I wanted it badly.
For months, I’d been waiting tables at a high-end seafood restaurant on the Connecticut waterfront, dealing with hard-to-please octogenarians who’d send back perfectly delectable lobster: “What’s that black gunk? Tell the chef I want a fresh one!” I wanted a magazine job.
The idea of working for a boating publication made me drool. I grew up around boats. I fished long summer days by foot and boat. My favorite possessions were a bucket, a clam rake and a small seine net I’d drag around with my friends at the beach to catch silversides. The inflatable dinghy for my dad’s 40-foot sportfish took me on adventures around the harbor and the Hammonasset River. I’d inspect every turn, dropoff and ripple till the gas ran dry on the 6-hp Johnson. I’d row my way home. You notice even more watching water slip past the transom as you pull the oars.
After a brief stint as a newspaperman — I didn’t have the stomach to report on death, murder and mayhem — I ended up on the front porch of my mother’s house. I was broke, having spent a few months cruising around the West in my 1973 Volkswagen bus. Options were limited. I took the restaurant job, not knowing if a writing career would ever materialize.
I saw a classified ad for an online staff writer at Soundings Trade Only, a B2B magazine focusing on the marine industry. I submitted a résumé, made the customary follow-up call, and when I didn’t hear back after a few days, I showed up at the offices of Soundings Publications in Essex, Connecticut. My tenacity got me an interview. One of the people in the room was Bill Sisson. I got the job.
It was 2000, and the internet was new and untrusted. I went to work reporting on sales trends, boatbuilders, accessories and all of the products that go into recreational boats. The office was a lively place, situated in a marina overlooking the Connecticut River. I was green, but I had desire, and I think Bill, the editor of Soundings magazine at the time (and now the semiretired founding editor of Anglers Journal), saw promise in me. We’d chat, often about striped bass or bluefish. We sometimes met up for an afterwork drink. I’d listen to his fishing stories and share what I could. I didn’t break into the circle of trust that he fished with, but I wanted to.
Anglers Journal editors William Sisson (left) and Charlie Levine, fishing together on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 2023. Charlie LevineMy stint in Essex didn’t last long. An opportunity to run a weekly fishing magazine came, and I took it. Before I left, Bill and Michael LaBella, now the senior editor of Anglers Journal, invited me out for a sendoff at the Griswold Inn. We laughed and drank. Before the night ended, Bill grabbed a bar napkin and wrote a note: “If you ever need a job, give me a call.” He signed it, as did Michael. I spent an afternoon looking for that napkin recently. I know I have it somewhere, but 23 years and many moves has displaced it among a slew of personal artifacts in my office.
About a year later, I moved to Florida to field another job. I never wanted to live in Florida, but I’m still here. The fishing is good all year. Bill kept tabs on me. He’d call once or twice a year to see what I was up to, and I’d bump into him at boat shows. On one of his calls, he told me about his idea for Anglers Journal. It was a dangerous time to launch a magazine, and the fishing space seemed full. But the existing titles were mostly facsimiles of each other — rigging stories, first-person reports and tutorials. Bill had no interest in creating another fishing magazine like that. He didn’t want to focus on how to fish. His focus was why we fish. The poetry of an early morning bite. The adventure of running offshore, beyond the sight of land. The men and women we meet on the docks and riverbanks. The images in the magazine were different, too. They seemed real, not perfect, because fishing is an imperfect pursuit. Things can go wrong even when they’re going right.
“To create the product you now hold, we started with a blank page,” Bill wrote in the first issue. “We asked ourselves, what would we as lifelong anglers want to read? What photographs best capture the world we have come to know? What stories resonate strongest? Whose voices ring true?”
Those principles set Anglers Journal apart and ignited a host of fans who rained down support. I was one of them. I wrote down a goal: I will be the next editor of Anglers Journal. I stuck the note on the windowsill beside my desk. When Bill decided to semiretire and approached me about taking the reins, I felt I had scored my dream job. This is what I was meant to do.
Ten years have passed since the first issue of Anglers Journal graced newsstands, and we continue to seek out the why. The reasons we fish are different for everyone, yet they overlap and intersect in so many ways. A love of the ocean, lakes and streams. The promise of a fish to pull on. The joy of spending time outdoors with friends and family. Adventure. Passion. Camaraderie. I could go on, but I don’t have to because the pages of Anglers Journal are full of the why. Flip through a copy. Share one with a friend, and by all means, subscribe and stick around. From that boy with a clam rake and a bucket in his hands to the fisherman he has become, I want to thank you for your support. We couldn’t make this journey without you.
