Every year, a small number of striped bass winter over in the bays, marshes, and salt ponds of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. We call them “holdovers.” They’re not big, they can be tough to find, and by the middle of the winter, they look a little haggard. Their flanks, once polished a gleaming silver by a…
FROM THE SICKLE’S CURVE of Great Abaco Island’s eastern shore, the next piece of solid ground for 3,500 miles is the African continent. Between those shores lies ample room for inspiration. This is perhaps why noted American sporting artist Vaughn Cochran called a summit. “Years ago, when I managed fishing lodges, I had this idea…
GLASS AND RUSTED METAL on the beach. The deafening sound of planes landing. And a steady striped-bass bite. The mussel beds and grungy shores of Boston Harbor may not be pristine, but they reliably produce fish—stripers, bluefish, carp, even the rare bluefin. When I tell people I fish here, they scoff, laugh, or plain don’t…
Bamboo fly rods are a little like herpes. Both are achieved out of lust which, in the light of day, provokes a certain retrospective guilt. Both, once acquired, invoke the sort of awe that elicits careful handling, and—be it split-cane rod or irritated genitalia—the newfound host might find himself wondering “Damn… should I even touch…
Cape Cod is a gnarly pine tree sandbar that sticks sixty miles out from Massachusetts into the north Atlantic. A fishing mecca from time immemorial—Vikings crossed the Atlantic in open boats called knarrs to fish the teeming offshore banks, and the native Wampanoag perfected clambakes there—up to today with one of the best bluefish and…
I’m sitting now, on one of the first mornings of the New Year, in a messy, stinky pile of marabou feathers and raccoon skins that nearly canvas the frigid wood floor of my tying room. It’s only ten a.m., and I’ve sneezed at least a couple dozen times by now, and my fleecy home office…