Alaska Air is offering a buy-one-get-one deal for a very limited time. Combined with the Anglers Inn discount for B.A.S.S. members this fall, that’ll help you and a partner save a combined $1,000+ on a trip.

Lots of good fishing travel news for the week ending September 18, 2021 — whether you’re headed to Brazil, Alaska, Guatemala or just want to up your credit card and miles game.

The international travel restrictions to and from Canada have been relaxed just in time to start planning for winter getaways, and if you’re a Canadian angler there’s no better place to spend time during the “hard water” months than Mexico – specifically Lake El Salto and Lake Picachos. Fortunately, there are great direct flight options.

I’ve now been to South America four times but I’ve never left the friendly confines of Brazil. I went to Rio de Janeiro as a teenager (no fishing), and over the past decade I’ve been to the Rio Negro region twice, along with an exceptional trip to Rio Juruena. That needs to change. Here are five more that are currently at the top of my list.

It’s been an up-and-down week in the world of fishing travel, with all sorts of flight changes. The good news is there are lots of opportunities to fish Lake El Salto or Lake Picachos with Anglers Inn International.

For the people still inclined to fly to fish it is critical to make the right decisions. A flight that’s too costly can make a trip prohibitively expensive. A flight that doesn’t fit your schedule can make it a pain in the ass. And a flight that’s canceled altogether can ruin everything. Rarely, however, are all things equal. So when should you consider an itinerary other than the least expensive one?

Lake El Salto is full – newly full of water and of course, as always, full of big, mean, Florida-strain largemouth bass. You may recall that when we were there in mid-June, the lake was at a record low, which bunched the fish up really nicely. The shoreline cover that grew up while the lake was down is now inundated with water, creating a highly fertile ecosystem.

Planning a fishing trip to Asia is a daunting task, not only because there seems to be less information available about Asian fisheries, but also because of the time, distance and expense in getting to them. We’re simply more aware of the bucket list options closer to home and more able to take advantage of them. Here are four that I want to try when I retire.

When I compiled my recent list of “Ten North American Dream Fishing Trips,” I knew that is wasn’t a comprehensive survey, nor was it meant to be. Here are five more special destinations that are on my mind right now. The fishing comes first, of course, but each one offers something a little bit special on top of that – be it history, the way you get to the fish, the food or the scenery.

The vast majority of travelers don’t have unlimited budgets or hundreds of thousands of frequent flier miles. Many of us scrimp and save not only to get the time off to travel, but also to make the most of it. That means we have to make choices. In most cases, I’d rather splurge on a luxury like a helicopter ride to a glacier to go dog sledding versus a more comfortable seat for a midday four-hour flight. I’d rather go economy class on a 10-hour flight than not go at all.

The professional bass anglers’ wives are so full of knowledge and tips and tricks about the RV lifestyle that I couldn’t confine their wisdom to just last week’s Part One. Here’s a second installment that should help us as we prepare for our retirement plan, and I hope will prove to be valuable to anyone who wants to hit the road, with or without a bass boat in tow.

As Pete and I get closer to retirement we are pretty certain that we’ll spend much of our time on the road in a camper. Until recently, it’s not something we’d ever considered, and we didn’t know much about it until we explored our friends’ rigs. Fortunately, we have a great resource to learn about this lifestyle: The bass wives!

You’ve saved for your bucket list vacation, acquired all of the necessary gear and the luggage to get it there. The forecast is perfect, the flight gets off without a hitch, but when you arrive at the baggage claim it’s the nightmare scenario. Either your rod tube doesn’t arrive or its contents are destroyed. Here’s how to avoid that nightmare scenario.

For a 50 year-old fishing-addicted man, there are few greater joys in life than visiting a well-stocked tackle shop for the first time. When you pull into a town like Clewiston or Guntersville, it’s a must-stop on your journey. In those cases, you’re likely looking for local and current knowledge and trends. But what about shop visits when angling isn’t in the short-term plans? Here are some strategies that’ll help you live without regret.

Have you ever traveled someplace, had a fabulous time, and no matter how long you stayed when it came time to go home it was just too short? As we prepared to leave Sport Fish Panama Island Lodge, I felt a pit in my stomach. We loaded up the dinghy with our luggage what felt like moments after we’d arrived. I remember thinking, “I don't want to go home. When are we going to come back?”

f you’ve read our “Ultimate Guide to El Salto and Picachos” it should be pretty obvious that we’ve spent hundreds of hours trying to figure out how to maximize every trip South of the Border, developing systems for everything from what to pack, to how to pack, to what to eat and lures to throw. Despite all of those best-laid plans, however, we still screw up at times. We’ve decided to be transparent about our mistakes, hoping that you don’t end up repeating them.

As a longtime member of the fishing media as well as a consultant to several leading fishing lodges, I think that I’m uniquely situated to tell you why you need to bring your pro staff together at a fishing lodge – with or without media. Executed properly, one of these gatherings can jumpstart your media campaigns and build brand knowledge and loyalty that a paycheck alone does not provide.

Our trip home from El Salto was scheduled for an otherwise innocuous weekend that turned out to be one of the worst travel experiences of our lives. We were scheduled to travel home on American Airlines, leaving three hours to transfer our bodies and our luggage in Dallas, but we unknowingly stumbled into a minefield --- American canceled over 400 flights and we were caught up in the chaos.

Every time we go to Mexico I learn or relearn certain things, or get an opportunity to test out new products and theories. This may seem like a bunch of disconnected mumbo-jumbo, but I’m hoping that some of you can benefit from my experiences. Here are eleven notes from our June 2021 trip, in no particular order.

We were warned prior to our recent trip that Lake El Salto was at record low levels, and while we can’t confirm the historical accuracy of that statement, we can confirm that the lake is lower than we’ve ever seen it – and that’s over the course of 15-20 trips, with one or both of us visiting during the low water season every year since 2013. Here’s a gallery of some of the scenery.