Show Notes
April Vokey has spent 25 years building a life around fishing. She decided to pursue professional fishing at 18, started her first business at 21, guided for steelhead in British Columbia, created the television series Shorelines, launched Anchored with April Vokey, and built Anchored Outdoors into an education platform and community for anglers.
In this conversation, April takes us from landing a 300-pound arapaima in Guyana and having 32 spines pulled from her foot to the winter steelhead obsession that became her career. She also explains how a 2008 head-on collision forced her to rethink life and business, why motherhood changed her relationship with risk, and how discarded television interviews led to Anchored. We also resolve two important questions: whether wet jeans are secretly flattering and how many introductions stand between me and Liam Neeson.
Subscribe to Longfire for more stories worth gathering around. Show linksWatch Longfire on YouTube Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Longfire website Follow Longfire on Instagram Guest linksAnchored Outdoors Try Anchored Premium Insiders The World Through Your Eyes Anchored with April Vokey April Vokey on Instagram Chapters00:00 Rapid Fire: Wet Jeans, Campfire Dinner, and Liam Neeson 02:37 A 300-Pound Arapaima and 32 Spines in Guyana 06:07 Turning a Life in Fishing Into a Business 10:40 The Salmon That Started Everything 13:36 Why Winter Steelhead Became an Obsession 18:31 Learning to Guide Before Google Earth 20:46 Surviving a Head-On Collision 22:38 The Injury That Forced a Business Pivot 25:01 Saving the Stories Television Had to Cut 27:31 Canada, Australia, Motherhood, and Risk 32:19 The Dean River Run She Should Never Have Attempted 36:10 Starting Over and Facing an Uncertain Next Chapter 37:45 Anchored Outdoors and The World Through Your Eyes
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