From the very first issue, we wanted The Road to Water Magazine to be a different reading experience for anglers than what they’d become used to.
We were not here to share the latest and greatest tactics and techniques about where and how to catch your next largest fish. There are websites, apps and podcasts galore that will make those promises.
We were not here to showcase the most recent innovations in gear or tackle. As the media we consume becomes increasingly personalized, no doubt every social media feed you glance at has you inundated with cutting-edge, ultra-light, state-of-the-art, never-before-seen, tackle.
Our simple aim was to share stories about people and places that fascinated us. We knew the best part of any fishing story was always either the people or the place. The characters who attempted incredible feats and the places that were so beautiful, unforgettable or awe-inspiring that their existence could not be kept a secret. There are people and places that are meant for stories.
Take, for example, John Anderson. Anderson is a muskie guide on some of Canada’s wildest and most muskie-rich water, and the man has landed more than 300 fish that were at least 50 inches. With that many muskie put in a boat, you’ve got stories of dogs being attacked, terminally ill patients catching a muskie that lived in a spot that Anderson knew so well that he returned with his sick friend to catch a fish that he knew resided there for… a third time. Anderson has fished with the guitarist from Iron Maiden, a blind angler and once had an angler break his arm while battling a muskie only to land it and keep fishing, landing another fish with his arm in a sling.
Or how about Steve Ramirez, a fantastic fishing writer who we spoke with about his Casting series of books. Ramirez has fished all over the country, traveling and writing, and shares some profound insight about how we need to treat the earth if we expect to leave it for generations to come after us. A columnist for Fly Fisherman Magazine, Ramirez’s words are as meaningful and well-chosen as anyone working as an outdoor writer today.
Monte Burke is another phenomenal writer whose books have resonated with thousands of readers as he’s explored topics from world-record largemouth bass to the obsessive quest for giant tarpon in Florida. Burke was kind enough to share some of the inspiration and insight that has gone into his writing.
But for straight wow-power, it’s tough to top Jeremiah Catlin. This army chaplain sustained a life-threatening injury in the Middle East, had a potentially deadly surgery stateside that wound up saving his life, and has devoted his time thereafter to getting veterans on the water and in the woods through his ministry at Chappy’s Outdoors.
If you’re on a quest to catch giant, beautiful brook trout, you’d be hard-pressed to find more wisdom than Scott Daskiewich offers us in our interview. The Adirondack angler has landed more big brook trout than anyone I’ve ever met or talked to.
Blair Erickson is a top-notch college bass fisherman at the University of Alabama, Montevallo, and shares what it’s like to be working on a four-year degree while bouncing around the Southeast competing in college bass tournaments.
There are more stories in this issue, and we think you’ll love them. That’s exactly why we created the Road to Water. It is our sincere belief that that “you-won’t-believe-this…” expression, story, or incredulous attempt at description is the beating heart of our love for the sport. It’s the stories that we trade, search for and hold onto, over a tackle counter, a campfire, a cell phone and especially through words and images, that make this sport one that we all share with one another. It’s the stories that connect us, inspire us and that have the power to live forever.
The Road to Water Five will be live this winter, but here’s a peek at one of our favorite features from the issue thus far.
Scott Boese’s lure company, Soturi Tackle, held a coloring contest for local children with disabilities from a North Dakota gas station where their lures were sold. The child who could come up with the most creative lure design would have his pattern painted on a Saturi Tackle hardbait. That’s how a young man named Wyatt ended up getting an orange-and-black crankbait that he could rightfully say that he designed. And when Boese and his son Jon sold about 180 of the crankbaits, they took the profit that they made and donated it back to Prarie Grits, the organization that helps disabled children participate in adaptive sports.
That’s not a lure pattern you’re going to find on the shelf at Bass Pro Shops, not yet at least, but it’s a brand ideology we can get behind. Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a lure company that was the brainchild of a marine who spent time overseas in Afghanistan and his father would have an altruistic backbone. But what is surprising when you visit Sokuri Takcle’s website is how different these lures look at first glance.
The hue and shades of the hardbait selections is the first thing that will pop out at you on Soturitackle.com. The shades you’re seeing here aren’t ones you’ll soon see on the shelves at at your local tackle shop. There’s a creative, almost magical glow to the shades these guys have painted on lures and the names of the patterns, like ‘Uncle Fester,’ ‘Area 51,’ and ‘Fat Belly Barbie,’ are every bit as original.
“We’d hear the same complaints from a lot of our fellow fishermen,” Boese recalls. “’The other lures, they all look the same.’ We wanted ours to stand out in a school of baitfish. Our patterns are bold, they flash. Half of the patterns we came up with came from pro staffers and customers requesting a specific pattern.’ These guys are actually listening to fishermen on their home water and making lures that are working for pike, walleye and bass right in Minnesota.
Soturi Tackle swimming plugs come in a variety of bright color selections
“It’s good to have a different looking lure, when fish see something different, it just stands out,” Jon says. And when you consider that many tackle manufacturers are looking to exactly mimic the natural forage of the fish in the lake (i.e. perch pattern, etc.) the Soturi approach is certainly a bold one.
But the Boeses can play match-the-hatch, too. They created a deep-diving crankbait that had a white body and silver stripe that made it a dead ringer for a baitfish called a cisco that was prevalent in some Minnesota lakes. “At that point, we had guys driving from 40 or 50 miles away to get that bait, we got a cult following. They were hooked.”
Although Scott and Jon have been fishing together for as long as Jon could walk, conversations about starting their own bait company began with Jon got back from the service. “He was kind of struggling, so we went to Lake Vermillion in Minnesota and were fishing for between 8 and 10 hours a day for three straight days,” Scott said. “He would talk about his experiences over there, and I was amazed and horrified at the same time.”
“But his attitude changed when we started thinking bout things we could do.” Just as you’d expect from a young man who enlisted for the most dangerous job on the planet, once he put his mind to something constructive, there was no stopping them.
The lure-creation business wasn’t exactly new to the father-and-son team. When Jon was just a boy, Scott whittled down a two-by-four into a muskie bait, painting it and eventually fishing it. It got young Scott’s attention, and the seed was planted for a full-scale project twenty years later.
And Scott is quick to point out that Jon has long been a more dedicated and talented angler than his dad. “When he was in fifth grade, he was already a better fisherman than I was,” Boese says of his son. “In the spring you can see the bass sitting on the beds. Jon would start casting and them and I’d tell him: ‘You’re not going to catch that thing.’ But he’s very determined, that’s his nature, very determined.
In 2019 when Jon moved to Ely, Minnesota to work at a lodge called Smitty’s, not far from the Canadian border, he started taking clients on guided trips in his spare time on a lake called Snowbank Lake. The Lake is so clear, that is has a reputation for intimidating even the best fishermen, because fish are so easily spooked. In other words, your presentation has to be perfect on Snowbank.
“Jon took the time to understand water temperatures, and he established a reputation as the guide on Snowbank Lake,” Scott says. He’s guiding part-time now, and does some ice-fishing guiding as well.
In a that-can’t-be-a-coincidence twist, there’s a lodge called Veterans on the Lake Resort that caters strictly to military veterans and their family members and Jon Boese happened to bump into the owner at a gas station and of course, gave him a free jig. The next thing you knew it, Veterans on the Lake was carrying the Soturi Banshee jig in their tackle shop.
“That’s where things kind of started getting cool,” Scott says in the understatement of a lifetime. “There are tons of veterans up there, and because this tackle company was a therapeutic thing for Jon, it became one for the veterans too as he spent more time with them on the water. They started inviting him out for seminars, and he really established himself up there.”
One of their first creations was called the Banshee Jig, and Scott said that using it while fishing The Mississippi River for walleye in the spring proved that it was more than productive. In fact, their rods were bent so often that other boats would pull right up to ask them what they were using. Eventually, they began carrying and selling extra lures right on the water, and said it became almost like the ice cream truck was coming around when they went out on the water. Guys would hurriedly pull up alongside them, cash in hand, for more Banshee jigs. They took advantage of their newfound fame and had the boat wrapped in a Soturi Tackle design so that they were always ready to sell a sample on the water.
Soturi Tackle Ice Jigs are a popular produce in the Upper Midwest
As you might imagine, the Soturi Tackle Pro Staffers aren’t your average fishermen. “One is still active in the Air Force, and our first pro staffer, J.R. Cooper, was a tunnel rat in Vietnam.,” Boese said. Vietnam tunnel rats had one of the most challenging jobs in the war, clearing Vietcong tunnels, which were often booby trapped with grenades, mines, and even venomous spiders and snakes that the VC would leave for American troops. Oh, and agent orange was more concentrated in the tunnels. Cooper was inducted into the Minnesota Fishing Hall of Fame three years ago, so the fact that he’s backing Soturi jigs should tell you everything you need to know about them. Famous Midwestern fisherman Al Lindner was a Vietnam veteran as well, and when his show was a television staple, J.R. Cooper was the scout, finding them the hot lakes to fish.
Boese and his son were sponsoring a tournament in Brainerd, Minnesota, when Cooper walked up to a table at the dinner before the first day, picked up a green jig, and declared that he’d win the tournament with it.”
“I told him that if he won with that lure, I’d make him a pro staffer.”
We know how that story ended. Cooper and his wife Cindy have a lot of records under their belt, according to Boese, including an unofficial state record northern pike. Cooper has a long and storied history as a guide (as a head guide he once had five full-time guides underneath him and 38 on call), lure inventor (Impact Lure Company) and all around Midwestern fishing legend who can read more about here.
What could possibly be more intriguing than a head pro staffer who was a tunnel rat in Vietnam who has 30 guides at his beck and call? What if that pro staffer was the inspiration for a pair of fictional fishermen you have heard of named Max Goldman and Jon Gustafson. That’s right, the film Grumpy Old Men was reportedly based on the exploits of Cooper and his group of guides.
Funding for the start-up came from an altruistic source, too. The Veterans Administration in Minnesota has a program called Vocational Rehab, Boese says, that, if you give them a clearly outlined business plan, will award you with as much as 25,000 dollars to fund your plan. Scott and Jon put together a detailed, thoughtful plan for lure production and their idea was funded, although Jon is still working 40 hours a week managing partnerships for imaging and electronics company Ricoh.
Boese says that as of this writing, they were about maxed out in terms of production capacity. They were, in September, working on ice-fishing jigs, and said that they try to stay about three months ahead of the season in terms of lure creation.
They’ll, on occasion, take an outlier project, like a wooden muskie plug Boese had just finished and shipped to a pro staffer the morning I spoke with him.
Although they have investors pushing them to take the company to the next level, mass producing the baits and scaling up the entire production, Boese didn’t sound too keen on the idea when I spoke with him. He sounded like a guy who, creating a unique, effective and popular collection of lures with his business partner and son, was right where he wanted to be.
Midwest walleye are a favorite target for Boese and his family.
The passion for his craft is evident when hear him talk about it. “There are days when I can’t stand this any more but then you look at a table of stuff that you just produced and think you might like to see it get large enough to support our family and stand on its own,” he says.
“I’d like to see it recognized regionally, and maybe even across North America,” he says. “We’re getting Minnesota already.”
He knows they could be in most shops in the state if he had more time to devote to the project, but he says they’re having enough trouble keeping up with demand as it is.
And while his full-time job and lure production keeps him from getting on the water as much as he’d like, he says that he’ll still get in three or four trips in the summers. “But when a customer sends a picture of a fish we’ve caught… I know, everything we’ve done has been successful.”
At the moment he’s thinking of scaling back Soturi, perhaps choosing ten of their most popular baits and producing those on a regular basis. He likes that, as a small company, he can stay nimble, introducing and nixing patterns as the market for each changes.
On the Soturi Tackle website, there’s a YouTube Video featuring what sounds like an alt-rock anthem by an artist named Sam Tinnesz. The lyrics ring out again and again, “This is how legends are made.”
But the star of the video isn’t a heavily tattooed pro fisherman, a tournament angler with a sponsor-sticker covered bass boat sporting twin outboards or scantily clad, sun-kissed coeds in tropical locations. No, the video is entirely devoted to an angler who appears to be a little bit shorter than four feet tall. But here’s surprising thing about that video: The kid is holding up fish after fish that most of us grown adults spend our summers chasing. He’s got kype-sporting brown trout, big pike and perch that are pushing a pound.
“That’s our grandson, Easton,” Scott Boese says with a smile in his voice. “He always wants to paint his own lures.” Repeatedly producing, catching the fish we’re all out there after, with a proven product that’s unique and created with care, quality and character… is exactly how legends are made. And we wouldn’t be surprised if, keeping an eye on Soturi Tackle in the coming years, we didn’t see that process unfold, one bait at a time.
Every Week We’ll Bring you a Story from our Most Recent Issue
We’ve got some stories of incredible anglers in this most recent issue of The Road to Water, and we want to share them with as many of you as possible. We’d love to hear from you if you’ve got a story to tell, we think you’d love the whole issue, but in the interim we’ll bring you one story at a time to add some color and inspiration to your scrolling experience.
Agness shows off an arctic char from Ugashik, Alaska.
“It’s like planting a seed and watching it grow,” Lindsay Agness says of the friendships she’s made while working as an instructor and guide for the annual Casting for a Cure retreat in Western New York, a program that funds a weekend of fly fishing fun and instruction for women battling breast cancer.
“With fifteen women at each event, and having done this for eight years, that’s a lot of women,” Agness says of the anglers she’s been able to meet and share the sport with. “I am able to stay in touch with some and I’m just so in awe of them, I get back as much as I give.”
Her current project of guiding women who are battling cancer to, what often times is their first trout, is just a small slice of a life that has been spent on or around the water for Agness, and most of the time she’s bringing the beauty of the fishing life to others. Agness’ passion for and knowledge about the sport are palpable when she talks, which she did with us in July.
The fishing seed was planted in Agness’ psyche, in her soul, when she was a toddler keeping up with her grandfather in what are some of her earliest memories. Her grandmother would help dig worms for those first outings, and they’d all go fishing together. Afterward, her grandmother would prepare the catch for a fish dinner.
She never stopped following in her grandfather’s footsteps to the water. After fishing with friends growing up, and getting her Captain’s License and a boat, she decided to venture into the Adirondack Park and take the exam for her guide’s license in 2011. “I had been thinking about it, but… It was Vicky [fried and neighbor] that said: ‘Let’s go do it.’” That type of courage and optimism is what makes Agness’ story such an incredible one. If you talk with a handful of men who are talented and skilled fishermen, and ask them about the prospect of guiding, or becoming a guide, you’ll hear a variety of responses which will often include but not be limited to the typical challenges that come with the profession.
Guides have to have patience with novices, they have to be able calm and friendly while teaching what can be a challenging sport to their paying customer who, for the money, of course expects success in the span of six hours. They have to be willing to sacrifice gear that’ll get broken with a smile, sleep that they’ll lose while repairing waders and rods and lining new reels, wake up at ridiculous hours and compete in an industry where everyone thinks they’re the expert. Becoming a fishing guide, or guiding at all, is an alluring prospect to all young anglers until we hit about age 15 and start doing the math, realizing what the profession entails, demands and costs. And I’m only talking about conventional guides. When you approach the world of fly fishing you’ve got an entirely new skillset that you’re expecting clients to have some mastery of in order to even have a chance at success.
What it comes down to for most guides, and you’ll hear many say this if you ask them, is that you really have to love the water, you have to love helping people to those first fish, you have to love it so much that’ll you’ll give up just about everything else and be able to live a contented life. Many guides will describe an inability to fit into conventional careers, molding their souls to a cubicle or office space, but really its an intrinsic and undying appreciation for simply being immersed in the elements of a fishing lifestyle that enable guides to do what they do, despite the sacrifices and hardships that the career path includes, on a regular basis. You’ve got to love the water.
It seems like Agness fits that mold.
She said that the weekend event she attended, they at first teach you CPR, water safety and then, Thursday through Sunday you are learning everything about how to target and catch these fish. In terms of becoming a guide, or getting the certification anyway, New York State offers a variety of resources for anyone interested.
Keep in mind Agness is just now in the process of retiring from her position as the Director of the Enterprise Project Management office for Rochester Regional Health. She graduated from S.U.N.Y. Geneseo with a Bachelor’s in Science in Biology and a minor in Chemistry and Computer Science before earning her Master’s Degree in Management from Nazareth College. She was the Director of the Enterprise Program Management Office for nearly seven years after leaving Kodak, where she was an I.T. Director, Manager, Business Systems Analyst, Senior Buyer, Project Manager and Manufacturing Supervisor.
We’re guessing that the wariest trout or the toughest weather conditions still pale in comparison to the challenges we can only imagine must have come her way in those various roles.
But she was bringing the beauty of fly fishing to anglers even before she got involved with Casting for Recovery. In 2007, she started the Trout Unlimited Women’s Fly Fishing Classes at the Salmon River Hatchery.
“I’ve taught more than 300 women how to fly fish,” she says, mentioning something modestly and in passing that most of us could never accomplish in a lifetime. She was the Women’s Initiative Coordinator for Trout Unlimited when the program was just beginning. The program became so popular that it went from one event to three, held across the state.
Between 2013 and 2015 she served on the Trout Unlimited National Leadership Council as the New York Women’s Initiative Coordinator Representative. She basically took her approach to teaching women the sport and documented it so that it could be implemented nationwide. How many women have become passionate anglers in part thanks to Agness’s contributions to the sport, it’s hard to say, but we’re willing to guess they’d line the river for miles if they were ever all assembled in one place.
You might easily say that she’s following in the footsteps of the “First Lady of Fly Fishing,” Joan Wulff. Agness and Wulff served together as members on the Board of Trustees at the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum in Livingston Manor, New York. She is, in fact, a graduate of the Wulff School of Fly Fishing, and of course she took the advanced casting class.
You can tell that when she puts her mind to something, it’s only a matter of time before she finds a way.
She was initially doing an L.L. Bean Outdoors Day when a man named Steve Olson, who was working a Casting for Recovery table, asked her if she’d be interested in helping out. She was the first one to sign on for an Upstate program, and she knew, from her fly-fishing classes for women, who to call to recruit help. One of her first phone calls when to Rachel Finn, the head guide at the Hungry Trout fly shop in Wilmington, New York.
She put together a team to help these women on the water in a way very few people could have, and her ambition is clearly genuinely altruistic. “I wanted these women to feel safe, I didn’t want them overwhelmed by technology of the terminology,” she says. The vast network of anglers she’s helped is evidence of her success to that end.
Agness says the the reward for helping the women she has learn to fly fish is an intrinsic one and comes with the nature of the work, but we were glad to see that she’s been recognized for what certainly seems like an outpouring of enthusiastic help for just about everyone in the fishing community. In 2021 she was given the Conservationist of the Year award by the New York Chapter of the American Fisheries Society. The next year, in April, she was inducted into the New York State Outdoorsman Hall of Fame for what they called a “Lifetime devotion to giving back to the outdoor sports and conservation in New York.”
She’s also received the 2018 New York Person of the Year Award by Outdoor News, recognizing a “lifelong dedication for fish and wildlife conservation.”
In 2016 she received Trout Unlimited’s National Volunteer Award for Distinguished Services for Veteran Service, because women battling cancer aren’t the only group that Agness has brought to the water with a rod in hand.
If there’s another group of people out there who deserve a day on the water as much as women going through the trials and tribulations that come with a cancer diagnosis and treatment, it is certainly our veterans who are dealing with any number of difficulties that most of us civilians thankfully will never understand.
You might think that after what sounds like an overwhelming career and with the ambitious project of getting Casting for Recovery up and running in Western New York, Agness wouldn’t have enough time to sleep let alone take on another project.
Agness and her husband show off Alphonse Island Bonefish.
But when she was approached by Project Healing Waters to guide female veterans, you can probably guess what she said.
As it happened, her neighbor, Bob Hoover, was a veteran who had started an organization called Oasis Adaptive Sports, which helped veterans by getting them skiing and sailing. So her and her husband started the 501c3 to get waders, boots, and everything they’d need to get veterans on the water, and in a beautiful twist of fate, the program became interwoven with her Casting for Recovery project.
“The veterans have been tying flies at Fort Drum,” she says, “and they’ve donated the flies to our Casting for Recovery project.”
If there’s a proverbial picture that better illustrates what this sport is about for those of us who love it than a woman who is battling breast cancer holding a trout she has caught with a fly tied for her by a veteran working at a vice to steady himself from the trauma of PTSD, we’re not sure what it would be. The water has brought peace and hope to so many of us, and these are the people who deserve it most, and they’re helping one another.
“They’re healing from trauma and PTSD,” Agness says, “and women facing a cancer diagnosis and treatment, there is trauma that they go through, in some ways they are similar to the vets.”
With both her and her husband retired, the future for Agness looks like it will be spent increasingly on or around the water, and it’s tough to argue with her choices of excursions.
“We did a tarpon trip last month, and next month we’re going to Labrador,” she said. “We keep going back to Alaska,” Agness says. She and her husband return to a lodge called 58 North where guests can target, depending on the season, five different species of salmon, arctic char, grayling and trophy rainbow trout. The places that Agness has gotten to travel and fish give you a little bit of hope that there’s something like Karma in the fishing world. You know when you pick up a discarded Pepsi can and stick it in your waders’ pocket hoping it’ll translate to a better night on the water? We don’t think Agness spent her time helping women struggling with cancer and veterans with PTSD so that she might have phenomenally successful trips in her retirement, but we hope it works out that way all the same.
Having traveled to Alaska, the Seychelles, Belize and Mexico, you’d think Agness would have a hard time choosing a favorite fishing destination, but she was pretty straightforward when asked.
Brook trout have always been a favorite species for Agness.
“Potter County, Pennsylvania,” she says.
“There’s no cell phone reception,” there, she begins, and for a woman who is helping out more organizations that you can count on both hands, we can see how this, if only for a little while, might be a bit of a relief. “There’s a place called Kettle Creek near Cross Fork,” she says of the stream near the Susquehannock State Forest. “You’ll catch these little brookies on the mountains streams in the morning, and there are some amazing hatches, especially near the end of May.”
“They’re pretty ferocious for their size,” she adds of the colorful fish that is a Northeast favorite.
The middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania, surrounded by forest and water, holding a wild native brook trout caught on a dry fly sounds pretty heavenly to us, and we’re hoping Agness gets more of those days in her retirement.
When she does get back into cell phone range, she says she’ll routinely get texts and e-mails all the time from veterans who have become mentors and come to classes to support new vets learning how to fly fish.
With six grandkids, she’s taken the role of Vice President for youth education in her local trout unlimited, so she can ensure the sport survives and is passed to the next generation. She’s been a camp director on the Delaware River where T.U. hosts an annual event for teenagers, teaching them about the sport and how to target and catch trout on the fly.
She said at the camp there were teenagers tying flies until one in the morning some nights who could barely keep awake at breakfast. It was a good sign for future generations of fishermen, if ever there was one. She just accepted that position on June 3rd, moving from her role in charge of the Women and Initiative Diversity Coordinator. She’s also working with Costa Sunglasses and their Trout Unlimited Costa Five Rivers Club, which promotes the generation and growth of fishing clubs on college campuses around the country. “My goal would be to grow that program, find faculty members willing to help with mentoring, support and recruiting, and help them with speakers too.
It doesn’t sound like Agness will be slowing down a bit even as a demanding career winds down. “My poor husband,” she says. “We do it together,” she adds with a smile in her voice, he’ll drive me around, I drag him around, we’re just looking for our next adventure.
She said in our early-July conversation that Trout Unlimited had a national meeting in Maine in the coming week and that her husband was upstairs tying streamer flies for the trip. What makes Agness’ story so unique is that that advent has almost always involved helping others find and fall in love with the sport she’s become so proficient at.
Looking back on a trout that Cris Lewis caught, on a Quill Gordon she’d tied the same day, she remembers that in that same outing the women had been sitting together, sharing the heartbreaking parts of their journeys with one another. “When something’s funny, they laugh, they cry, the women are just amazing,” she says.
“She caught a fish on a fly that she tied, and it was very emotional,” she remembers.
You might think that helping women battling a potentially terminal illness and soldiers facing the rigors of PTSD would wear on a person, steal some of their light, but Agnes’s doesn’t seem diminished in the least as she talks about the road ahead, the one she started down, following her grandfather to the pond all those years ago.
“I thank my lucky stars every day,” she says.
Thanks for reading…If you enjoyed this story, check out more than 100 pages of features like this one in the latest issue of The Road to Water.
Seeing is Believing: How one Trout Can Drive you Insane
If you’re like me, you read a great deal about the fish you’re chasing in magazines, blogs, social media posts and even (gasp!) actual books. In the past few years I’ve developed an increasing interest in trout, where they live, how they behave, what they’ll eat, how they move seasonally and why they do what they do.
It’s mostly because I’m living in Upstate New York, and salmon and steelhead aside, trout captivate the imaginations of more fishermen here than just about any species. Now, since we’ve got great smallmouth water, giant pike and a very underrated muskie fishery in the St. Lawrence, you could make a compelling argument for a number of species that’d rank first in the minds and hearts of central New Yorkers… But, when most people think New York, great trout water comes to mind. We’ve got the Delaware, The Beaverkill, the AuSable, the Neversink, The West Canada and the list goes on.
I was fishing a stream called the Oriskany Creek yesterday, which has the added benefit of a decent smallmouth fishery, when I saw a fish I’ll be hard-pressed to forget.
Have you had this happen: You see a specific fish, and just knowing it’s there, in water you were wading through, gnaws at you? You think: “If I could forget that fish existed, I’d be perfectly contented with the smaller fish I was catching, hell I might even explore new water happily… but no. Now I know that specific fish is in that stretch, and it is the fish by which all other fish I catch there will be judged.”
This was a brown trout that was behaving in a way that was almost perfectly textbook. It was holding in a current seam and rising, periodically, to take flies off the surface. The hits weren’t subtle enough that you might miss them, but they weren’t audacious enough that you’d notice unless you saw one while studying the water. But once you saw one, you could watch the specific seam the trout was in and see it rising, perhaps every 20 seconds or so, to sip another bug.
That sight in of itself would have been kind of a cool way to witness nature in action: It’d just be a real-life realization of the scene we play out in our heads when rigging up a fly rod.
But it was the size of this trout, which veered out of the seam and close enough to me for a glimpse, that’ll just haunt the bejesus out of me to be perfectly honest with you. I will not be one of those guys who tells you he saw a _ _ – inch trout because honestly, who among us can guestimate the length of a trout that’s underwater at 20 yards?
I do not know how big this fish was, only that it was larger than the biggest trout I’ve ever landed, which would have it pushing 22 inches at the very least.
So this 20-plus inch trout sat in a current seam, rising periodically to take flies off the surface and it had absolutely no interest in the small lure I was throwing.
To witness such a large fish in a body of water that is never deeper than six feet or wider than 30, feeding on one specific bug, paying absolutely no mind to a lure that has fooled dozens of his smaller brethren, is to really get an appreciation for what incredible creatures larger wild brown trout are. This fish was keyed into a specific hatch, eating his fill in one seam, at the perfect time of night, and if he saw my Phoebe Wobbler, he dodged it without a second thought dozens of times as he sipped his flies.
February is a month to dream, and our latest issue has got inspiration in spades
Alaska Sportsman’s Lodge Owner Brian Kraft writes: “Drone shot from the lodge. “This is looking downriver on the Kvichak River in what is known as the Kaskanak Flats part of the river. The lodge is just off camera to the lower left corner of the picture.”
February, if you live in the northern half of the United States, will test your mental and emotional mettle. Sure, you’ve got a holiday for lovers, once in a while a woodchuck predicts an early spring, there’s some great college basketball and at least it’s shorter than other months, but still… February is a month you get through.
If there’s one month that’s timed perfectly for dreaming of new fishing destinations, new species, new adventures and angling escapes, it’s February.
That’s why, this month, we’re delivering you a Road to Water with the kind of stories that’ll have you ogling, Googling, dreaming and planning.
First off, we’ve got Alaska. And if you’re a fisherman who has never dreamt of visiting Alaska… well, we’ll end that for you right now. Brian Kraft, who owns the Alaska Sportsman’s Lodge, with outposts in Bristol Bay and King Salmon, talked to us at length about what makes the region, and the fishery, so incredible. After you visit the site and the social media pages and see 20-pound rainbow trout jumping five feet out of the water… yeah, you’ll be dreaming.
If you’d rather dream about a place you could take off for right now if you hit the lottery, then we’ve got the Bahamas for you. We’re talking stunningly beautiful beaches, bonefish you can wade to, barracuda that’ll take said bonefish right off the end of your line, permit and tarpon on an island paradise. Vince Tobia, who helps anglers arrange D.I.Y. bonefishing excursions to the Bahamas, told us why so many fishermen from all over the country keep coming back to this veritable paradise.
Outfitter Vince Tobia holds a Bahamas barracuda.
Looking to learn about something a little closer to home? We talked with a group who has initiated a project in New York state to preserve brook trout water and save this beautiful species from extinction. If you live in a state that has native brook trout, this piece is worth a read, and honestly, if you’re just fascinated by these gorgeous trout like I am, we think you’ll like the guys behind TroutPower.
We interview the anglers behind TroutPower, an organization looking to save wild New York Brook trout
Roy Bilby and Steve Smith, two Upstate New York anglers who’ve both caught smallmouth better than five pounds (and Bilby has tallied more than 30,000 bass to his name) tell you what it’ll take this summer to find your personal-best smallie.
Long-time outdoor writer John Pitaressi tells us what it takes to go from a conventional fisherman to a fly guy, and how he made the transition on some of New York’s most legendary trout waters.
Steelhead savant John Giovenco breaks down why chasing these powerful fish is worth it even in the dead of winter.
We’ll take you through what it requires to fish for trout when it’s bone-chillingly cold out, and what kind of madness would drive a person to such desperation, and then we’ll break down the fishing-destination trips you’ve got to read about, and start dreaming of taking.
Even the most devout anglers only get to spend a fraction of their time on the water. We’ve got to sleep, work, help one another, mow the lawn, file income taxes, take out the garbage, feed the dogs, pay the bills, etc.
So while most of us can’t fish incessantly, we can always dream. There’s nothing to stop you from picturing permit and bonefish, or steelhead and brook trout while dragging the garbage to the curb, doing a laundry or paying the bills.
And the funny thing about dreaming about your next fish, trip or adventure is that while it might seem completely meaningless until it’s realized, when it is realized, it makes the experience itself infinitely more valuable than it would have been otherwise. It’s the dreaming, waiting, anticipating a fishing trip that makes its realization as incredible as it inevitably is, right?
Most Everybody is Sick of 2021, and Understandably So…
2021 was about time, and how we spend it…
If anyone told you, one New Year’s Eve two years ago, that in the coming years you’d be wearing a mask every time you went out in public, you’d be getting multiple vaccinations that adversely affected your health in their own right, that you’d be laid off from work (if you worked in the public sphere whatsoever), collecting unemployment, going stir crazy cooped up, and seeing infection rates scroll by on the bottom of your television like school closings after a winter storm… You’d likely bet them a month’s wages that it was B.S.
But it all happened, and we’re here, two years later, a society changed, likely forever, in small and large ways.
There have been more than enough pundits rambling on about the disease’s origin, the effectiveness of masks, the merit of stimulus checks and whether or not this is the apocalypse, so I’ll not add fuel to that fire.
But for me 2020-21 posed a simple question: Without a job/jobs to frantically scramble to, without a schedule ruling every waking moment of your life, without 119 superficial obligations to be met between that first alarm clock and finally falling asleep… What would you do? What would you do if you had the time.
Because many of us, and I’m no exception, force ourselves to rush, scramble and run from one obligation to another, whether that’s a job or two, taking care of loved ones, keeping up on the news, or your favorite reality stars, or…. or… whatever you devote your time to…
I fell in love with brook trout and brown trout in a way I’d never have imagined possible, I wrote more than I ever have in a single year, and I talked to some incredible anglers and got their stories.
Yes, I got vaccinated, social distanced, got frustrated, went a little stir-crazy, got sick of Covid, and vaccines and masks, but I also got to ask myself… If, as Hemingway once wrote, “time is the least thing we have of…” what do I want to do with mine?
And the answer that I found, namely to fish more and tell stories about the incredible anglers we share the water with, was definitely a positive piece of 2021 that I’ll hang onto forever.
I hope you found some optimism in this past year, and I hope you carry that into the coming one.
Can our time on the water be defined by everything we do away from it?
In the early spring, distribution center days begin before the sun comes up.
In the last month, I’ve been extremely fortunate to start a job as stocker at a recently-built distribution center in Upstate New York. I say ‘extremely fortunate,’ because the people are kind, the pay is above average, and the original hours of the shift in question were from 5 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.
If you’re anything like me, when you see those hours, you’re thinking: “God, if I can drag myself out of bed at that hour on a regular basis, I’ll basically have an entire day to myself once my shift is over,” and perhaps more specifically: “That’s a lot more fishing time.”
Well, the purpose of this post is to first and foremost thank each and every one of you who has ever worked at a distribution center, making it possible for people who are blissfully ignorant of how shelves get stocked, like I was two months ago, to get our _____________ (toothpaste, paper towels, mosquito repellent, etc.).
I now know that it takes a small army of workers, working 50, and sometimes 60-hour weeks, so that I can waltz into the grocery store and get my paper plates.
While they’ve continued to staff the distribution center, those of us already working have been working 12-hour shifts for four days a week, with a little leeway on Fridays, when we’re more likely to get out ‘early’.
Distribution center work isn’t ‘hard,’ per se: As a repack stocker, you’re pulling pallets of products in a gate, lining them up to start the day, and then taking them, one at a time, and stocking the products in shelving, or slots that are labeled numerically to correspond with labels on the products (this makes it easier for ‘pickers’ — employees finding the products to send out to stores and customers — to easily locate a given item).
The challenging part — and of course this is subjective — is keeping on your feet, and moving, for the better part of twelve hours, hauling, lifting and stocking everything from Quickcrete (which they’ll send up on a 700-pound pallet) to birdseed. I don’t know if being 5’8″ and change and a buck-sixty is a blessing or a curse, because I do see some of the bigger guys working in what’s called ‘Full Case’ stocking, where you’re loading trailers from noon until… some nights, almost midnight, from what I’ve heard. If they thought that, when they sent me, as they do all perspective employees, to a certified trainer at a fitness center to see if I could hack it (or more likely, if I’d be a liability), I might not be the best specimen for loading trucks for 12 hours, then who am I to argue?
What I’ve learned for sure in the two months I’ve spent at the distribution center is this: Despite the continuing trend of automation in a lot of industries, there’s still an invisible army of American muscle making sure you can get your ____________ (paint, hammers, nails, toys, garbage bags and laundry detergent). They’re the kind of people who get up before dawn, work long hours, are grateful for the job and who are quick to help the new guy, even when he spills a gallon of paint that leaks through to the floor below.
And perhaps more importantly, it has become crystal clear that, after 70-plus-hours between two jobs, the beauty of the water that keeps us coming back, whether it’s the pattern on a wild brook trout, the subtle movements of a hunting heron, waves crashing on a beach in the striper surf, or just the moon rising over the trees and shining a little more light on a pool that you’re hoping has that 20-inch brown, are essential and perfect parts of our existence that I’m more grateful for daily.
Do you ever wonder why, when a stranger pulls out a phone to show you a fish they’d recently caught, you’re not terribly excited? Unless it’s a roosterfish, a recent world record, or a fish in a place we might soon visit, it’s cool, but not necessarily exciting.
It’s the circumstances behind a catch that make it memorable
Our fish photos, however, are exciting (to us anyway) and here’s my theory on why: Every fish is the culmination of a story. That brown trout, brook trout, striped bass or bluefish is the exclamation point at the end of a sentence that finishes a paragraph about how we found ourselves holding a rod, reeling a line, connected to a lure (or fly) that said fish inhaled. And it’s the story, more than the fish, that’s so endearing, so incredible.
I was standing in line at North Star Orchards two days ago, getting some fresh fruit, when I took off my hat, holding my polarized glasses on my head. The glasses hit the concrete and an an ear piece came off.
I’d had these glasses for more than a decade, they’d survived a trip around the country, I’d been soaked and frozen to retrieve them from various stream bottoms, I’d searched for them frantically right before a trip, and I’d managed to hold onto them through moves to and from Cape Cod, New Jersey, Florida, Salem, and New Hartford, New York.
It’s everything before the photo that makes a fish memorable
If you’ve got a favorite pair of lenses, a lucky hat (we’ll save that for another blog), hoody or trinket, then you know what I’m talking about.
Let’s forget the facts of the matter for the moment — namely that without polarized lenses, ideally of a light amber shade, it’s harder to make out stream bottom, spot moving fish, or see holes or drop-offs underneath the water’s surface, or keep from squinting all day. Let’s focus on feel. Because when you don’t have your lucky/usual __________ (glasses, hat, hoody) you just feel different. You can tell, on some level, that’s something’s missing.
So, naturally, I drove like a crazy person to the nearest Walgreens, bought an eyeglasses repair kit, ripped it open in my Jeep in the parking lot, said a prayer, and picked the first tiny screw to try to put my glasses back together.
Let’s pause for a second here, shall we? Who in the name of Sam Hell invented these glasses screws. I have felt grains of sand stuck in my eye that must be twice as big as these things. They’re smaller than socks a flea would wear. I can imagine the microscope they must need at the factory where these things are assembled.
This has got to be some kind of joke on all of us right? Let’s see how many people we can get swearing, muttering and cursing while holding a screwdriver a quarter the size of a toothpick? I digress. By some miracle the screwdriver screwed the atom-sized screw back into the sunglasses and they (knock on wood) have held together since.
But now I was running behind, and I’d lost an hour of fishing time. Am I the only one who does this? “If I leave at ____, I’ll get there by _____, and then, well… the sun technically sets at _____, but I can fish until _____, which still gives me _____ hours.” I feel like I have this conversation with myself seven times per week.
Now there was just the matter of gas money. I work in retail, which is fun, interesting, and you meet some great people. I also drive a Jeep Wrangler that gets, by my estimate, a third of a mile per gallon. Basically, my income is direct-deposited into my gas tank, which was empty.
But would an empty gas tank stop you from getting on the water on your last day off before an eight-day work stretch. Of course not, which is where cans and bottles come in.
I had about seven bags of returnable cans and bottles, which were the closest thing to cash I had in my possession. I threw them in the empty-tanked Jeep, raced to the can and bottle return, and … waited.
I was third in line behind two people who, from the looks of it, were returning the cans and bottles consumed by entire sports franchises for the past six months. I tried to do the math in my head to decide if returning them to a grocery store, which would involve a drive, and feeding can after can into the machine, would be faster. When in doubt, stay the course.
What felt like 17 hours later, I emptied the cans and bottles, all five bags, onto the tray in front of the guy who counts them. Whenever I think about any aspect of a job I’m not wild about, I think about this guy. He counts, for hours at a time, other people’s soda-covered cans and bottles.
And you know what? He’s a pretty upbeat, easy-going guy. I always think: If a guy sifting through a town’s empties can be pleasant, what am I going to complain about?
It turns out I had sixteen dollars in cans and bottles, which is enough to get to a stream an hour away and back.
For a number of reasons, Nine-mile creek near Syracuse has become my favorite trout stream. There’s a handful of blue herons that frequent the area, and seeing the enormous, majestic birds always makes me smile. In the upper reaches of the creek, closer to Otisco Lake, there are brook trout, and even some wild ones. And I’ve caught browns to 21 inches in certain stretches, and if nothing else, that’ll make a stream your favorite pretty quick, won’t it?
So, with can-and-bottle money in the gas tank, and glasses held together by a drug-store screw, I made it to Nine Mile.
Not one, but two browns better than 15 inches made the trip an incredible one. The blue herons and a stunning sky on a start-of-summer night would have made it amazing either way, but two beautiful trout made it perfect.
And in-between looking at the photos and trying to put gas from a spare tank that I’d had for the lawnmower into the Jeep so I’d make it to work and back the next day, I couldn’t help but think: It’s the story more than the fish, isn’t it? We might need the fish, but we definitely need the story.
If there’s one topic anglers are always ready to discuss, it’s the trips we’d love to take.
One of the most endearing elements of the fishing life is that the future is every bit as, if not more, exciting than the past. Sure, we love to hear and share stories about our favorite species, trips or days on the water, but being a fisherman almost demands optimism on several levels, so naturally, we’re more excited about trips we might take than trips we already have.
But let’s open it up a little bit, shall we? If you could take a week and chase any species, anywhere… where would you go? These are a few that have been kicking around my head for a few years now, but don’t hesitate to tell me what I’m leaving out, or why I’m wrong…
Alaska: Alaska has three million lakes, twelve thousand rivers, and 627 different species of fish. We’ll let that sink in for a minute. How could a state with more than a million lakes and a thousand different species of fish not be a dream destination?
We realize that fishing, as a sport, has several endearing elements, we each love it for our own reasons, but I can’t help but like cool-looking fish. I just never lost that fascination with a fish’s patterns, markings or coloration. That’s part of the reason I’d love to chase species like the arctic grayling, pictured above, in Alaska.
My father was stationed in Alaska in the army, and some of those stories undoubtedly piqued my interest.
But I think it’s more than any individual interest I might have in the state, because I’ve talked with too many anglers who’ve either gone there, or hope to some day. I think it’s a uniquely American mindset that we want to go as far as we can go… to the end or the edge, just to see what’s there. The fact that Alaska is the end of the road on our continent is what makes it, to me, such a dream destination.
Bluefin Tuna on Light Tackle: Whether it’s the fact that a bluefin tuna just looks so sleek, shiny and cool, or the notion that they can grow larger than the car in your driveway, the species has always been one I’ve hoped to chase. I was watching a clip of the On The Water guys casting at schools of tuna this week, and it just looked so… much… fun.
Roosterfish: If you’ve never watched the ‘Running Down the Man,’ video… take a minute. You can’t tell if these guys are nuts, kidding or onto the most fascinating, maddening type of surf fishing you’ve ever seen. But once you start thinking about casting at giant combs cutting through the surf on a Mexican stretch of sand… good luck stopping.
Patagonia Brown Trout: In the past year, I’ve come to love trout fishing. I caught a beautiful fish yesterday that was pushing eight… inches. So, when I imagine a sea-run brown trout that can weigh more than thirty pounds… yep… that sounds like just about one of the coolest damn things on earth. You’re talking about the trout I’m chasing, except they’re running out to the ocean, and they weigh ten times as much? Yes please. Angler’s Journal has an intriguing piece on the fishery, just in cast you’re not already sold.
Canadian Brook Trout: Can you imagine a 34-inch, 14-pound brook trout? That was the size of the brookie caught in Nipigion region of Ontario, Canada. I get excited if I land a 10-inch brook trout, and we’re talking about a place with 10-pound fish? Lake Nipigion alone covers 1,872 square miles, making it the largest in Ontario county and one of the biggest in the world. In 1887, Field & Stream called the Nipigion “The finest trout stream in the world.” That’s more than good enough for us.
What rivers, coastlines, lakes and regions did we leave out?
We just published Issue 2 of the Road to Water, an online magazine about all the elements of the sport that make it one you spend a lifetime in love with.
The magazine, which we launched last Fall, is one that I hope is about more than just the fish. As first-time contributor Matthew Gutchess puts it in his feature, the answer to the question, “What are we looking for on the water…” “more often than not, had nothing to do with a species or time of year.”
Gutchess goes on to explain that there are any number of elements pulling us back to the stream, beach, river, pond or lake and that the fish often form a relatively small part of the equation.
Even Roy Bilby, a man who has caught and released more than 30,000 bass, who we profiled in this issue’s first feature, is quick to admit that numbers “are certainly not the most important way” to gauge your growth as an angler.
Roy Bilby holds one of more than 30,000 bass he’s caught and released.
Chris Senyohl, Joe Higgins and John Kobald are all incredible artists who depict the fish we love in various forms (ranging from ink to sculpture) and we brought you their work in a feature about the angler as an artist. Certainly when looking at Higgins’ beautiful gyotaku prints, or Kobald’s stunning sculpture, we are reminded that we are in pursuit of much more than fish when we take to the water.
Striper fishermen are their own breed entirely, and sometimes, talking to one, you’ll feel like you need a translator or a dictionary. That’s why we included “A Striper Dictionary,” in this issue, too, to give those interested in joining the striper cult a crash course in the lingo, and for those already well versed, perhaps a laugh.
John Giovenco talks about the allure of steelhead in this issue.
In the past two years (in part thanks to the pandemic) I’ve fallen more in love with trout than I’d ever been before, which had us dreaming about the best trout trips in the country. We put together a list for you to consider, and that’s in this issue too.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a fisherman without a storm story. Storms are an integral part of our existence as anglers, and we pay them homage with a list of a few of our favorites.
Sharks and storms, we’ve got both of them in the spring issue.
We’ve got some of the most unforgettable seafood restaurants, for you foodies, and an interview with one of Upstate New York’s steelhead-obsessed anglers about what makes the species so endearing.
We’ve got pieces on catching your next giant redfish, from a man who has landed and released more gargantuan reds than most of us ever will, and a list of niche fisheries (like peacock bass, sea-run cutthroat trout and Boston carp) that… if you haven’t investigated, you might want to.
A guide who targets enormous redfish talks about what it takes.
There’s more in this issue, including a profile of a fly tying guru named Pat Cohen who makes some bugs you won’t believe, a list of the best fishing movies (and what makes them great), and an angler named Mark Kiburz who will design you a custom crankbait… no really.
Pat Cohen is an artist at the Vice, and he shows us some crazy creations in the spring issue.
One of our goals with the Road to Water was to pack every issue to the gills with stories, color and life, because the fishing life is a beautiful one that’s immeasurably improved when we share our stories and experiences with one another.
We’re beyond grateful for everyone who has helped bring this second issue to life, and we hope you love it.
One angler's attempt to strike back against skin cancer.
Take, for example, John Anderson. Anderson is a muskie guide on some of Canada’s wildest and most muskie-rich water, and the man has landed more than 300 fish that were at least 50 inches. With that many muskie put in a boat, you’ve got stories of dogs being attacked, terminally ill patients catching a muskie that lived in a spot that Anderson knew so well that he returned with his sick friend to catch a fish that he knew resided there for… a third time. Anderson has fished with the guitarist from Iron Maiden, a blind angler and once had an angler break his arm while battling a muskie only to land it and keep fishing, landing another fish with his arm in a sling.
It’s the circumstances behind a catch that make it memorable
Catch A Cure 