The Wild Life Behind Anchored Outdoors

About this episode

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.

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Show links

• Watch Longfire on YouTube

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Guest links

• Anchored Outdoors

• Try Anchored Premium Insiders

• The World Through Your Eyes

• Anchored with April Vokey

• April Vokey on Instagram

Chapters

• 00:00 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