Meet the Editor
Joe Healy, associate publisher of Fly Rod & Reel
Hi, I'm Joe. I got started in outdoor publishing when I realized, while studying journalism at the University of Hartford, that I could unite my interest and passion for fishing and hunting with my professional aspirations in journalism. I began to write freelance articles for newspapers and began a short career in advertising/public relations managing publications for clients and also handling PR for Swarovski Optik and Kombi ski gloves, among other clients. Through the Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA) I got to know some of the top writers and editors in the outdoor field, and in the early 1990s landed a dream job as an editor at Outdoor Life. Lo and behold, I moved to the wilds of Manhattan to work for one of the world's largest hunting-and-fishing (hook-and-bullet, the field was called at the time) magazines. At OL, gravity seemed to take me toward the fishing articles and I began to edit the work of longtime Fishing Editor (and good friend to this day) Jerry Gibbs, and many fishing features. I also wrote and edited "This Happened to Me" for a few years, the most-read section of the magazine. Manhattan was fun for a single guy in his 20s, but it was also wildly expensive for a young journalist and ridiculously short on local hunting options, though the saltwater fishing was and is still good, and the Catskills are a short drive outside the city. Still, I followed my country-boy instincts to Minnesota to work for a fishing magazine. I loved Minnesota, but after less than a year felt the pull of the fly-fishing industry and American Angler and two recently launched magazines, Fly Tyer and Saltwater Fly Fishing—both relaunched, actually, from earlier versions that had suspended publication (Fly Tyer morphed into American Angler, to be exact). Living in Vermont, I edited Saltwater Fly Fishing and wound up as editorial director/VP of the Abenaki fly-fishing magazine group, which today is part of Morris Magazines.
I took a detour from the fly-fishing industry for a couple years, helping to run Vermont Magazine and Saratoga Living Magazine. But in January of this year relocated to Maine with my family to join Fly Rod & Reel and become a part of the magazine's nearly three decades of usefulness in fly-fishing publishing. My plans for the magazine? Keep it the relevant, vibrant, exciting, authoritative, surprising resource it's been since 1979.
Many thanks for reading...
From Editor's Notes
I was on the day's 99th cast when I realized how much I missed doing this. As I fired off another hopeful presentation with my 10-weight, I looked up the shoreline to see dolphins surfing through the rolling waves of the Caribbean Sea. Ten minutes earlier, my wife, Robin, had jumped a 150-or-so-pound tarpon; she was casting a heavy jig on a spinning rod. We were prospecting for cruising tarpon in Panama, just south of the Costa Rican border town of Manzanillo. It was the first time in about six months I had held a fly rod.
After stints as editor of Saltwater Fly Fishing and Fly Tyer, I took a hiatus from fly-fishing publishing in 2002-well, a break from a full-time gig in the industry, as I've continued writing for several fly-fishing magazines; my day job for the past five years has been editing regional magazines in New York and New England. Still, I never strayed too far from fly-fishing and fly-tying. I fished on Cape Cod and in Florida every year, and often poked around the streams of the Adirondacks in New York and my home waters in Northern Vermont. But I felt something was missing.
As I stood in the bow of the panga in Panama, I said to myself, "Maybe it's time to get back into the fishing game." A few months later, I was speaking with the folks at Fly Rod & Reel's parent company, Down East Enterprise-and they invited me back into the fly-fishing family, as this magazine's associate publisher.
...I grew up on a lake in Central New York, Oneida Lake, known as one of the Northeast's top walleye waters. I took my share of that brand of perch—we always said "pike" in CNY, but walleyes are of the perch family, and calling them pike is similar lazy usage as saying that brookies are trout when in point of fact they are char; a shout out to the print readers who reminded me that walleyes are indeed perch, something I knew but skimmed over—on conventional tackle and jigs, and developed a fleeting infatuation with targeting walleyes on flies (another topic, for another time), but my favorite fishing was wading the shallows with a 6-weight and throwing fly-rod poppers for bass.
My family lived on the shore of a shallow bay in which bass thrived. Those were my first flats—hard sand with patches of eel grass, much like the turtle-grass saltwater flats I began to fish years later. In mornings and evenings, I would wet-wade, looking for surface wakes or sight-fishing for the dark forms of bass passing over sandbars. Mainly, I caught largemouths; but once in a while a sow smallie would leave the rocky shoals in the middle of the bay and come up on the flats, looking for food or maybe having just quit a spawning bed. These were the fish-jumping hookups you don't forget.
My 6-weight was a fast-action trout rod (G. Loomis, as I recall). I used a weight-forward floating line, a 3X leader and hard-bodied poppers or really unkempt hair bugs that I tied myself. I didn't have specialized bass tackle because there wasn't much sold as such. My leaders were dotted with wind knots due to my imperfect strokes casting the big flies. I lost fish because I didn't have the leverage with a 9-foot rod to land them efficiently. Times have changed.
In our new "Bass & Panfish" department, Buzz Bryson looks at the purpose-specific bass rods offered this year from Sage and Scott—rods designed to cast bulky bass flies quickly and accurately. A few models measure less than 8 feet—a magic number if you happen to fish according to bass-tournament rules capping rod length at 8 feet. (This is a good length for fish-fighting duty, too.) Will the rods show up on the bassin' tournament circuit or in bass boats nationwide? Interesting questions....
In this issue we introduce a second new department, which we're calling "All About..." simply because it drills down into one subject or product category, in detail. This time, we offer guidance on choosing personal watercraft; next issue, we'll examine fly flotants. In each "All About..." department, we'll bring you in-depth information to help answer the questions: How does that work?; what do I need to know?
When the bass season opens in New York this June, I may need to head back to my flats with a new bass rod and, for reaching the deep weed lines, a pontoon boat. Not a bad combo.
