Life on the Edge

Globetrotting fly fisherman and photographer Pat Ford has never lost his thirst for adventure

By William Sisson

February 17, 2025

The scene could have been ripped from a Hemingway story.

On a seamount more than 100 miles off Costa Rica, a white-haired salt stood in the cockpit fighting a blue marlin on a fly rod. The battle was as mano-a-mano as it gets in this theater. A 300-pound marlin, 20-pound tippet and a 75-year-old Don Quixote with a 14-weight rod.

What could go wrong?

One hour became two, and the powerful fish still hadn’t jumped. Instead, it rested far below with its pectoral fins extended horizontally. It’s message: Make me move, old man. After two hours, the experienced angler was wearying; he’d put as much pressure on the fish as he’d ever put on anything — and still it wouldn’t rise.

The fish had ripped off a quarter-mile of line and backing on its first run. Given the resistance of that much line in the water and the gossamer-like, 20-pound tippet, the drag was set at less than 2 pounds. The veteran angler carefully palmed the reel to increase drag to 4 pounds and pumped. Nada. He reduced the drag to almost nothing. Still the fish wouldn’t budge. Most of the line he got back was the result of Capt. Chris Sheeder’s skillful boat handling, which changed the angle of pressure exerted on the great fish. Sheeder, who had caught more than 35,000 billfish, put his old friend in the best position to win the battle. (Sheeder passed away in 2021.)

Sometime during the second hour, the marlin came to within 30 feet of the surface — then headed back down. In the third hour, the constant pressure from the stoic angler finally paid dividends; the tired man worked the fish closer and closer to the surface through a series of short pumps designed to keep the marlin’s head up, a technique he’d learned fighting tuna on the fly. The mate finally grabbed the leader, and the catch was official. The blue marlin, estimated to weigh more than 300 pounds, was released.

Happy and exhausted, the fisherman, Pat Ford, slumped. “He was pretty broken, but he’s a tough cat,” says Rufus Wakeman, a friend and skilled angler who had fought and released a 200-plus-pound marlin on fly the previous day. “He’s a tough little bugger.”

Indomitable

Ford has never been someone to count out. “I’ve caught a lot of good fish in my life … but nothing will top that blue marlin,” Ford says. “I was amazed by the speed and violence of the marlin.”

In Ford’s estimation, wrestling a blue marlin on a fly rod is the Super Bowl of fly-fishing. “There is nothing harder than catching a blue marlin on a fly rod with a 20-pound tippet,” says Ford, whose photos and stories are likely familiar to anyone who reads this magazine. It was the kind of struggle that Hemingway would have understood, approved and likely participated in.

Ford remains a spry and youthful 81-year-old. He can a cast a fly into 40 knots of wind all day, shoot photos for hours and move with the energy of a much younger man. He did just that in Argentina last October. “Just watch Pat,” exclaims his friend Rodger Glaspey, co-owner of the Rainbow King Lodge on Lake Iliamna in Alaska. “He has not slowed down. He keeps acting like a 65-year-old. You can’t keep him down. He bounces right back up.”

Ford wears a closely trimmed, white beard and mustache, and brushes his silver hair back. Dressed in a fishing shirt and shorts, he looks every bit the North American representative for the International Game Fish Association that he is. Ford can speak with polish and poise when necessary, and he can talk the rough language of anglers and guides gathered in remote lodges around the world.

A former Miami trial lawyer, Ford is a quick-thinking Alpha in the trim frame of a middleweight. He carries himself into any room or fishing camp with gravitas and confidence. Wherever he is, Ford embodies the stature of a host, not a guest, Glaspey says. He is also blessed with what is known as old-man strength, as evidenced by a trip last year to the Galapagos.

“I took two striped marlin, back to back, each over 200 pounds, on the fly in the Galapagos at 80 years old,” says Ford, who mentions the catch not as a humblebrag but rather as an achievement he is especially proud of. “I don’t know anyone else who’s done that.”

Ford stays in shape by walking and occasionally visiting the gym, but he tires easily of workout routines. He’s easily bored, which is one reason he’s constantly on the move. “I’ve fished with Pat from the Seychelles to Africa, from Bolivia to Brazil to the Dominican Republic. Bermuda, the Bahamas, Key West and the Galapagos,” says Wakeman, a skilled 62-year-old fly angler and world-record holder who runs a fish camp and cottages on the Indian River in Florida. “He’s great to travel with. He’s entertaining and confident. And he’s strong. He carries his own stuff.”

Ford has held more than two dozen IGFA world records, some of which still stand. Forty years ago this March, he landed a 67-pound, 4-ounce cobia on 8-pound tippet with longtime friend and Key West guide Capt. Robert “R.T.” Trosset, with whom he’s fished hundreds of days. “That record will never be broken because there aren’t many 70-pound cobia around,” Ford says. “And if someone spots one, they’re not going to toss a fly at it. And they’re certainly not going to use 8-pound tippet.”

Ford and Trosset met in Key West in the 1970s, when the fishing was off the charts. “We’ve had some great times together,” says Trosset, who at 72 is the respected elder statesmen of Key West guides. “A lot of the stuff I learned was through Pat. He was always trying something different.”

Trosset follows Ford’s various fishing and photography adventures from afar, as do many of his friends. “Look at what he does now,” Trosset says. “He has the same tenacity as he did when we first started fishing.”

One would think Ford would be slowing down, but he shrugs off such talk. “I’m 81 years old, and I don’t feel any different than when I was 60,” he says.

Early Key West

Ford’s road to Key West was as serendipitous as it was unlikely. The son and grandson of lawyers, Ford grew up in northern New Jersey and graduated from Notre Dame in 1965 with a degree in journalism. He then attended Columbia Law school. The Vietnam War was raging at the time, and social upheaval tore the country from coast to coast. During Ford’s last year at Columbia in 1968, war protests closed the campus for the last six weeks of classes. Ford, who’s fished since boyhood, spent most of that time fishing streams an hour north of New York City.

Ford says his biggest break occurred when he joined the Navy and got accepted into the JAG (Judge Advocate General) Corps. He was sent to Pensacola, Florida, where the fishing was very good. “A lot better than Vietnam,” he reflects.

At the time, Ford recalls, “Key West was like the end of the earth.” No one wanted to be posted there unless, perhaps, they fished. He let it be known to his superiors that he was open to an assignment there. After a year-and-half in Pensacola, Ford got his wish. He was made the legal affairs officer for the Naval Air Station and a military judge. Two of this four children were born in Key West.

He arrived at the southern outpost in January 1971, before the advent of Loran-C and early enough to capture the best of the reef and wreck fishing. He purchased a 17-foot skiff powered by an 85-hp Evinrude for $2,500. Ford was one of the handful of anglers and guides who navigated to wrecks by dead reckoning — running a prescribed compass heading at a specific rpm for an allotted time. The sharpies relied on calibrated Danforth Constellation compasses and stopwatches. “If you found one wreck, it was like dying and going to heaven,” he says. “It was unbelievable. Just magic. There was never anyone on those wrecks. And the fishing down there was unbelievable.”

Once you got close to a wreck, you slowed the boat and searched for it on sonar. “There would be 50 cobia following in your prop wash while you were looking for the wreck. We used to think that jigging 50-pound amberjack on 12-pound mono in 250-feet of water was fun,” he says.

It was a great laboratory for the likes of Ford and Trosset, who drove innovations in tackle and techniques, and benefited from the advances in boats, motors, sonar and more that followed. With the advent of Loran-C, both men became adept at getting “hang numbers” from shrimpers. The Loran numbers marked wrecks and other high spots that the commercial guys wanted to avoid since they’d foul their nets. They were solid gold for rod-and-reelers. “He’s one of the old-timey guys who was there in the ’70s, when all this stuff was happening,” Wakeman says.

Ford has long been a figure in South Florida light-tackle circles. He chaired the Golden Fly Tarpon Tournament for 13 years and is a founding member of the Tarpon & Bonefish Trust.

Photography

In life, as in fishing, Ford has managed to evolve with changing times. As Wakeman presciently observes: “Pat’s probably happiest with a fly rod or a camera in his hands. These days it just might be a camera.”

“I’ve caught all the fish I need to catch,” Ford told me last fall as we sat in the kitchen of his Miami home, waiting for Hurricane Milton to pass before flying to Jurassic Lake in Argentina to fish for big rainbows. “I’m really phasing out of the fishing and into photography.”

Part of the shift has to do with the declines in his Florida home waters. “The fishing is not as good as it was 10, 20 or 30 years ago,” Ford says. “I really saw the best of it.” The long perspective is both a blessing and a curse for those like Ford, who have experienced the very best a place has to offer and are now witness to its decline.

Ford’s solution is travel to places where the fishing is still unparalleled, be it Argentina, Alaska or Timbuktu. “It’s all got to do with action,” he says. “I don’t have to catch another tarpon, but I want to capture the best action photo of a tarpon.”

Ford started his own law practice in January 1975, which specialized in suing nursing homes over elder abuse. He says it’s still the leading firm in Florida in that field. He stopped practicing full time in 2009, when he turned 65. Burned out, he sold the firm to two of his partners, who have kept his name on the practice. Was he good?

“Oh yeah,” he says.

Florida fishing legend Stu Apte has been friends with Ford for years. Once, when Apte was having a problem with his mother and a nursing home, he let it be known that Ford was his lawyer and a close friend. The problem disappeared. “You mention Pat’s name, and they shrivel up,” says Apte, who turns 95 in May and figures he’s fished with Ford more than 100 times. “He’s a great fly fisherman and a great attorney. He’s one good man. And I can tell you, you always want him on your side.”

Ford lives in what one guide called “the world’s biggest man cave.” His home in Miami is steps from a lake brimming with peacock and largemouth bass. The walls are decorated with art, fish photographs, world record certificates, and shots of grown children and grandkids. (Ford is a divorced father of three daughters and a son.) “The whole house is filled with memorabilia,” Ford says.

Traveling Man

Ford intends to continue traveling, fishing and taking photos for as long as he can. “I still like to travel to exotic fishing spots,” he says. His 2025 plans are not yet complete but include a trip to Uruguay in January to fish for golden dorado, one to Yellowstone National Park in February to photograph wolves, then a jaunt to Punta Arenas, Chile, in March to take pictures of pumas. He’ll be focusing on bald eagles in Vancouver in June and traveling to Iceland in July. September is Ford’s time for Alaska.

Then he’ll head back to Jurassic Lake Lodge in Argentina, where he has an annual reservation for the second week in October until he can no longer fish or take photos. He also includes blank spots on his calendar that he intends to fill with even more travel. “Life is lived forward, and Pat is trying to capture the adventure of life as he moves through it,” says Glaspey, who first learned of Ford after seeing his Alaska photos displayed on the walls of his lodge when he bought it. “That’s what he’s trying to do with his lenses.”

Ford’s interest in picture-taking dates to his undergraduate days at Notre Dame. In the summer of his freshman year, he bought his first camera, a Pentax with a 135-mm telephoto lens, to shoot Fighting Irish football from the sidelines. He was paid $1.50 for each published photo. “I didn’t have any training, but I’ve been there for the rest of my life. I love to shoot football,” says Ford, who prowls the sidelines shooting photos of the Miami Dolphins, the University of Miami Hurricanes and Orange Bowl games. “I like the action. It’s super-exciting to be down on the field. It’s like fishing; you’re always learning.”

Today, Ford shoots a Canon EOS R5 Mark II mirrorless camera, which takes 50-megapixel photos at a rate of 30 frames per second. Photography poses similar challenges to fishing, says Ford, whose fishing photos have appeared on more than 300 magazine covers. “You have to find the animal, and you need to photograph it doing something interesting,” he says. That might be an eagle diving on a fish, a bear pouncing on a sockeye or two young jaguars playfully cuffing one another.

The similarities between his two passions include a deep understanding of the equipment and a lot of time in the field. “It has to be second nature … on the instinctual level,” Ford says. “With photography, you need to know your camera, and you need to practice. The rule of thumb is your first 10,000 photos are going to suck.” Ford has written two books and also provided photographs and copy for Andy Mill’s opus, A Passion for Tarpon.

Adventure-Seeker

Like a Formula One driver, stunt pilot or mountaineer, Ford is a calculated risk-taker who has more than demonstrated his macho bona fides. An adrenaline junkie, he says he doesn’t like to be bored. He’s dived numerous times with tiger sharks off the West End of Grand Bahama. There’s a video showing a tiger and a hammerhead shark taking more than a casual interest in Ford, which created a few anxious moments for both the photographer and the divemaster. He says he’s probably done with shark diving, which would put several of his friends at ease.

Photos from 1986 show Ford feeding ballyhoo to a large barracuda named Smokey in Pennekamp State Park in the Keys. When Ford fiddled with a bait too long to correct an awkward grasp on it, he nearly lost a finger. The cuda grabbed a little more than the fish. “It completely filleted the index finger on my right hand,” Ford says. Like most daredevils, he blames himself, not the fish. He also realizes that the 50-pound barracuda could have removed his hand with a single bite and caused him to bleed out before reaching the boat, which was anchored a quarter-mile away.

While fishing on the Zambezi River in 1999 for tigerfish in the south-central African country of Zambia, Ford had yet another close call. He was standing near the transom when a hippo engulfed the small outboard in its enormous mouth, tipping the small boat and pitching Ford into the river. Hippos kill about 500 people a year in Africa and are far more territorial in the water than on land. The guide, who quickly hauled him back on board told Ford: “A hippo bit my grandfather in half last month.”

Ford set a tigerfish, 12-pound tippet world record on that trip — it weighed 14 pounds, 8 ounces. The fish may be forgotten by now, but the hippo story still has legs. “There are so many times, I should have been dead,” he says.

Still not Dead

Ford holds a stoical, cool-headed attitude toward life’s unpredictability, as demonstrated in his fondness for the Willy Nelson song lyric: “I woke up still not dead again today.” Ford founded the Woke Up Still Not Dead Club after nearly cashing in his chips in 2014. He awoke one early morning in excruciating pain from pancreatitis. Complications followed, including a MRSA infection. He spent 47 days in and out of a hospital and underwent numerous invasive procedures. He lost 55 pounds, and one doctor confided that he didn’t think Ford would survive. When he was finally back on his feet, he spoke of “savoring every minute, every day on the water, every fishing trip, every photo. Can’t put things off until tomorrow anymore.”

Ford’s favorite photo subject for years has been Alaska grizzlies. He loves September at Rainbow King Lodge, when big rainbows move out of the lake and into the streams to fatten on sockeye eggs and flesh. Brown bears that fish, love sockeyes. “That means rivers with the most sockeyes also have the most rainbows — and the most bears. The perfect combination,” according to Ford. “If there are bears around, I spend more time with my camera in hand than my fly rod.”

He knows how to act in bear country and has avoided missteps that could lead to trouble. “He has an insatiable appetite for adventure,” Glaspey says. “He has this desire to be on the edge, gazing at something new that interests him. He’s got the wanderlust in him. And he’s always inquisitive.”

Ford also loves photographing raptors — eagles, hawks and other birds of prey. “I especially like the owls; they have so much personality,” he says.

He doesn’t expect to make money on his nature photography, but that’s not his motivation. “What good are photos if you don’t share them with people?” asks Ford, who posts his work regularly on social media. “If you can brighten up someone’s day, it’s all worth it.”