A New Start

To those friends and fellow anglers who have read my musings in the past, I hope I can continue to engage you with this new format. For those of you encountering The Harbor Angler for the first time, thank you for staying with me this long and I hope you find enough here to prompt you to read further. 

If you go fishing just to catch fish, you are missing the point. Further, IMHO, the particular desire to put fish in the boat or a meal on the table will not sustain a life-long pursuit of fishing. There has to be more. You must enjoy the process of fishing. 

I love to fish. Always have. My earliest childhood memories are of fishing in the park ponds and lakeshores in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Much of my adolescent years were spent fishing in the northern parts of the state. As an adult I have fished in many parts of the country from Florida to Montana. I have taken regular excursions to Ontario. I have caught fish on five different continents, including Antarctica. I currently live in what I consider an angler’s paradise, Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin. Baileys Harbor is located on a “thumb” of land known as Door County surrounded by the deep cold waters of Lake Michigan and the warmer and fertile Green Bay. You can literally travel in any direction from my home and find a place to fish within minutes. And I often do. I do not consider myself an especially talented angler. I catch a lot of fish because I fish a lot. I like catching fish, that’s true. However, what has sustained me over all these years is the process of fishing. I love everything about the process from preparing the tackle to backing the boat into the water. I even enjoy cleaning fish. I learn a lot when I clean a fish. About me and about the fish. 

I think a lot about fishing and most of my best friends are my fishing companions. I also write about fishing. Since March of 2017, I have written a regular fishing blog for the Baileys Harbor Community Association that was posted to their website. Over those five years I posted over 160 articles covering a wide range of fishing topics. The blog was an amalgam of local fishing conditions, descriptions of my latest piscatorial exploits as well as discussions of topics such as the ethics of “catch & release” or the impacts of climate change on the future of fishing.  I posted reviews of my favorite fishing movies and shared what fishing books I found most useful.  In this new iteration of “The Harbor Angler Report” I hope to continue in that same vein and perhaps expand the scope of the blog to all aspects of angling.  

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, 

Bruce Smith (aka The Harbor Angler)