. and told us tales tuna, and the anglers in the bow blasted cast- returned from the cabin donning fresh clothes
of traveling through the segregated South with ing jigs at them. At some point, I began to and smelling of Irish Spring, I asked how
his mostly African-American bandmates. ebb. Guys next to me were hooking up on the the shower was. “Absolutely perfect,” he said.
Also aboard were a truck driver, a chiroprac- same bait I was using, but I couldn’t catch a “Good pressure and hot water.” I headed in.
tor and his brother, and a young serviceman cold. I didn’t care, so I decided to hit the rack The shower woke me up, took me out of my
out for a few laughs between deployments for a couple of hours. fish focus and made me human again. As I
with his father and uncle, who sell roofing I couldn’t tell you what time it was when went out on deck in fresh duds with combed
supplies. Everyone was friendly and happy to I was awoken by claims of grouper and red hair, the captain made the call to reel up the
be on good fishing. snapper, but I flew out of the berth and into lines and get ready for the long steam home.
As the night wore on, my arms grew sore, the 100-degree heat. The fishing was still hot, I was happy with my decision as the guys
my hands stunk and my cheeks hurt from and I hooked up on my second drop, but the jockeyed for the shower.
smiling. When the mates told us it was time barracudas and sharks had found us. My catch The sun went down, and we warmed up Lon-
to rotate out of the stern, I asked what time went bye-bye in a National Geographic-style don broil, chicken wings and buttered noodles
it was. He glanced at his watch. “Take a explosion next to the boat. in the microwave. We ate on paper plates and
guess,” he said. We fished for another few hours, picking used coolers as tables. The food was heavenly.
I had no clue. “Midnight?” away at a bevy of species. I was in the same The beers went down, the ball-busting re-
“It’s 4:30 in the morning.” clothes I’d worn the morning we boarded the sumed, and at 3 a.m. we were back at the dock.
I went inside to make a cup of coffee. I didn’t boat. My legs were covered in sweat, sunblock, I hadn’t felt that exhausted, yet recharged, in
want to stop fishing. fish scales and blood. My shirt was beyond a long time. It’s amazing what a good fishing
The sun came up, and the mutton snap- ripe. Steve was fishing next to me, and I could trip can do for the psyche.
40 Anglers Journal
 R E C E N T LY D E L I V E R E D

84-F EET OF P ERFECTION

J A RRE T T B AY.COM
PHOTOS: LUKE PEARSON
First Light
By Henry Hughes
Photos by Kenning Arlitsch

Pain Relief
THE 10-DAY, 90-MILE HIKE WAS TOUGH, BUT THE FISHING
WASHED AWAY THE BUMPS, BRUISES AND BITES

Carrying a 50-pound
backpack, the writer had
to pick his away over
some difficult terrain.

Kenning tempts me with a well-cast email: “Wilderness fishing.” Rob drifts the the bugleweed to Big Sand Lake. But on the
perfect attractor down my lane: “Miles of untouched water.” It’s an invitation to join two friends third day, the Little Dead Elk Trail nearly drops
on a 10-day, 90-mile trek through the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in north-central Idaho. We me. Bearing 50-pound packs, we climb over,
would enter the fabled bear- and wolf-haunted wilds of the Nez Perce; trace Norman Maclean’s under, around and between the limbs of mas-
footsteps through Blodgett Canyon, Montana; behold majestic groves of old-growth cedar; and sive downed trees that block the route every few
touch miles of pristine trout water. hundred feet. Other sections of the pathway are
“Sounds great. I’m in!” I type back. completely overgrown. Thorns and branches
We train and gear up. Kenning, an experienced hiker, researches the route and contacts the tear our legs, mosquitoes pierce our Deet-
Fenn Ranger Station overseeing the area, asking if there is anything we should know about the numbed ears, and flies bite our hot skin. After
trail. “Well, that’s very rough country,” the ranger says. a four-mile morning, I’m breathing hard, sweat-
“Rough?” Rob shakes his head, gulping water and smacking a horsefly on his neck. “This trail ing and thrashing through a wreck of downed
hasn’t been maintained in years.” ponderosa pines from the previous year’s fire,
We start near Hamilton, Montana, clear Blodgett Pass in blistering July heat and follow a dent in wondering why I’m on this damn hike.
42 Anglers Journal
The promise of good fishing kept the hikers from fixating on the bugs and downed trees during their 10-day odyssey in Idaho’s Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.
Pushing ahead — what else to do? — and
parting a jungle of leafy brush, my only ori-
entation is Rob’s voice: “This way, over here.”
I find him waiting with a handful of huck-
leberries. I nod thanks, savoring the quench
of juicy sweetness but feeling completely
spent. “Only five miles to go,” Rob says evenly.
“We’ll camp by the water.” The trail gets worse
and vanishes. Kenning takes a satellite GPS
reading and divines the way. Legs wobbly, I
stumble over roots and rocks.
A Little Fish that Lifts Me
It’s 6 p.m., and we’re pressing above the
rumble of East Moose Creek, desperate for
a campsite. Kenning turns to me. “I’m sorry
about getting you into this.”
“No, no,” I say, touching his char and sap-
smeared shoulder. “As long as you get me the
hell out of this.”
“Stay on your feet, and we’ll get you out,”
he says.
Kenning and Rob are stronger hikers, but
we’re all exhausted. Kenning battles his
Anglers Journal
way down to the creek one more time, then
shouts, “Hey, this will work.” Rob and I stag-
ger and slide down the canyon to a massive
waterside patio of moss-covered rock.
My legs are lashed, bruised, whipped and bit,
and my back is strained. Even my hands throb
from gripping trekking poles, but when I see
the series of boulder cascades and deep pools,
I feel a surge of energy. I quickly assemble the
nine-piece, 5-weight backpacking rod Ted
Leeson lent me. A month earlier, Leeson had
listened to my training reports and plans for a
fish-filled Bitterroot adventure.
“Ninety miles, wow,” he said. “Well, I hope
you get through without too much pain.”
“Pain?” My eyebrows arched.
“It seems backpackers enjoy some pain. I In the shadows at the end of the run, a feisty
don’t understand that.” Leeson smiled, wished 7-inch cutthroat snaps up the fly and turns,
me luck and gave me a box of his fine flies. pulsing life back into me. Rob applauds, and
I tie on and grease up one of Leeson’s small Kenning takes a photo. The fish, a burnished
stimulators, and step to the rock edge — bassy green, is finely spotted, with red blushes
mindful of my shaky legs. Drawing out a few on its gill plates and sanguine slashes below.
feet of line, I flip the fly into the swirl behind A little fish that lifts me. I land a couple more
a sunny break, and three fish instantly rise. small cutts, bull trout and a few brook trout
43
First Light
The river gave up a westslope cutthroat, an offering that was prepared and consumed fireside after a long day under way.
that are browner, with dazzling light-colored
spots and glowing red pectoral fins. Wonder-
ful. I sleep like a rock on the rock.
The next morning is chilly. Kenning and I
rise early, delighting in the sound of moving
water and the absence of mosquitoes and
horse flies. He sets up his tenkara rod, and we
both tie on wooly buggers and catch several
cutts, bulls and brookies. “You were looking
pretty beat yesterday,” Kenning says to me.
“Until you saw the creek.”
“I was destroyed, man. But there’s something
about the promise of fishing. It’s crazy, isn’t it?”
Tired but Inspired
Day four of hiking is even more difficult. We
battle more downed trees and cover less than
seven miles in nine hours; it’s painful, but
the memory and promise of fishing keep me
going. “Just think how good it will feel when
you’re casting this evening,” Rob cheers.
He reminds me that in 1919 a young Norman
Maclean hiked 28 miles in one day through
this country. “He was 17; I’m 53,” I shout.
Kenning laughs and chimes in. “You and
Norman are both fueled by fishing. We’ll find
some nice water for you.” We all smile as we
watch a black bear gorge on berries and saunter
44
across the pale granite flanks of Diablo Moun-
tain while a young golden eagle sounds its
high, short whistle over the canyon. A mile
down the trail, there’s a half-eaten deer and
fresh wolf tracks.
Tired but inspired, we walk into a cathedral
grove of towering western red cedars, many
of their trunks 8 feet in diameter, the ground
below a profusion of soft ferns ignited here
and there by needled rays of sunlight. Cool,
fragrant and tranquil, the place feels holy, a
forest of dreams spared the violence of log-
ging, fire and storms.
We camp beside the creek, and I fish the
fading light. This time I keep and clean a
10-inch westslope cutthroat, rub it with olive
oil, sprinkle on salt and pepper, and wrap
it in a page of foil unfolded from my pack.
Raking out a few coals from the fire, the fish
cooks four minutes on each side. We share its
delicious flesh and delicate skin — a welcome
complement to rehydrated curry, dried peas
and filtered water.
The trail gets better, and we march on. We
reach the Selway River, drop stimulator and
caddis patterns in tailouts and over deep, blue
pools, and catch and release shining trout that
fight hard and come to our wet hands like
living gifts. We bathe, rinse our clothes, step
around sunning rattlesnakes, and marvel over
western tanagers and a wilderness night sky
of brilliant stars and a sanguine Mars. After
10 days, we walk out to the road at Paradise,
Idaho. I luxuriate in the finish but feel let
down that the hike is over.
POSTSCRIPT
A couple of days later, I’m sipping a gin and ton-
ic with writer and angler David James Duncan.
The air is hot, and my feet and legs are beat-up.
Duncan leads us into the creek behind his Mon-
tana house, where we soak in cold, mineral-rich
water. I tell him about the hike. “It was brutal at
times, but the fishing kept me going.”
Duncan is not surprised. “Good fishing turns
some of us into yogis,” he says, swirling the lime
around in his glass.
He recounts a day on the Missouri River:
“I knelt on rocks all day in the heat, fishing
tricos for 10 hours.” He describes rainbows and
browns rising constantly. “They averaged 3
pounds, and several went 4. There are very few
aches and pains that a cartwheeling 4-pound
rainbow can’t cure.”
My fish were small, but I know exactly what
he means.
Anglers Journal
First Light
Story and Photos by Jake Oliver

Full Circle
THE PROS AND CONS OF FLY-FISHING AND THE PRIMAL URGE FOR TABLE FARE

The writer’s fly-versus-spin

conundrum is a matter of
thrill versus nutrition.

I have been a self proclaimed “fly-only guy” for many years. Not because of some With age, I find it harder to be a fly-only guy,
egocentric gratification, but in the name of pursuing the highest level of angling thrill (in my despite stubborn laurels. I have many friends
humble opinion). A sight-casted fish that willingly eats a fly created by my own hand is a rush who fish, but fewer who fly-fish. Fewer than
that has only grown with time. However, there are equal lows to such highs. A dry spell can leave that will make any sacrifice to go fishing.
feelings of torment, provoked by others catching fish, or a lack of pelagic table fare. Hunting weighs heavily on my arbitrary creed,
Distant daydreams still include leaping tarpon from one of the fabled $50K skiffs, feet atop as well. Much in the way of the commercial
flawless non-skid and keel floating safely above any danger to virgin gelcoat. But something fisherman, everything has its purpose. I have
primal awakens in a man when he sees the weathered old salt at the ramp. Dragging crusty traps a rifle, some camouflage, and if I see a deer, I
across old fiberglass. Walking stern to bow in battered deck boots. Work. Tools. Nothing is un- shoot it and eat it.
necessary. Nothing is any cleaner than it has to be. Outside of hunting season, I have a skiff, a fly
46 Anglers Journal
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First Light
The writer took his Pathfinder 15T
to a bridge he used to fish years ago
(right) to try his luck with live bait.
rod and an overpriced cooler. If I see a fish, I
am going to cast to it, then hope to God I can
convince it to eat this clump of rubber legs,
fight it with “just enough” drag and let it go.
Some days I wish I’d brought my .270 instead
of my 8-weight.
My son is five months old. I figure it will be
at least a couple of years before he can pole me
around. I also figure if I play my cards right, I
may be able to bring him up in such a way that
he may enjoy watching a comrade from the
back of a skiff. Just as I do. If I pursue this line
of thinking further, I must play the long game.
Introduce him to fishing slowly, make it fun.
Live Bait
With Christmas comes the inevitable gift card
for the sportsman’s store, this year from some
kind soul in the gracious amount of $100. I
never know what to waste it on, even as I glide
through the turnstile into a subtly overpriced
redneck dream. New sandals? Beef jerky? An
antler lamp? The possibilities are endless.
This year I thought about it. A lot. A C-note
is just enough for a small cast net, bait aera-
tor and some circle hooks. Feeling strangely
guilty, I stuff the receipt in the bag and scurry
past domestic pigs and Tracker boats, avoiding
48
the judging gaze of a taxidermy bobcat and
formaldehyde alligator heads.
I dig up a spinning reel from another life and
a seaworthy five-gallon bucket. I give the new
net a few throws in the yard. Teeth squeeze
polypropylene, St. Augustine scratches ankles,
and childhood memories rush in. I load up
the skiff and head to the ramp. It’s Monday
night, and I’m going it alone. Catching bait
was more difficult than I’d anticipated, and
doing so solo exacerbated the effort. I man-
aged one pair of wet jeans, 16 scaled sardines,
two finger mullet and a muddy skeg.
I stow gear and rig rods during a lengthy
idle to the spot. I am after snook, I suppose. I
anchor up-current of a modest bridge, haunt-
ed years ago by buddies and me. I feel the
anchor catch as sunlight recedes into the tree
line. Erratic mangroves merge into perfect
concrete. Natural light fades, and street lamps
brighten. Water flows, and pilings stand tall. I
grab a bait from the humming froth; 2/0 steel
pierces scales and skin.
The first finger mullet hits the water like a
galvanized trash can hits a flight of stairs. It
sounds like a cannonball compared with the
heaviest clouser. I sit. I feel the small, frantic
life at the end of braided line. Toes scratch
no-see-ums from ankles. A predator smacked
the second mullet, seemingly out of playful
malice, no hookup. Hours pass as I drain life
from each morsel on my hook. It’s getting late.
I spare the rest of the baits in my bucket, dead
or alive, to Mother Lagoon. All but two. The
first is sacrificed immediately, to something.
The second is frantically strung up and cast,
meeting the same demise, I suspect.
Whiff of Nostalgia
The Walmart rod goes from a sensitive flick
of life to pounds of pulsing meat. Distant
sounds of braid, drag and aluminum-oxide
once again echo in my ears. I lower the tip
to water level, feather the spool and rip ac-
tive flesh from under mangrove hideaways.
Thirty-pound braid and a specific agenda has
the fish whipped in short order. This is not the
slot snook I target, but a sizable cubera snap-
per. That works for me. I open my cooler and
deposit seafood in exchange for a beer.
Pungent slime caked under the tab of my
Busch Light lulls thoughts into the past. The
seedy nature of a downtown boat ramp on
a late Monday night becomes familiar once
again. Summers spent here manicuring lawns
under the sun and fishing under the moon.
The nostalgia smells as sweet as the Copenha-
gen of younger years.
I could get back into this. I enjoy cooking
and fresh seafood more than ever. I clean
the skiff and fish carefully, not to wake the
slumbering family. The quest for wild-caught,
natural protein ironically ends with a late-
night can of tuna and some pickled okra. All
or nothing. Fly for fun or live bait for food.
The things we do for our kids.
Anglers Journal
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First Light
By Henry Hughes
Photo by Daniel Harding Jr.

Lobstering
Long Island, New York, 1983.

And don’t show-up drunk, Ziggy warned. But I had one helluva hangover, waking in my parked car to the
window-thump of his greasy fist. I was eighteen. We baited a hundred wooden pots, stacked the deck and
ran that dirty Down Easter toward Shoreham, the nuclear plant they never finished, where my dad worked
for ten years. Goddamn waste, Ziggy shook his head. And we’re gonna pay for it. He smoked down cigarettes.
I splashed heavy pots. Every time he yelled, Drop it fuckin’ flat, I thought of my girlfriend and getting paid.

We’d pick ’em up in a couple days. No numbers, all in his head. Black and white bullet buoys, line on the da-
vit, seaweed, plastic, spider crabs, snails and marble-brown lobsters pulled from the bedroom. Girls and kids
back over, rubber bands on the claws of a keeper some rich guy from Manhattan will buy at the restaurant,
wearing his ridiculous bib, cracking a fat red claw that squirts his girlfriend’s face. Their drunken laughter
sounding like gulls swooping the last of the rotten fish I cleaned from those pots.

50 Anglers Journal
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 The
Offshore
Life
FROM DAWN TO DUSK, DECKHANDS
PLAY A PIVOTAL ROLE HUNTING
BIG FISH IN THE BLUE WATER
STORY BY CHARLIE LEVINE
PHOTOS BY TOM SPENCER

Mate AJ Rizzo gets down to business

aboard First Look, a Weaver 60, during the
Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament.
t
The waking hour is early, just after 4 a.m.
Only those who work with their hands rise
at these hours.
Darkness lingers over the dock as the bridge-
mounted floodlights click on, illuminating
the cockpit in a blinding glow that bounces
off the fiberglass. The coffee pot hisses,
bubbling hot water onto the grounds. The
deckhand’s mind, however, focuses on differ-
ent grounds. The continental shelf. The Gulf
Stream. The offshore grounds.
The captain is still snoring in his berth as
the mate moves by muscle memory. The
young man’s body is fatigued from the long
day yesterday. They found the bite. The
reports were on the money, and the blue
marlin chewed. Today, he hopes, will be
even better.
Coffee is consumed, and frozen bait
is removed from the freezer. Today the
sportfisherman will pull two dredges. The
three-armed teasers resemble big balls of
bait trailing the boat. Most days the crew
loads the dredge arms with plastic squids
and black mud-flap cutouts in the shape of
small tuna. Not today.
This is tournament day, and the dredges
will hold split-tail mullet and ballyhoo on
pin rigs. They’ll also pull naked ballyhoo off
the long riggers, with pitch baits ready to
drop back to marlin that appear behind the
dredges and bridge teasers. The pitch baits
are bigger — Spanish mackerel, skipjacks
and horse ballyhoo, some naked and some
rigged behind chugger heads with circle
hooks front and center. The mate’s hands will
rig hundreds of baits before the day ends,
relying on a mishmash of sewing skills, knot
tying and dissection work that would make
his high school biology teacher proud.
54
The tournament purse and
a deckhand’s reputation
are at stake when a big fish
comes alongside.
Leftover baits from the previous day were
packed with salt and placed on an aluminum
tray that rests atop the ice in the bait cooler.
You know the bait cooler when you open
the lid. The odor is strong, but the baits are
a thing of beauty. He inspects them closely,
squeezing their flesh, determining the soft-
ness of the bait. Only the best will do. This
is not the time to cut corners. Tournament
buy-ins are hefty in the Carolinas, and the
boss is bringing along some high-rollers.
There is no room for error.
The captain emerges from the saloon,
grumbles a good morning and ascends the
rungs to the bridge. The engines fire, and
black plumes of exhaust tornado into the
still morning. The owner shows up, having
slept on land, his entourage looking more
dead than alive. They slap the mate on the
shoulders as he extends a hand to help them
aboard. One of the guests hands the mate
a paper sack with a warm sausage, egg and
cheese sandwich.
It’s a 60-mile run to the canyons. The guests
sleep. The captain plots the course and
works the radio, gaining intel, talking with
his network about water temperatures and
currents. The mate preps the baits, removing
eyeballs, clipping the beaks off the ballyhoo,
squeezing out the innards and snapping
the backbones so the baits move as freely
as snakes. A beer coozie filled with chin
weights rests in a cup holder on the rocket
launcher. A spool of rigging floss lies next
to the lead beads, needles sticking out of the
top. Shears, bait knife, crimper and hooks
are within arm’s reach from an overturned
bucket that serves as the mate’s office chair.
Two hours until lines-in. The salt stings
the cracks in the young man’s hands as he
Anglers Journal
Anglers Journal 55
56 Anglers Journal
 Rigging baits is one of the mate’s most
important jobs, as tournament success depends
heavily on proper presentation. The waiting
game begins once rigs are in the water, followed
by choreographed chaos once there is a hookup.
tightens down the gills of another bait with an
overhand knot so the ballyhoo will run straight
and not spin like a prop. The baits are lined
up in the cooler. He hangs a couple-dozen
premade leaders by slipping the hooks over the
tension rod of the fighting chair about a foot
from the cooler so anglers can grab a leader and
a bait quickly if the mate is busy. Efficiency is
key. Double-headers will carry the team up the
leaderboard. A triple-header could win it all.
One hour until the lines go in. The trolling
rods are placed in position, the drags having
been set at the dock. Extra rods are handed
up to the captain. The dredges are connected
to large electric reels and placed on the deck.
Leaders find their way onto swivels; baits rest
on the gunwales.
Thirty minutes until fishing begins. The sun
crests the horizon, and anglers roll out into
the warming day. The once quiet deck is filled
with chatter, smack talk and hopes. Someone
says a prayer while another person throws
money into the water for luck. The captain
makes a final move and slows the boat to troll-
ing speed. This is the spot.
The lines-in call comes over the VHF radio.
“Put ’em in, boys,” the captain hollers, then
looks up to the heavens, mumbles a few words
and traces a cross on his chest.
The baits swim perfectly. The dredge looks so
good that it fakes out the captain for a second,
but the morning bite eludes them. The adrena-
line of dawn meanders away. The drone of the
engines makes eyelids heavy until the line in
the long rigger snaps free and a reel zings to
life as a mystery fish pulls drag. The angler
PHOTO CREDITS
grabs the rod and pulls it from the holder.
“I didn’t see it,” the captain says. The line
stops pulling. The angler reels it in. The captain
begins a wide, arcing turn. Nothing doing.
Anglers Journal
The mate sees a blue flash behind a dredge.
“Left flat!” he yells and hands the owner a rod
with a Spanish mackerel pitch bait.
“Get ready, boys!” the captain yells as the mar-
lin moves through the spread. The boss drops
the big pitch bait into the water, lets it drift back
behind the prop wash and holds it in place
just past the teasers with his thumb, the reel in
free-spool. The marlin attacks from left to right.
The water erupts; foam flies. A head-on colli-
sion. The boss keeps his cool and lets the big
blue swim off for a solid nine seconds before he
slides the drag lever to strike. The mate holds
his breath. Please come tight, he thinks.
“Hooked up!” the owner yells. The entourage
hoots and hollers, and the madness begins. The
blue marlin leaps in a frenzy. The fish shakes
its head wildly, trying to unbutton the bait, but
the circle hook holds steady, clinging to the
corner of its jaw. The owner, who can fish with
the best of them, moves to the fighting chair
and keeps steady pressure on the fish. The cap-
tain spins the boat, helping him gain line.
“Double line!” the mate yells as the first
knot crests the tip-top guide on the rod. He
pulls on his wiring gloves, itching to grab the
leader as he sees it pop through the surface
waves. He reaches out and gets a grip, keeping
his center of gravity low. The first wraps come
easy. The fish launches just off the transom.
It’s 500 pounds, all day. He holds tight and
regains control. The fish shakes its head, and
the mate takes another wrap, moving closer
to the fish. Endorphins rage through his
body. His muscles tighten. The fish is caught.
Phones come out to record videos and pho-
tos, but nothing can accurately capture the
way the mate feels, knowing that his baits,
knots and rigging all held.
Now for another one.
57
Taking the
Plunge
RATHER THAN PURSUE
SCIENCE, THE BIOLOGIST WHO LOVED TO FISH
CHOSE THE RISKIER LIFE OF AN ARTIST
BY KRISTA KARLSON
Nick Mayer’s paintings, such as this false
albacore, reveal a high level of detail.
N
Nick Mayer ambles along Main Street in
Bristol, Vermont, population 3,894, on the kind
of crisp fall day when the sun provides all the
warmth. He looks out of place in his lobster
T-shirt and white Nikes, an average Joe in a sea
of flannel. He slips into a doorway and walks
upstairs to a high-ceilinged hallway with creaky
floors. He unlocks the first door on the right.
Sunlight floods the room, and immediately
we are in the land of sharks and tuna, a saltwa-
ter fishing oasis in a landlocked state. Mayer’s
meticulous paintings line the walls surround-
ing a plush red couch on wheels and a long
wooden table with two paintings in progress, a
muskie and a giant trevally. The studio has just
the essentials: pencils, paper, paint, brushes, a
coffee maker and a bottle of Scotch.
Mayer, who is 49, is as much a scientist as
he is an artist, having been steeped in both
since birth. He was born in Michigan to
parents who were professors — his father
semester’s end. His mother researched one
single-celled organism for her entire career.
From a young age, Mayer was a keen observer
of underwater life. His mother took him and
his sister fishing for bullheads at a local pond,
but he was more interested in turtles. “Every-
body called me the turtle man,” Mayer says.
When he was 12, he would squeeze through
the bars of a grate guarding a culvert where big
snapping turtles lived. He would grab them by
the tail, examine them and let them go.
Today, in his home studio in Lincoln, Ver-
mont, seashells fill a windowsill revealing an-
cient mountains that once cradled an inland
sea. Mayer pulls out his childhood sketch-
book and flips to a treasure map that his
father drew for the young boy. More flipping
reveals a giant chicken that Mayer had drawn
and requested his father’s assistance shading.
Next to the sketchbook on the shelf, below a
microscope, is a yellowed copy of Life: Nature
an abstract oil painter, and his mother a by the Sea. Mayer remembers memorizing
microbiologist. The family moved to Rhode the book’s captions.
Island when Mayer was 5, following profes- As a child, Mayer visited an uncle in Ver-
sorships at Brown University in Providence. mont who took him to the local fly shop and
He remembers bringing home art supplies introduced him to a man who would become a
that his father’s students had left behind at the lifelong mentor. Gordy Hinds, who worked at

The northern pike is a relative

of the “dragon-like” muskie.

60 Anglers Journal

the shop, was in his 30s and took Mayer under
his wing. “We just kind of became friends. He
introduced me to fly-fishing,” Mayer says. The
pair fished the Battenkill and the Mettawee
rivers together.
Mayer went on to study biology at Brown
University, where he also took jewelry-
making and oil-painting classes through a
partnership with the Rhode Island School of
Design. However, he never received any for-
mal training in watercolors, the medium that
would later inspire his livelihood. He gradu-
ated in 1993 and moved west. In Kodiak,
Alaska, he studied the effects of the Exxon
Valdez oil spill on salmon before working on
a commercial fishing boat for a summer. He
then went to Oregon to study out-migrating
salmon in the Columbia River. During this
Anglers Journal
This year, Mayer caught a 44-inch muskie not
far from where his elusive 50-incher lurks.
time, he started painting underwater scenes
in his field notebook.
He next landed in Tortuguero, Costa Rica,
where he tagged sea turtles with his future
wife, Amy. “I would catch fish and sketch them
in my sketchbook, thinking that it was the
scientific reference that I could use later for
other kinds of paintings,” Mayer says. He liked
watching crevalle jack zoom through the water
close to shore. “You’d see them way down the
shore, and then by the time you cast over here,
they’d have already come that far.”
After a stint with Oregon Fish and Wildlife,
he went to graduate school, where he again
studied biology. During this time, he began
painting more taxonomic pieces that draw on
the techniques of Flick Ford and James Prosek.
He says painting in this style is his way of
61

getting to know a fish. In 1997, he sold his first
painting, a tarpon, in a gallery in Key West,
Florida. “That was a data point,” he says.
Soon after, a friend invited Mayer to visit his
home in Lincoln, and Mayer was sold. He and
Amy moved there in 2000. He taught high
school biology in a neighboring town, then
worked as an environmental consultant. But
neither of those jobs were a good fit. “At that
point, I knew I really wanted to be an artist,
but I didn’t think I could make enough money
doing it,” he says. Amy was a behavioral thera-
pist in a local elementary school, and they
were raising two kids.
Muskie Water
Mayer lives on a winding dirt road hemmed
by fields that sweep into the rainbow palette
of the Green Mountains. His truck, laden
with a beat-up blue canoe, bounces over
potholes and kicks up dust on the way to his
favorite top-secret fishing spot. A few years
ago, he and Amy hacked a path through the
underbrush from the road to the riverbank,
62
and carefully camouflaged the opening with
brush to hide it from other anglers. They did
such a good job that we drive by a few times
before we find it.
A former high school wrestler, Mayer is 5
feet, 8 inches and barrel-chested, with freckles
that frame his blue-gray eyes. His 5 o’clock
shadow could be an artist thing or a Vermont
thing. He speaks with long pauses, and I can
tell he’s listening intently when he utters a
drawn-out mm-hmm. We load the canoe —
an aluminum hand-me-down from Amy’s
parents that has survived collisions with a
snowplow and a hurricane — with fishing
gear and skid down a muddy embankment.
He confirms that I know how to swim.
The river is murky, flanked by grassy vegeta-
tion and snagged logs that bring to mind
images of the deep South. It smells like mud.
It’s a side of Vermont I doubt many people
have seen. Mayer says he’s never encountered
anyone else on this stretch of river.
We paddle to a bend where Mayer is certain a
single 50-inch muskie lives. He has been chasing
For four years, Mayer has been
chasing a 50-inch muskie at a
bend in his local Vermont waters.
it for about four years — he’s hooked the fish six
times in total — and it’s become an obsession.
“I’d like to catch him just once,” Mayer says.
Muskies were reintroduced to Vermont
after disappearing in the 1970s and are now a
protected species. Mayer likes apex predators:
His other fishing obsession is blue sharks and
makos off Maine. He casts a large carp fly imita-
tion on 20-pound tippet toward the bank under
a tree. The fish grabs the wiggle tail but doesn’t
take. He goes wild. “Holy f---! That was him!”
Mayer is electrified. It takes him a couple of
minutes to calm down. He switches to a white
carp pattern with a tail. I demurely cast a spin-
ning rod with a magenta spoon, trying not to
let on that I’m not exactly a master angler. We
dip into an eddy untouched by the sun, and
the air is instantly chilly.
After a half-hour of fruitless casting, I get
a strike and feel the weight of a good fish. I
fumble the hook-set; Mayer notices and starts
yelling excitedly. Before I know what’s happen-
ing, the large fish, which Mayer describes as
“dragon-like,” is gone. Mayer is beside himself.
Anglers Journal
Here he is, attempting to glimpse this elusive
creature, and not only is the catch not going to
be his, but I’ve bumbled a good shot of at least
hooking what he believes was the fish. Rather
than disappoint, the ordeal seems to provide
him with that perfect blend of hope and won-
der that keeps dreams like these alive.

Life of an Artist
After five years running his art business on the
side, Mayer went full-time in 2012, despite his
father’s warnings about how financially un-
stable the profession can be. “It just got to this
point where the business grew, and I had all this
creativity. I just had to take the plunge,” he says.
His mother was his first sales representative.
She pitched his prints to stores up and down
the East Coast. The wholesale market contin-
ues to be a large part of Mayer’s business. He
used to go to art shows and display his work
in galleries, but he says he never made much
money that way. Mayer spends 40 hours sketching and another 90 hours or more painting large pieces,
Mayer is earnest, diligent and measured like a such as this bluefin tuna. He paints each individual scale over a watercolor base (below).
scientist, but has the hustle of an entrepreneur.
He estimates that he spends 40 hours sketch-
ing a large painting before he begins mixing
paints. Painting, which is his favorite part of
the process, might take another 90 hours. Like
many artists, he is his own biggest critic. He
stresses about whether he used too much paint
or if a painting is even going to work out at all.
From a distance, it’s impossible to see the
wild level of detail in his paintings. But stand-
ing with my nose six inches from the 4-by-3-
foot giant trevally that is almost finished on his
table, I let out an exclamation. Big washes of
color bleed down the paper as a base layer, and
he has painted each of 84 scales white in a way
that gives the fish its signature iridescence.
He’s never seen a giant trevally in real life, but
he says, “there is something about that fish.”
Every artist occasionally wonders what the
hell they’re doing, and Mayer is no excep-
tion. He doesn’t have many artist friends,
and sometimes he wonders why he lives in
Vermont. But it’s the community that seems
to keep him here. Until recently, he was the
varsity wrestling coach at the regional high
school, and he likes how the sport draws kids
who might not fit in to other sports. He has a
group of friends who are also entrepreneurs:
One makes slate products and another designs
quirky suits. And he has his fishing friends,
some of whom he met at the local bakery.
We haul the worn canoe up the muddy bank
and turn back to cover the trail with brush. The
light is low, and the air hums with insect life as
the truck crests and dips over Vermont’s hills.
We talk about love and fish and the meaning of
home, those elusive forces that keep us return-
ing to the creek and the palette for one more
glimpse of what is true.
Anglers Journal 63
Stu Apte wound up in the drink after
gaffing this trophy tarpon for Joe
Brooks. (Facing page) Apte several
times held the record for tarpon on fly.
 đđǦęĆėĘ BY MONTE BURKE
EDITOR’S NOTE: In the late 1970s and early ’80s, something
unique happened in the quiet, little town of Homosassa on the
west coast of Florida. The best fly anglers in the world gathered
to chase the world record for the most glamorous and coveted
fly rod species, the tarpon. It was a collision of circumstances
and personalities that was unprecedented in the world of fishing
and one that will never be seen again. Monte Burke explores
this chapter of fishing lore in his new book, Lords of the Fly. The
following is an excerpt.
By 1978, all of the players were in place in Homosassa.
Stu Apte was born in Miami on Mother’s Day in 1930.
He pronounces the name of his hometown as “My-am-uh,”
in the same way that Flip Pallot does. Apte’s voice is, at once,
deep and nasally — almost like he has a persistent head cold
— which provides it with a peculiar sort of authority, one he
has earned and one he is unafraid to let you know about.
Apte’s parents moved to Miami from New York City. His
father was in the produce business until he took up a side
hustle gambling on the ponies, which ultimately cost him his
livelihood. Apte’s mother took to doing the majority of the
raising of her son. Apte boxed a bit in high school. He went to
the University of Miami and then into the military, where he
became a fighter pilot. Though he was on active duty during
the Korean War, and says he was “gung-ho to get over there,”
he never left the training base in Virginia and didn’t see any
action. After his military service, he became a commercial
COURTESY IGFA (2)
pilot for Pan American World Airways.
Apte, now 90, is the hub from which all of the spokes on the
tarpon fly-fishing wheel emanate. He knew — and knows —
everyone, from the early tarpon guides, like Jack Brothers and
Jimmie Albright, to the big shots of the 1970s and 1980s, like
Tom Evans, Billy Pate Jr. and Al Pflueger Jr. He also personally
mentored and trained both the young man who would catch
the world’s largest recorded tarpon on a fly in 2001 and his
guide. No one in the tarpon world is more than a degree or
two away from Apte.
He started fly-fishing in salt water at the age of 16, with a
three-piece South Bend bamboo rod. Joe Brooks was among
his first real fishing partners. At the age of 18, while in college
as a zoology major, Apte routinely cut his botany labs to go
snook fishing on the Tamiami Trail. He was driving home
on one of those days when he saw “this big dude casting a
fly,” he says. He pulled his car to the side of the road, got out
and asked the man if he was having any luck with the snook.
The big dude ignored him. Apte asked again and was again
ignored. After the third try, the big dude finally turned to him.
“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT CATCHING SNOOK,
BUSH?”
“I know enough that I caught three 15-pounders this morn-
ing,” Apte replied.
The big dude reeled up and walked over.
“YOU’RE NOT BULLSHITTING ME, ARE YOU, BUSH?”
Apte told him he was not bullshitting him, and they chatted
a bit and then fished together the next morning. The big dude,
who had a pretty cast, fished well. After the tide ran out and
the fishing slowed down, the big dude wrote down his name
and number on a piece of paper and gave it to Apte. “I don’t
follow spectator sports and had no idea who this guy was until
a friend told me later,” says Apte. And that’s how Stu Apte and
baseball immortal Ted Williams became fishing buddies.
Apte started guiding in the Keys after he was laid off by Pan
65
 HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF SARASOTA COUNTY
A chance encounter brought together Apte and baseball legend Ted Williams,
who also was an accomplished fly fisherman.

Am in 1956. He was later rehired by Pan Am and then laid off again, but by
1960, he had a house in Little Torch Key and was fishing and guiding full time.
Well, almost full time. Much of this era in his life is detailed in his autobiogra-
phy, Of Wind and Tides, which is really the story of Apte’s aptitude for the three
F’s: fishing, flying and, to put it rather indelicately, f—ing. There are pictures of
a young Apte in the book. He is, indeed, quite studly — wiry, with muscular
forearms. In some of the photos, he sports a tightly trimmed mustache, which
he wears to this day, one that seems ironed onto his upper lip. He tells stories
of his fishing exploits and his flying career. And he talks about the many flight
attendants who took their layovers at his love shack in Little Torch. He writes
that he was “scoring like Shaquille O’Neal at a basketball dunking contest …
surrounded with never-ending groups of lovely ladies, coming down to visit
whenever they so desired.”
Modesty has never been Apte’s strong suit. “Stu does not possess one molecule
of humility,” says the guide Harry Spear. Adds Sandy Moret, angler and owner
of a fly shop in Islamorada: “Stu’s very easy with a good story about himself.”
Apte was not pleasant to fish with, stressful even, as Guy de la Valdène has
noted. He was aggressive and pushy and a constant yeller. For many years, he
had an RV that had an enormous picture of his face on the side, under which
was written, in large letters, “Stu Apte, world’s greatest fly fisherman.” He drove
that RV from the Keys to Montana and back every year, and he used to park it
in front of his home in Islamorada.
But as Dizzy Dean supposedly once noted, “It ain’t braggin’ if you can back
it up.” Apte is the real deal, to some the best pure tarpon fly angler who ever
lived. “He was a predator,” says Moret. “People used to gather at the dock to
watch him launch his boat.” Much of his aggressiveness and self-promotion
were rooted in his hard work and his perfectionism.
He spent his nights rigging his tackle, tying and retying knots until he got
them just right. “There are knots, and then there are Stu’s knots,” says Doug
Kelly, an outdoor writer from Florida who knows Apte well. Apte once wrote
that he “caught most of his fish before he went fishing.” He had all sorts of little
rules that he followed, about how best to approach a fish, and where and when
to cast. One of his flies, the orange-hackled Apte Tarpon Fly, appeared on a
U.S. Postal Service stamp (like Lefty Kreh’s). Apte on the bow, with a fly rod in
He pioneered a method of fighting big tarpon that is still used by some today, his hand and a fish in his thoughts.
PAT FORD

something called “down and dirty,” in which he keeps the rod low to the water
and uses the butt of it to “program” the fish, as he called it, taking control of the
66 Anglers Journal
Anglers Journal 67
68 Anglers Journal
 Sporting his signature
mustache, Apte, now 90,
pioneered fly-fishing for
tarpon, one of the most
coveted fly rod species.

fight with leverage and his strong forearms. He was the master of now leg-
endary spots Coupon Bight and Loggerhead for many years, having had
them pretty much to himself. He once poled onto a flat near Loggerhead
to within earshot of another boat, helmed by someone he didn’t know.
He staked off and started jawing at the man in the other boat, telling him
how to fish the flat and pointing out all the things he was doing wrong.
The man listened for a while and then grew impatient and yelled back,
“Who do you think you are, Stu Apte?”
“Well …”
In May 1961, he was fishing in the Keys with Joe Brooks when Brooks
hooked a big tarpon. As Brooks got the fish close to the boat after a
two-hour fight, Apte gaffed it. The tarpon pulled, and Apte went flying
into the water “like a pole-vaulter,” he says, still attached to the fish. The
tarpon came loose, and Apte, chest-deep in the water, gaffed it again. The
fish weighed 148 pounds, 8 ounces, the biggest tarpon ever landed on a
fly. That record stood until 1967, when Apte broke it with the 151-pound
tarpon he landed in the Keys while fishing with Valdène. He broke his
own record, again in the Keys, with a 154-pounder in 1971.
When Apte arrived in Homosassa in 1978, he was nearing the age of 50
but was still very much in his prime as an angler.
Williams, the baseball player and wartime fighter pilot, started fishing
for tarpon in 1947. He would routinely arrive early for the Red Sox spring
training camp in Sarasota so he could get in some fishing.
During camp, he sometimes snuck away and went down to Miami and
the Keys for more fishing. He also fished while doing his fighter pilot
training in Florida. It turned out that his 20/10 vision, incredible quick-
twitch coordination, uncanny patience and insatiable drive translated
very well to fly-fishing on the flats. In his boat, he would stand on his fly
box, rod in hand, eyeing the water and waiting for the fish, just as he had
once stood in the batter’s box. Sports Illustrated deemed him an “expert
fisherman — maybe the most expert of our time.” Even accounting for
some inevitable
hyperbole, it’s very Excerpted from Lords of the
possible that at differ- Fly: Madness, Obsession and
ent times in his life, the Hunt for the World Record
Williams could have Tarpon, by Monte Burke.
been considered the Published by Pegasus Books.
best hitter, fighter © Monte Burke. Reprinted
PAT FORD

pilot and saltwater fly with permission.

fisherman alive.
Anglers Journal 69
ěĊėęčĊĆĎēćĔĜ
ARGENTINA’S LAGO STROBEL IS HOME TO A THRIVING POPULATION
OF DINOSAUR-SIZE RAINBOW TROUT STORY AND PHOTOS BY PAT FORD

A 20-pound rainbow
is the highlight of the
Jurassic Lake fishery. ??
I
I had just stepped off the de Havilland Twin Otter that
brought us from Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina, to Jurassic
Lake Lodge’s private landing strip when my hat blew off. It
landed about 30 feet away, and a guest who was leaving the
lodge snatched it up and returned it with a smile.
The smile was a premonition of the week to come. I was
about to experience an otherworldly rainbow trout fishery,
but I first had to make friends with the wind.
I’d known of Jurassic Lake for many years. Its actual name
is Lago (Lake) Strobel, and it’s in southern Argentina,
about a six-hour drive from El Calafate, the nearest point
of civilization. The landscape surrounding the lake is pretty
much what one would expect to see on Mars: rough, dry
and lifeless. Occasionally, we saw a rabbit or fox or guanaco,
but there was very little life except for birds. Lago Strobel is
fed by the Río Barrancoso, and there is no outflow. It’s in the
middle of nowhere.
In the early ’90s, the land owner decided that the ponds
around the lake would be a great place to raise and harvest
72
rainbow trout. Steelhead from the Santa Cruz River and
McCloud River rainbow eggs were dumped into the ponds
and river, and on a lark, also in the lake, according to the
early accounts. Unfortunately, the fish farm plan had a few
glitches. The lake and its ponds had no road access or acces-
sible shorelines. There was no way to profitably harvest the
trout, much less get them to market, so the plan was aban-
doned. But the eggs had been planted, and nature took over.
Lago Strobel’s scud and nymph abundance was perfectly
suited for rainbow trout, and the hatchlings flourished. With
no natural predation, the trout grew to enormous sizes. In
2006, Klaus Frimor and Christer Sjöberg heard rumors of
a lost lake with giant rainbow trout and decided to investi-
gate. At the time, Christer owned LOOP Adventures, and
Klaus was managing Christer’s lodge on the Río Gallegos. It
turned out to be an 11-hour drive from the Río Gallegos to
Lago Strobel. There was no habitation on or anywhere near
the lake, so Christer and Klaus lived in tents and explored
miles of shoreline, including the river mouth. I tracked down
Anglers Journal
 The lodge blends with the
remote, rugged landscape that
surrounds the lake and river.

With Lago Strobel’s constant

winds, anglers get a crash course
on fly-fishing in gale conditions.

Anglers Journal 73
 The writer and his group fished
several beats on the lake and
the river. Rodger Glaspey (right)
caught three rainbows in the
20-pound class.
Klaus, and he told me they discovered that the fish at the river mouth
would eat just about anything, but determining which flies were best
for the lake and ponds took some time.
The trout in the lake and river mouth averaged 10 pounds. Christer
and Klaus agreed that they should develop an operation to fish Lago
Strobel. LOOP Adventures signed a lease with the landowner around
the river mouth, and the lodge started as a collection of tents. Eventually,
a few rough buildings were set up to house supplies and generators for
refrigeration, and the lodge began bringing in anglers from El Calafate.
There were no amenities for guests, including plumbing or electricity,
but the fishing was off the charts.
Fast forward a dozen years, and Jurassic Lake Lodge, now owned and
operated by Carlos Casanello, is as comfortable as it gets, and the fishing
is still off the charts. (There’s also another lodge on the lake.)
We flew from the United States to Buenos Aires, where we were met
by a lodge agent and escorted to our connecting flight to Comodoro
Rivadavia, where we spent the night. The next morning, we were
bussed to the local airport for the hourlong flight to Lago Strobel.
74
It took only a few minutes to drive from the landing strip to the lodge,
where we were assigned rooms and offered a snack. We gathered in
the dining room and were given the lowdown. Breakfast was at 8 a.m.,
lunch at 1 o’clock and dinner at 9 p.m. We would fish in groups of two
or three and were assigned beats. Guides would join us from 9 a.m. to
noon, then from 4 to 8 p.m. All the beats were within walking distance
of the lodge, and we could fish on our own at any time.
Barbless hooks were mandatory for our safety, as well as the trout’s.
This is no place to take a barbed hook in the eye. The only restriction on
flies was no Alaska-style plastic egg rigs.
The lodge is at the mouth of the Barrancoso, which could be fished up
to a pool called “The Aquarium” and farther upstream, where the river
and pools were considerably smaller. To my surprise, we were told that
90 percent of our fishing would be with floating fly line. We were also
told to expect wind — lots of it — and that it wouldn’t affect the fishing
much, as long as it blew less than 50 mph. That was a bit intimidating.
One day wind speeds reached 70 mph, with gusts to God-knows-what.
I had assembled our group of anglers for the week, so we all knew
Anglers Journal
each other. On the first afternoon, Rodger Glaspey and I headed out
to The Aquarium pool after lunch. We had done some research on
the most effective flies to bring and settled on an olive woolly bugger-
style nymph with a hot pink bead head. We also brought along a new
creation called a mop fly. I hadn’t heard of a mop fly, but Rodger had
brought a few with him, and the lodge sold them.
The fly is about an inch long and has a sparkled neck and a bead head.
The body is made from a piece of mop chenille, which is sold in stores
for dusting. The material comes in white, chartreuse and pink. The white
mop fly looks like a giant maggot. I picked up three of each and rigged a
white one on my 9-foot, 6-inch, 7-weight rod along with a strike indica-
tor on a 12-pound fluorocarbon leader. We didn’t have a guide with us,
but Rodger and I were pretty confident we could figure things out.
As we approached the river where it enters the pool, we spotted sever-
al double-digit rainbows holding in the current. Rodger swung his olive
hot-head through them and immediately hooked up. We were off to
the races. That afternoon was undoubtedly the best trout fishing we had
ever experienced. Our guide showed up around 4 p.m., and we fished
Anglers Journal
until 8 o’clock. We caught about 35 fish that went more than 10 pounds
and five that were in the 17-pound range. We didn’t count anything we
thought weighed less than 10 pounds.
Walking back to the lodge, our guide told us he had never seen so
many big fish caught in one session from that pool. I had never seen
a 17-pound rainbow. Rodger caught a 31-inch rainbow on a dry fly.
We were afraid to tell the rest of the guys how lucky we’d been — we
figured they wouldn’t believe us anyway.
There are several beats on the river and lake. Moving clockwise from
the lodge is a beat known as the “Bay of Pigs,” where you fish off some
of the rock formations that surround the lake. The water drops off
sharply, and the footing can be tricky, but some truly fat fish patrol the
edges, hence the name.
There are two beats at the river mouth — one right, one left. A shallow
stretch a short distance away can be easily crossed, so one group waded
across and fished the right side of the lake and upstream of the mouth.
The guys on the left pretty much fished the mouth and the beach to the
left, but also could venture upriver.
75
 Jurassic Lake guides (in
blue hats) celebrate with
Tom Nygard after a nice
hen came to the net.

The Aquarium pool was another beat, and from there we could also
head upriver and sight-fish a smaller stream, which had other pools
full of 10-pound rainbows that were easily caught with dry flies and
5-weight rods. We typically fished one beat in the morning and another
in the afternoon, rotating through them.
I used a 10-foot, 8-weight rod for the lake and the 7-weight for the
river pools. One of my buddies used a LOOP 7-weight switch rod for
the lake, which was very effective. The combination of constant wind
and current resulted in a chop that made mending with a shorter
rod difficult. The extra length helped a lot. Next time I’ll probably
bring a switch rod, too.
Most of my fishing was with the mop fly, or a scud or nymph tied
below a standard strike indicator. Most of the guys used a giant foam
salmon fly with a nymph dropper. For those who wanted to swing
flies, a Teeny Mini-Tip sink-tip line worked perfectly, especially at the
river mouth. A full intermediate line worked best at the Bay of Pigs if
we were using streamers.
We used lighter rods as we went farther upriver. In the higher pools,
4- and 5 weights were fine with light tippets for dry flies. Still, there
were plenty of fish going 10-plus pounds.
It was interesting to watch the rainbows move upstream through the
shallow sections. They were so big and the water so shallow that their
backs were sunburned. We saw lots of fish with scars and wounds on
their backs — the result of being exposed to the wind and sun. We saw
these fish both upriver and in the lake, so we surmised that they move
back and forth continually.
This is a magical fishery, and the holy grail is a 20-pound rainbow,
though the fish here fit several loose categories: less than 10 pounds; with sink-tip or intermediate lines. There was plenty of current at
10 to 14 pounds, which is basically a thin 30-inch fish; 15 to 19 the river mouth, so we cast up-current and watched the indicator.
pounds, a short, very fat or a very long, thin fish; and 20 pounds. Strikes could be subtle, or the indicator simply disappeared under
These monsters in the latter category were bigger than 30 inches and water. I started out fishing a white indicator but kept losing it in the
fat. If we didn’t think oh my God when we first saw it in the net, it foam when the wind kicked up, so I switched to orange. I was con-
wasn’t in the 20-pound class. I caught two, and Rodger caught three, cerned that the extra visibility would be a problem — that is, until a
two of which were closer to 25 pounds than 20. 10-pound rainbow ate it.
Rodger owns Rainbow King Lodge in Iliamna, Alaska, but neither of The guys who used foam flies as indicators caught several fish on
us had ever seen anything like these Jurassic rainbows. Our group had them. Every cast could produce anything from a dink to a monster,
a total of nine 20s for the week. That’s exceptional, even for Jurassic and they all fought like crazy. Runs went well into the backing, and
Lake. Every one of the 20-pounders was caught on the mop fly. some of the biggest fish would come completely out of the water more
Wind notwithstanding, the fishing was relatively easy and mostly than a dozen times. It was spectacular.
involved drifting flies with a strike indicator. Every beat had cur- I’ve mentioned the wind here, but not nearly enough. This part of
rent, except Bay of Pigs, which required casting and retrieving Argentina is geographically flat from the ocean to the Andes Moun-
76 Anglers Journal
tains. The wind blows constantly and can reach unbelievable speeds.
Normal winds are around 30 mph, which is easily fishable. The river
pool is the most protected, as is the river above the mouth; Bay of
Pigs is the most exposed. At one point, the wind was steady at 70
mph, with higher gusts. We tried fishing the river mouth, but it was
a challenge just to keep upright. Spindrift covered the entire lake, so
most of us took the afternoon off.
In hindsight, the wind added to our adventure. We noticed that the
lake was calmest at dawn, so Rodger and I would sneak in a little fish-
ing before breakfast. One morning, he caught two of his monsters at
the mouth on a mop fly. There’s something about that fly that attracted
big fish. It would bob along under the strike indicator, moving with
the waves, which could be substantial at the river mouth. Whatever
that fly resembles, it was definitely on the big-fish menu.
Anglers Journal
I was obsessed with landing a 20-pounder, so the mop was pretty much
all I used, except the day the fish were going nuts over green scuds.
Everyone had a secret fly that worked for them, though we caught the
majority of our fish using whatever was on our lines the most.
Our trip was in December 2019, which is early summer in Patagonia.
According to the guides, the fishing is outstanding from opening day
in October through December, then slows to merely amazing. Their
season runs from October to May, and monsters are caught every
week of the year. In April, however, the wind dies, and 90 percent of
the fishing is with dry flies. I can only imagine 15-plus-pound rain-
bows on dry flies and 5-weights.
If landing giant rainbows off the beaten path is your idea of adven-
ture, check out Jurassic Lake Lodge at jurassiclake.com. And check out
the mop fly at mopflies.com.
77
Bucktail Believer
John Skinner literally wrote
the book about bucktail jigs.
JOHN SKINNER IS A MASTER AT
FISHING THE ICONIC BUCKTAIL
STORY BY MARK ROBICHAUX
PHOTOS BY BILL MOULTON
T
he wind off the beach on Long Island’s
North Fork had turned my cheeks can-
dy apple red as I swung the 10-foot rod
toward a boulder 50 yards out in the
surf. It was late November, just after the
fall migration of striped bass had wound down. Not
believing the last of the stripers had finned out of the
Northeast, I was determined to pick up a straggler
surf casting with the only lure I had brought with
me: a white bucktail jig.
The 1-ounce jig sailed into the dark blue sky,
needling into the surf like an Olympic diver with
hardly a splash. Before the bait had a chance to hit
bottom, I was reeling for all I was worth to pick up
the slack. I did this over and over — precisely as I
was told, point by point — by perhaps the greatest
living authority on bucktail jigs, John Skinner, who
was casting not 20 yards from me.
“I always say that anything that will hit an artificial
lure will hit a bucktail,” Skinner says. “A properly pre-
sented bucktail, reeled in slow and steady in the strike
zone, will catch anything willing to hit an artificial.”
Most anglers I know bring a suitcase of baits when
they fish — poppers, plastics, jigs, spinnerbaits,
crankbaits and flies. These baits rattle, buzz, spin,
float, dive or shimmy, glide or quiver. Hey, you
never know, right?
Few anglers have enough confidence in only one
lure to catch fish consistently. Skinner uses other
baits, to be sure, but his loyalty lies with the white
bucktail. And with good reason: He is the author of
three books on fishing, including one title devoted to
this singular lure: Fishing the Bucktail.
A bucktail jig isn’t much to look at — a bundle of
white deer hair wrapped around a lead jig head.
However, it is one of the most versatile — and there-
fore most successful — lures in the history of fishing.
The elegant simplicity of the design and the way it
mimics nearly every baitfish and minnow on the
79
planet, salt or fresh, make the bucktail jig one
of the most widely used baits in the world.
The lure can be fished nearly anywhere and
in any way: in the shallows, in deep water,
in heavy current, in still ponds, in Nor’easter
surf, trolled or jigged vertically in deep water.
It will entice nearly any fish to strike. On
Long Island Sound, I’ve raised big striped
bass, bluefish, false albacore, fluke, black sea
bass, porgies and sea robins on bucktail jigs.
And in the freshwater lakes and brackish
bayous of my native Louisiana, I’ve used them
to catch redfish, speckled trout, largemouth
and smallmouth bass, white crappie, blue
catfish and even sunfish. I have friends who’ve
landed mahi, mackerel, kings, jacks, tarpon
and barracuda on bucktails. Few lures can
claim that much success.
The bucktail jig also has helped set several
records. Corey Kitzmann, fishing Minnesota’s
Lake Vermillion last fall, landed a state record
muskie on a homemade bucktail — 57¼
inches, 47 pounds, with a girth of 25½ inches.
Ronnie Talas caught a 74-pound, 8-ounce
black grouper on a bucktail July 2, 2019, setting
80
an IGFA Men’s 15-kilogram (30-pound) Line
Class World Record.
But mastering the bucktail is easier said than
done. With variances in weight, bulk, retrieve
speed and cast placement, there’s a narrow win-
dow for working it properly. And few people
can fish a bucktail better than John Skinner.
Despite his warnings that we might get
skunked this late in the season, he indulged
me on a trip to learn a few lessons about
properly fishing a bucktail jig on this cold
November morning. After our first stop on
the beach, with the pink hue of the predawn
light on the horizon, Skinner began walking
to spots he knew held fish only weeks earlier.
His instructions were simple: cast overhead
for maximum rotation, then crank my big
Penn reel steady enough to keep the lure just
off the bottom. Let it “swim.”
There were no hits — not even a bump —
midway through our walk on an endless
beach of pea-sized pebbles and clear, cold
water. As we clomped along in waders, I
quizzed Skinner on techniques. It may be an
art, but Skinner can describe the exact science
behind it, not surprising given his science
background. (He has a bachelor’s degree in
biology and a master’s degree in computer
science.) He’s a likable legend among the most
seasoned salts on Long Island Sound. With
the soothing voice of a polite, affable college
professor, he narrates his YouTube channel,
John Skinner Fishing, with a mix of precise
and practical advice on chasing big bass and
blues, with unique high-definition underwa-
ter video of, among other things, flounder
ambushing his bucktails with teasers cut from
the skin of sea robins or legal fluke.
On one level, bucktail fishing is simple.
Swim the bucktail in the strike zone, near
the bottom, on a steady, slow to moderate
retrieve. “Do that in the presence of fish that
are willing to feed, and you’ll catch some,”
says Skinner, 59, a retired software developer
and lifelong angler who lives in Greenport
on Long Island, New York. “It’s conceptually
easy but challenging,” depending on condi-
tions and whether you’re fishing from a boat,
beach, inlet, pond or a pile of rocks.
But even Skinner — who has a well-earned
Anglers Journal
 Simple and effective, the bucktail
“will catch anything willing to hit
an artificial,” Skinner says.

reputation in the Northeast as a trophy catch-

and-release striper fisherman — sometimes
has an off day. In Fishing the Bucktail, Skinner
recounts frustrating examples of getting out-
fished — and out-fishing others — because
of some seemingly small detail. Skinner calls
them “learning opportunities.” Be observant.
Try different things. Focus on moving water.
Change your retrieve speed.
To determine which size bucktail to use,
Skinner’s first question is about water depth
and conditions. “How deep is it?” he asks.
“How much movement, from either current
or waves? I’m also concerned about air move-
ment because certainly wind is going to play
into that. Those three things are going to de-
termine what weight bucktail I want to use.”
He says the biggest mistake newbie buck-
tailers make is going too heavy. “They cast,
and it doesn’t go very far, so the next thing
they do is they put a heavier one on,” Skinner
says. “OK, that goes far, but now it’s dragging
the bottom. An occasional bottom bump is
fine, as a reassurance that you are near the
bottom. If you’re bumping bottom a lot, or if
Anglers Journal 81
you’re dragging bottom, certainly it doesn’t
look very natural.”
Skinner rarely throws a bucktail without
some sort of trailer or teaser on it. He favors
4-inch Otter Tail straight strips on bucktails
lighter than an ounce, and the 5-inch straight
split Otter Tail on 1-ounce and heavier jigs.
As for color, the expert says, “If you had noth-
ing but white, you’d be just fine. Fluorescent
green is a good one, and so is yellow at times.
Black and wine-colored are for night.”
Skinner is the latest in a line of bucktail
proselytizers that stretches back centuries.
Some say the first bucktail-like flies date to
ancient Greece in the second century; oth-
ers say native Americans fashioned the first
bucktails with deer hair.
Despite some uncertainty surrounding the
origins of the lure, it’s well-documented that
the Upperman brothers out of Atlantic City,
New Jersey, were the first to mass-produce
bucktail jigs. William K. Upperman applied
for a patent in 1941, eventually selling thou-
sands of jigs based on its reputation as a fish-
catcher. Patent No. US2315304A, approved
March 30, 1943, describes in the most minute
detail everything from the angle and place-
ment of the hook eye (top of the jig head,
inline, to get rid of the bubble created by the
eye moving through water) to the precise
placement of the hair:
In all forms of the invention, the hairs of the
bucktails are laid heavier at the top and bottom
of the necks than at the sides so that they fan
out principally in the vertical plane, thereby
carrying through the streamlined formation
and increased lateral visibility of the body,
while at the same time acting somewhat as a
rudder or stabilizer fin rearwardly of the body.
The distribution of the weight of the lure is such
that the keel is disposed substantially above
the center of gravity, preferably a little forward
thereof so the drag of the bucktail is sufficient to
cause the lure to ride level with the bill up when
drawn through the water.
William and his brother, Maury Upperman,
fished for stripers in New Jersey; Maury, of
Margate, New Jersey, once caught a striper
weighing 62 pounds, 9 ounces, a record he
held for more than a decade. The Uppermans
82
first produced bucktail jigs with lead molds
and hooks, hand-painting the jig heads and
wrapping each lure with deer hair individual-
ly. “They put the word out — to taxidermists,
sportsmen in the area and fellow fishermen
— that they wanted deer tails,” says Larry
Oliphant of Manahawkin, New Jersey, whose
father and uncle fished with the Uppermans.
“They liked the buoyancy of the hollow
hair on the lure.”
An undated ad extolling the Upperman
bucktail’s virtues for trolling, casting and
jigging states: “Here is the bait you’ve been
looking for.” The jigs were considered so reli-
able that the U.S. Navy ordered tens of thou-
sands from the Uppermans and made them
standard issue as part of its pilot survival kit
during World War II. The lure could catch
fish tied to a bobbing survival raft or worked
on a hand line.
Today, several well-known lure companies
produce bucktail jigs, and many anglers
(especially those who hunt deer) make their
own lures. Indeed, until a few years ago,
Skinner tied his own bucktail jigs. He didn’t
like the flimsy deer hair that bunched around
most hooks. Looking for a lure with an “in-
ner” body, he tied hackle feathers to the hook
shank, then tied the deer hair around the neck
so the hair would flair out more. Today, S&S
Bucktails makes several Skinner models. “They
do a much better job than I do,” Skinner says.
I noticed some dark bucktails in Skinner’s With degrees is biology and computer
science, Skinner possesses an uncanny
box and asked how the black and wine- ability to process fish behaviors.
colored ones worked at night. He told me his
theory on big stripers and bucktails.
“In many environments, you don’t have that
much visibility,” he says. “We don’t know ex-
actly how they’re picking up that bucktail. I’m
calling most of this a visual thing.” But that’s
not always the case. lateral line to pick those up. It’s sort of hard
Skinner remembers night bucktailing in The for us to understand because we don’t have
Race — the tidal entrance of eastern Long Is- that sense. There’s no way they’re seeing that
land Sound known for strong currents — on a thing. No way.”
new-moon tide with the bass happily banging Even in rough surf, a bucktail is easier to
bucktails. “One of the things I like to do when present more naturally than a plug, Skin-
I night dive,” recalls Skinner, who enjoys ner maintains. Fish sometimes will strike a
scuba diving, “is turn off my light … and that bucktail just a few feet from a surf caster, in
is the blackest, black dark you’ve ever seen. water clouded with sand and froth. “If you’re
So imagine in that darkness, 50 feet down, in on a steeper beach, then you know what? Ten
a 4-knot current, that stripers can readily hit feet in front of you could be a 30-pounder,”
those bucktails. Obviously, they’re using their Skinner says. “So you’re definitely going to
Anglers Journal
want to work carefully up through that beach,
continuing even where that last wave is. Espe-
cially behind the last wave.”
But we were having no luck this day, and I
was losing patience. I noticed Skinner stand-
ing intuitively at a spot where waves broke at
his knees, casting effortlessly. I was struggling
with the surf. Too focused on the lure’s land-
ing spot, I was getting knocked off balance.
The bucktail jig I was throwing — a white
S&S with a 5½-inch trailer — looked alive in
the water, like a miniature ballerina whose
Anglers Journal
skirt flared every time I allowed slack in the
line. I threw again over by the boulder. Nice
and easy. Take up the slack. Keep it off the bot-
tom. Reel in right behind the last wave.
“There’s a certain feel to bucktailing when
you know you’re doing it right,” Skinner writes
in his book. “It’s a feeling that’s impossible to
pass along with printed words on a page. You
can only get there with confidence, and that
confidence can only be earned by putting your
time in and building your own experiences.”
As I brought the lure in from about 15 feet
out, I felt a bump, and the drag on my Penn
started singing as line stripped off. I stepped
back for better footing. It was a small bass,
around 22 inches and with enough fight to
remember why I had driven three hours on a
nice fall day to meet Skinner. I looked to my
tutor for recognition. He smiled and waved.
I released the fish into the surf. The sun had
climbed higher, and so had my spirits.
Back at the truck, Skinner smiled and wished
me well. “Now you can go home and tell your
friends that you out-fished John Skinner.”
83
The Merritt 42’s classic
good looks make it one
of the most recognizable
sportfish hulls in the world.
 A Long Run
WITH MORE THAN 50 YEARS OF SERVICE TO SOME OF THE WORLD’S TOP CAPTAINS,
THE MERRITT 42 PICAFLOR HAS A STORIED PAST AND A FRESH START
STORY BY CAPT. KARL ANDERSON
PHOTOS BY JESSICA HAYDAHL RICHARDSON
I
In offshore fishing circles, the 42-foot
Merritt is instantly recognizable. The
design combines a seaworthy hull and
timeless good looks with the critical
elements needed for big-game fishing.
And the best of the best covet these
boats because they were purpose-built
for catching big fish.
Few older sportfishing boats have the
bones and receive the care required
to survive 50 years of hard fishing.
That cannot be said of the Merritt
42 Picaflor — Merritt hull No. 18 —
which launched in the spring of 1969.
She has been updated and maintained
throughout her illustrious career be-
caught the number of big fish that
Picaflor has. She’s fished the Atlantic
and Pacific, as well as the Caribbean.
Seven of the sport’s most distinguished
captains have manned her helm. She’s
had International Gamefish Associa-
tion Hall of Fame anglers in her fight-
ing chair, set world records and won
tournaments. And that’s just a sliver of
her storied history.

The Original Build

cause she has that special something, a
pedigree instilled by her builder.
There aren’t many boats that have
86
A young Roy Merritt stood alongside
an overturned 42-foot hull in the fall of
1968. He was learning the boatbuilding
trade from his uncle, Buddy Merritt, and
the talented crew at his grandparents’
modest yard, Merritt’s Boat and Engine
Works in Pompano Beach, Florida.
Roy and the crew had recently
completed a 42-footer for him and
his father, Allen, to be used for family
snapper trips. Powered with a single,
slightly used 6-71 General Motors
Detroit Diesel, Caliban — the name
of all Merritt family boats — was the
yard’s 17th hull. Merritt 34-, 35- and
37-footers had established quite a
reputation on the bluefin tuna grounds
of Cat Cay and Bimini in the Bahamas
during the 1950s and ’60s. The lion’s
share was earned by brothers Buddy
and Allen Merritt, who were relent-
less in their quest to rule Tuna Alley,
a 15-mile stretch of shallow water and
white sand off Cat Cay that’s a migra-
tion route for bluefin.
Buddy was innovative, calculating
Anglers Journal
 (Left) Picaflor’s storied history includes many
years of raising big fish off Panama. (Above) Vic
Albertson Carpenter is one of many skilled hands
who worked on Picaflor’s refit at the Merritt yard.

Anglers Journal 87

and focused, while his younger brother Al-
len (Roy’s father) possessed an innate sense
of tuna movements. Allen fished with Bill
Carpenter of the DuPont family, who was
president of the fledgling IGFA at the time.
They were the force to be reckoned with at Cat
Cay, winning the prestigious Cat Cay Tuna
Tournament seven out of 10 times and plac-
ing in the top three every time they fished it.
Allen tallied another win in 1987, for a total of
eight wins in 11 tournaments. No one has ever
come close to that stand.
In early 1968, Buddy was diagnosed with Lou
Gehrig’s disease. Knowing his eventual fate, he
set out to build a boat for himself, which years
later would be named Picaflor. That spring,
Buddy served as a hired gun on pro golfer Jack
Nicklaus’ 37-foot Merritt Golden Bear, fishing
Cat Cay with a young Capt. Gary Stuve. They
were talking about the boat Buddy was build-
ing when Allen and Roy showed up at Cat Cay
with their sleek, new 42-footer. “It’s going to be
just like that boat but faster,” Buddy told Stuve.
“I’m putting a bigger engine in it.”
That summer, Allen ventured to New-
foundland with Carpenter, where they fished
Conception Bay and caught more than 100
bluefin tuna in a monthlong season on Allen’s
42, including 15 giants in one day, tying a
record that Carpenter had set at Cat Cay with
Capt. Bill Staros.
Back in Florida that winter, Roy prepared
to fiberglass the 18th hull being laid up at the
Merritt yard. Buddy had never glassed a boat,
but Roy had done hull No. 17, and his uncle
liked it. “Buddy was stubborn on what he
would and wouldn’t do as far his boatbuilding
process,” Roy says. Buddy mixed the resin, and
Roy spread it into the fabric. They completed
the entire job, from the bottom to the sheer
line, in one day.
The build progressed throughout that winter
and into the spring of 1969. Buddy purchased
an 8-71 General Motors Detroit Diesel for
her, and by May, Caliban II was painted on
her transom. Caliban II set off to Cat Cay with
Buddy at the helm to chase giant tuna. After
the Bahamas season, Buddy loaded up the
boat and headed 2,300 miles north with his
family — sons Richard and Stevie, daughter
88
(Clockwise from top left) Gracie’s marlin
before its release; a chunky yellowfin comes
aboard off Panama; a Pacific black marlin on
the run; Picaflor backs down on a big one.
Ruth Ann and their mother, Dorothy — to the
tuna promised land.
Record Giants
Arriving in Newfoundland, Buddy steamed
past Conception Bay and headed farther
north to Notre Dame Bay, where he believed
he’d find better fishing. He pulled into the
village of Lewisporte. The fishing was as
spectacular as he had hoped. Stuve had been
fishing with a group in Conception Bay when
Buddy called. “Get your asses up here now,”
he said. The bite was on.
With IGFA president Elwood K. Harry,
future IGFA president George Matthews,
and Gil Keech fishing, Buddy caught 16 giant
bluefin in a single day of trolling, beating his
brother Allen’s record. “The fishing was on
fire, and we stopped fishing for like an hour
to eat lunch and quit early. I couldn’t believe
it, but that was Buddy,” says Stuve, who
crewed along with Charlie “Splittail” Hayden.
“At the end of the day we had 16. Could have
had a bunch more, but Buddy wasn’t worried
about setting records.”
Buddy returned to Newfoundland in 1970
but was too ill to fish, suffering the effects of
ALS. Allen had to fly north to bring the boat
back to Florida. Buddy died in March 1971.
Helen Grant purchased his boat in early 1972
and renamed her Quail. Along with Capt. Billy
Ridgway and mate Andy Anderson, they made
a formidable team in the Florida and Bahamas
tournament circuits for nearly 10 years.
In 1981, hull No. 18 became Sachem for new
owner Charlie Owen, who had owned 37-
and 46-foot Merritts. Under the guidance of
Florida Keys captain Billy Knowles, she was
converted to a twin-engine boat with a set of
Volvo diesels and got a new tower, installed at
Merritt’s. “She was the best sailfish boat I ever
fished on,” Knowles says.
In 1984, Sachem became Marauder, with
renowned skipper Capt. Ron Hamlin at the
helm. The boat got a new set of larger Volvo
diesels, and Hamlin fished that season in St.
Thomas and Venezuela. On the trip home to
Florida, Hamlin and his significant other at
the time caught a blue marlin that the skipper
estimated at 950 pounds. Photographs of the
Anglers Journal
Anglers Journal 89
(Clockwise from above) Picaflor’s machine-turned, hot rod instrument panel; Picaflor after her refit
at Merritt’s; craftsman Tom Thompson worked both on the original build and on Picaflor’s refit.

massive billfish later confirmed it would’ve
gone well more than 1,000 pounds.
In 1985, Marauder became CMC, which
stood for “Crazy Mad Canadian,” with the
legendary Capt. Bubba Carter manning the
bridge. Carter intended to take the boat to
Costa Rica on its own bottom, so a pair of
3208 Caterpillar diesels replaced the Volvos.
“We spent a lot of money on heavy-duty mo-
tor mounts,” he says.
In the spring of 1986, Carter set out from Palm
Beach, Florida, bound for the Panama Canal
and the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. “She was a
great fish-raising boat,” Carter says. “Spin on a
dime and give you nine cents change. I loved
that boat — went a lot of miles on that rig.”
90
By 1988, Carter had seen the promise of the
Pacific and decided to stay in Costa Rica. Capt.
Jack Morrow and his son brought CMC back
to Palm Beach, and Stuve fished her with his
son Charlie as mate during the winters of 1992,
’93 and ’94. They won the Buccaneer Cup Sail-
fish Tournament and placed second twice.
Panama and Gracie’s Marlin
After another sale, the boat, renamed Livewire,
went back to the Merritt yard in 1996 for
updates. In 2001, John Richardson, a fun-loving
Texan with a fishy family, bought the boat and
named her Picaflor (Spanish for hummingbird).
Richardson and I became friends when he
docked next to the 58 Merritt that I captained,
Brier Patch. In the spring of 2002, Picaflor
landed in Isla Mujeres, Mexico, her ultimate
destination being the Pacific coast of Panama.
Picaflor fished Panamanian waters for more
than 15 years. Richardson was a military kid
and went to school in the Canal Zone, so
Panama was a second home. He hired two
locals from Piñas Bay to run the boat — Capt.
Adolpho Grajales and mate Ligorio Sanapi —
and they logged enough trips to rival anyone’s
bucket list. Richardson recalls a particularly
memorable string of billfish. “We ran some
60 miles from Piñas up to the Perlas Islands,”
he says. “We fished our way up, and of course
we didn’t have enough bait, and when we got
there it was non-stop action. We caught 33
Anglers Journal
sailfish the first day, and the next morning we
just hammered them. It was just me, [my son]
Wade and the mate. We released 56 sailfish. The
next day we ran up there again and caught two.”
Picaflor also showed her tuna prowess in
Panama, as Richardson and crew caught a run
of big yellowfin, including a 353-pounder that
ate a marlin lure. But that fish was nothing
compared with a massive black marlin they
tangled with in 2007.
“I’ve never been home for the birth of my
grandchildren,” Richardson says. “The day my
first one was born, I put a satellite tag in a black
marlin. … The day number two was born, I
caught two marlin. So number three is on the
way, and we’re out trolling near San Jose Island
Anglers Journal 91
92 Anglers Journal
 (Clockwise from top) Picaflor’s refit included
an engine transplant; tools of the trade; Capt.
Wade Richardson sea-trialing Picaflor’s new
power plants; sparks fly at Merritt’s.
at a spot known as the Explosivos. It’s July. It’s
hot. Not much going on. We’ve got our lures
out, including this one Joe Yee Apollo lure that
we’ve caught 38 marlin on. It was all beat up.
We just kept putting new skirts on it.”
Richardson continues: “The fish comes up
on the teaser, then turns back, hits the lure,
and we’re on. When she jumps, she can’t even
get out of the water — it was such a big fish.
We start to spin the boat, and the starboard
engine quits. We couldn’t get the damn thing
started. I back off the drag, and she starts
jumping and jumping.”
After several minutes, the captain managed
to restart the engine, but the fish had begun
to pull away. “Adolpho turns, and we run her
down,” Richardson recalls. “She wore herself
out with all the jumps. We back over to her,
and she’s swimming along next to the boat.
We have her on the leader, taking pictures. We
measure her, and she’s right there next to the
boat as docile as can be. In the meantime, my
buddy goes in the saloon to see what the IGFA
world record book says. He comes out and
says, ‘John, this is a world record on 50-pound
tackle, if you kill it.’ And I’m saying, ‘Man, I
can’t kill this fish on my granddaughter’s birth-
day.’ So we let her go. She’s known as Gracie’s
marlin, after my granddaughter.”
The Refit
After two sets of engines and nearly 16 years of
fishing the Pacific, Picaflor was shipped back
to Florida for some much-needed rehab. In
December 2017, she was offloaded in Palm
Beach. Richardson’s son, Wade, and I brought
the old gal back to her birthplace for a major
refit. Under the watchful eye of Roy Merritt —
the man who had laid her fiberglass nearly 50
years earlier — Picaflor underwent a consider-
able transformation. I was fortunate to have
had a role in the 15-month project.
Like most boat refits, the “while we’re here”
list piled up. Removing the engines led to the
removal of other equipment: air-conditioning
compressors, refrigeration compressors,
pumps upon pumps and 600 pounds of old
wiring. Having sagged over the years, the
saloon sole was leveled, supported and set in
place with composite beams.
In the cockpit, the bulkhead freezers were cut
out. The cockpit deck was removed, exposing
her underbelly. Fuel tanks were removed, the
in-deck live well was cut out, and the rudder
Anglers Journal
shelf was replaced. Twin 450-hp Cummins die-
sels were mounted in the engine room, and the
6-inch exhaust system, which was marginal for
her engines to properly breathe, were replaced
with an 8-inch linear system.
Her paint was stripped to the original base
primer over the fiberglass, which was in great
shape. Old repairs and dings were patched with
glass and epoxy, her chine rails were glassed
over, and her bottom was sealed in epoxy. New
through-hull intakes and drains were installed
throughout to match the upgraded equipment.
As the project progressed, the health of her
bones was apparent. The scent of mahogany
when drilling into frames or sanding to bare
wood was a pleasant reminder of how boats
were built decades ago, in contrast to the fact
that Picaflor was becoming a 21st century
sportfishing boat.
A 100-gallon live well was incorporated into
the cockpit, fed by a three-pump system in
a sump box under the deck. If a pump fails,
switching to a spare is as simple as opening
and closing valves. A gate system fully floods
the tank to reduce sloshing and harming bait
when running. Opening the gate keeps the well
from overflowing when fishing. Placed directly
forward of the fighting chair/rocket launcher,
the live well also serves as a bench or rigging
table. It’s a far cry from anything that would
have been considered the latest equipment
when hull No. 18 was built.
Her new tower is an exact reproduction of the
original to maintain the boat’s iconic profile.
She has fresh paint all around and new varnish
on the toe rail; her new teak transom is adorned
with Picaflor in glittering gold leaf. Garmin
electronics will help her ride into the future.
Nearly all of the equipment was installed by
Tom Thompson, a mechanical wizard who
worked on the original build. She’s ready to
chase gamefish anywhere in the world. Of
course, a project of this scope starts with a boat
that’s worthy of such a large undertaking, a
boat that has a pedigree and a legacy of catch-
ing fish. Add to that a passionate owner who
understands that the historical value of such a
boat may never be reflected in her cash value.
Richardson now has a boat that’s a collector’s
edition, one that was brought home to be
worked on by the same folks who built her.
After her rehab, Picaflor will leave Merritt’s
for a new chapter of chasing big fish in new
destinations.
93
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 AJ
My Boat My Life
By Gary Reich

P
ete Shea’s passion for boats began
with a 25-cent raffle investment.
“I put in a nickel, and my father
pitched in 20 cents for an 8-foot
plywood pram at the Annisquam
Sea Fair around 1948,” Shea recalls. “We used
it to go clamming almost every weekend.”
Shea fell in love with boats and being on
the water, and his passion eventually collided
with the rush that comes when a bluefish or
striped bass runs off drag. “I bought a 1958
19-foot Lyman Islander for $500 in my early
20s and then tried to figure out how to catch
fish around Gloucester, Massachusetts,” he
says. “I had no idea what I was doing. Eventu-
ally, I had two or three friends who came
along. Once we figured out how to make
the engine run long enough to get out to
the lighthouse, we caught flounder. Then we
learned how to catch bluefish.”
As his fishing improved, so did the quality
of his boats. A 30-foot Broadwater followed
the Lyman, as did a 22-foot Sisu, an Eastern
31 Casco Bay and a 43-foot Post that he and a
partner offered for charters. Shea also owned
a Webbers Cove 34 and a couple of Mitchell

COURTESY OF PETE SHEA

Cove models. “We did a lot of great fishing off
those boats,” he says, “but my current boat is
one of my favorites.”
Irish Fin is a 23-foot Glenn Bradley built in
Wanchese, North Carolina. Shea found her
in 2015 in South Florida. “I saw an ad for her
and asked a buddy to come have a look with
me,” he says. “I saw the boat up on a lift and
fell in love immediately.” Shea says the out-
board had just 175 hours on it, and the boat
was being offered at a price he couldn’t resist.
The hull, with its signature Carolina bow flare
and tumblehome stern, was cold-molded with
Atlantic white cedar using a custom jig. “The
fit and finish are among the best I’ve seen,”
Shea says. “There’s plenty of room for fishing
Shea trailers Irish Fin between his
from bow to stern. I like how uncluttered the homes in Florida and Massachusetts.
whole layout is.”
Irish Fin’s Yamaha F250 is mounted on a jack
plate, and Shea says she cruises in the mid-20- of Gloucester. “It’s an incredible boat with a and rakes quahogs from a 16-foot Stur-Dee
mph range and tops out in the upper 30s. With great ride for both places,” he says. “It’s a great Amesbury dory. “It’s a great life being on the
an 8-foot, 6-inch beam, she’s trailerable be- boat to fish from in almost any weather.” water,” Shea says. “I’m so lucky to be able
tween Shea’s winter home in Key West, Florida, When he’s not running Irish Fin, the to enjoy it at my age. Having the right boat
and his summer place in the Annisquam area 80-year-old retired attorney pulls lobster pots always helps.”
96 Anglers Journal
Battle of the Bays.
Visit your authorized Everglades Dealer before July 31st, 2020 and
discuss special offers on select in-stock models including the popular
273cc. This is your opportunity to own a renowned Everglades boat.
The time has never been better to make your move to Everglades.

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* See your local Everglades dealer for details.
Limited to in-stock models.