Table of contents for Winter 2014 in Anglers Journal

Eighty to 100 miles out, where the canyons lie at the edge of the continental shelf, warm-water eddies spinning off the Gulf Stream meet the colder, plankton-rich waters of the North Atlantic. That’s where the squid and halfbeaks hang, out along the break between the warm and cold water. It’s where I love to be when the tuna are biting. The sharper the break, the better for attracting baitfish. Sometimes it can be 66 degrees on one side of that break, 73 on the other. Tuna — yellowfin, bluefin, bigeye — like the warm water, but venture out of their comfort zone to feast on the small baitfish feeding on plankton in the colder water. I use satellite-generated ocean temperature charts to find these breaks. Then I’ll search around, looking…

I’ve spent my life fishing for snook. The greatest thing about it is you do it early in the morning or late at night, far from the madness of the interstates. You see the sunrises, the birds, the vegetation, the fish popping in the solitude of the Everglades or mangroves, or in a moon-lit inlet. When I was a kid growing up — we were a family of nine — my job was to make sure the freezer was full of snook, and I did that. I killed thousands of snook, but we ate them. They never went to waste. Some will disagree, but with season closures, size limits and a fish-a-night limit, snook fishing is better today than 30 years ago. Golf pro Andy Bean and I caught and…

“In 27 days of fishing in the Dominican, we saw 100 blue marlin, and caught 39, maybe had 65 bites. Had a day of 5 out of 7 blues and a day of 4 out of 6 blues. On two different days, we saw 10 blue marlin in a day; unfortunately we only had 3 bites each of those days. They’re just cornin’ in, not eating, just cornin’ in and raisin’ hell. Overall we had incredible action.”— Capt. Jon Duffie of Billfisher, a 62-foot Spencer Fisheries: Beware the "Share" with Gulf Red Snapper It's been a long time coming, but a red snapper reallocation amendment Is under consideration by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council and could potentially recast the way the fishery is divided between recreational and commercial…

Bill Curtis literally grew up with a fly rod in his hand, but in 1948 he moved to Miami and found a passion that changed his life and the future of fly-fishing. He began traveling west along the Tamiami Trail, fly-casting for snook and baby tarpon, and then ventured out into Biscayne Bay for bonefish. In 1958 he started guiding anglers in the bay for tarpon, bonefish and permit. Bill took Curt Gowdy and Joe Brooks to Key West in 1968 for an episode of “American Sportsman,” and it was that show that brought the amazing flats fishing in the Keys to the attention of America. Bill’s stories about the bonefish and tarpon populations in Biscayne Bay during the 1960s and ’70s are both fascinating and depressing. He talks about…

Legend has it that one of the first sportfishing boats was built in California. Crete was built with a “deep cockpit, a special chair to fish from and leather rod holders.” That boat was used in California for about a year and then shipped to Hawaii by a Capt. Mardon, where it was expected to pay for its keep by taking Haleiwa tourists fishing. The date? 1915. I was born and raised in Florida, where I swept the chips from wooden boats, beginning in the late ’50s, so I may have a different perspective on the history and development of sportfishing boats. Many folks, all Floridians I suspect, insist that although that California boat may have started things rolling, it was not long before the epicenter of the sportfish world…

Islamorada, Fla., is my favorite place in the whole world. It’s where I hunt 100-pound tarpon with light tackle — an 11-weight G. Loomis fly rod and Tibor reel. Fighting a tarpon is epic. The first time I saw a monster tarpon ripping offline, jumping like crazy, it changed my life. That’s what it’s all about: a fish hitting the fly, then exploding out of the water. It’s the coolest thing you’ll ever see. I fish 75 days a year in Islamorada. I do it with guides — both backcountry and ocean — on a 17-foot Maverick HPX Kevlar flats boat with 115-hp Yamaha 2-stroke. When we fish the muddy backwaters, we do it with big flies — sometimes 6 inches long with a 2.0 or 4.0 hook. In crystal-clear…

The sun was almost down when Jack called out. “I’m on,” he said, and I watched him lean back as the fish turned and made its first run. Jack is 13, an age when he seems to grow about an inch each month, and now he was showing a newfound proficiency with the heavy spinning tackle we use to cast large live eels over shallow New England rock piles. Judging from the bend in his rod and the whirring of the reel, he had just put a hook into a striped bass of at least 20 pounds. Our open-deck 26-foot boat was drifting northeast, pushed along cross-tide by the southwest breeze, and there was nothing more than a few distant lobster pots down-drift to worry over, assuming he could keep…

His is an authentic voice from another era, from a time when Cuttyhunk, Mass., was an epicenter of striped bass fishing. In its heyday, two dozen charter boats worked out of the fish dock on this westernmost high spot in the Elizabeth Island chain, which separates Buzzards Bay and Vineyard Sound. Now, its down to a mere handful. The fishing here is still good, but times and fashions change, even if Capt. Jim Nunes, who turned 80 this fall, doesn’t budge. The dean of the Cuttyhunk captains still fishes the old way. He trolls artificial lures on wire line in the big tidal rips around the islands from the black-hulled Rudy J, the last of the traditional wooden bass boats working these swift, storied waters. He may be stubborn, but…

The sky was gray, the water was black, the glaciers were blue, and the mountains in the distance were white. It was a typical midsummer day in southeast Alaska, and it provided a perfect medium for my first encounter with the mighty king salmon. I was near the end of an unforgettable week with friends on a chartered motoryacht out of Juneau, eating well, drinking well and sampling the prodigious variety of fishing in the region. Our first two days out, we had a guide flown in to show us the pleasures of competing with the brown bears for pink salmon and cutthroat trout in the coastal streams of the archipelago. We then spent a day with a local guide, grinding monster halibut off the bottom of the straits that…

FISHING IS A FUNNY THING. Its funny — no, odd, really — because fishing has such a wide range of effects or lack thereof, depending on who you are and perhaps your genetic makeup. And on the other hand, it completely ignores genetics. Let me explain. First off, millions — perhaps billions — of people around the globe don’t give a rattail (Macrourus berglax) about fishing for sport. They might never have participated, perhaps had a bad experience once, or think its just plain icky. Or maybe they feel sorry for the fish. That’s OK. Then there are the millions who can take it or leave it. They may or may not own a rod and reel, and might go fishing once a year or so. Some will charter a…

The boats reserved for Capt. Mitchell and me were quite different from any we had ever used. They were close to 40 feet in length, and 11 or 12 feet in beam. The cockpits were deep, so deep that we had to build platforms upon which to mount the fishing chairs we had brought from Avalon. It looked to us then that we would have our troubles fighting fish from these wide cockpits. on the other hand, the boats promised to be very seaworthy and comfortable. The Marlin was the widest boat, with rather high deck, and I decided it would be best for the motion-picture man and his equipment. The launch I was to use had the name Alma G. … The swordfish struck again, again, and I the…

They call me “Crazy Alberto,” not because I’m crazy in the head but because I have a passion for fishing. Why else would I perch on a boulder the size of a VW — at night — in November, with the surf washing around my waders and a cold northeast wind whipping spray in my face? I’ve been known to hike out to the south side of the Montauk Lighthouse — the deep-deep south side — to hunt the elusive cow striper as it makes its way south past the easternmost point of Long Island toward Chesapeake Bay. Montauk is a surf-fishing Mecca, and November is the time to make the pilgrimage there to catch the monster striper, the 40-, 50-, 60-pounder. The wild September and October blitzes are over,…

After a lifetime of wresting a living from coastal waters, Capt. Bruce Borges possesses the skills of successful watermen the world over. He has eyes in the back of his head; he reads the water with the ease of a prodigy devouring a musical score; and he anticipates things before they happen. Those are the traits that keep Borges out of trouble, whether he’s hauling lobster gear or guiding light-tackle fishermen through the rock-strewn waters off Cuttyhunk, Mass., and neighboring islands. Trim and weathered, Borges, who is 76, came to Cuttyhunk as a high school kid in the 1950s to work summers for the iconic charter skipper Coot Hall He pumped gas, cleaned boats, learned to rig eels. He later wound up marrying an island girl and “really never left,”…

I lay on the surface moving quietly through the clear shallows in 3 to 5 feet of water. Something caught my eye, and I swung my head to the left and heard my breath in the snorkel. It was nothing, a cloud shadow moving on the bottom. Still, I knew that somewhere along the barrier beach striped bass were feeding on mole crabs in water as shallow as knee-deep. As I straightened my head, a lovely sand-colored fish sailed across my line of sight, headed seaward. I pivoted and watched it disappear in the greenish sunlit waters and thought of Stanley Meltzoff, the great fish painter who many years ago taught me to see beneath the surface A pioneering artist in portraying fish underwater, Meltzoff and I shared an affection…

There are two places in the world that offer reasonably reliable black marlin bites. One is the Great Barrier Reef, and the other is the west coast of Panama. Unless you’re in the mood for an epic flight for an epic fight, Panama City, which is a short hop from Miami and the base for a connector to the fishing grounds, is a great way to get it done. Black marlin are raucous fighters and acrobatic leapers, and they are estimated to swim as fast as 60 mph. They are purported to reach as much as 1,650 pounds, although most in Panama likely will be in the 400- to 800-pound range. Blacks can be hooked year-round off Panama, but the biggest fish generally are in the area from early December…

They’re doing amazing things with synthetics these days. Plastics and nylons, polymers and more, they can come pretty close to emulating the feel and texture of what occurs in nature. But when it comes to enticing game fish to bite, there’s something to be said for the real thing, provided you know what you’re doing in the rigging department. Here are five ways to use natural baits in your quest to put up personal-best numbers on your next excursion. Try them and see what happens. Bustin’ Bunker There’s nothing more exciting than a big striper attacking a live bunker on the surface. With more than 35 years of fishing for them under my belt, I always look forward to late spring, when the bass and bunker schools collide. Menhaden, also…

Sportfishing has made amazing strides in techniques and technologies that have let anglers catch ever more and larger fish. But nothing has advanced the sport faster than design developments in the boats we fish from. The early masters of the sport, Zane Grey and Ernest Hemingway among them (see “In the Beginning,” on Page 70), fished with tackle and from boats considered rough and limited by today’s standards. The modern sportfishing convertible, by contrast, is far down the evolutionary trail in terms of functionality and innovation. The convertible is a true hybrid design, and its ability to please hardcore tournament anglers has not gone unnoticed by cruising yachtsmen who enjoy its speed, style and seaworthiness. But the convertible’s bluewater forte is fishing, and the more you fish, the more the…

Please know that first and foremost I am a lifelong angler who loves nothing more than spending a day on the water in pursuit of big fish. It’s my passion and my profession, and I live it practically every day of the year. I am also a dedicated conservationist. I believe we must fish responsibly and ensure the health of fish stocks throughout the world. I grew up in southwest Jamaica, where my parents farmed beef cattle. They also had a small beach cottage at Belmont, and both loved fishing. My dad had a 26-foot canoe with an outboard and bamboo outriggers, and a local fisherman used to guide him. When I was home on school holidays I went fishing with my parents. Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the…