The Road to Water 8 is Live

The Road to Water Eight Is Live

                     Fishermen… are… fascinating. That’s all I kept thinking as so many of you helped me put this issue together. I could not believe, for example, that Ryan Lorensen of Locked with Lorensen charters guides all year in Upstate New York, for salmon, steelhead, all manner of fish through the ice, sometimes guiding two full trips a day, all while working a full-time job at a hospital. When I spoke with Lorensen to interview him, he was on vacation in Florida, fishing with his family and had just lost a goliath grouper that day. The next day he sent me a photo from having gone back and landed the behemoth fish.

                     If you ever wanted to know how to stay prepared, and awake when balancing a hectic life, there couldn’t be somebody better to ask than a man working a full-time job while guiding two trips a day in peak season.

                     Or how about looking at perhaps the most famous trout river on the East Coast, the Delaware, through the lens of two incredible guides, Joe Demalderis and Mike D’Accurzio Jr. This river sees more pressure every season then most rivers ever will and how it affects the fish is remarkable.

                     What’s it like to be so obsessed with muskie that you get a full-sleeve tattoo and travel from New York to Wisconsin to target them? We asked Jillian Beattie, a veterinarian who has traveled around the country chasing big muskie on the fly. She’s also got species like roosterfish to her credit after fly fishing in Baja.

                     If you like fishing writers, this is an issue you’ll enjoy. We mourn with the fishing world as we pay tribute to John Gierach. And we talk to two incredible writers producing compelling reads right now. Both Peter Cammann and Mark Usyk were kind enough to take some time and talk with us about what inspires their writing.
We examine the insanity of New York’s Salmon River from up close, go into a remote cabin in the Adirondacks and prove that a boat the size of a bathtub can be an effective means for getting on the fish.

We’re proud of the color, beauty, and laughter in this issue, and we’re grateful to have gotten to know the amazing anglers whose shared stories make it such a lively one. Thanks for joining our journey.