The Editor’s Note

from California Sportsman Mag - August 2022

STAMPEDE OF KOKANEE

he house I grew up in was perched near the top of a steep hill in

TSan Bruno, just south of San Francisco. At the bottom of the hill, about a quarter-mile away, was a 7-Eleven convenience store.

The walk back up the hill wasn’t as easy heading down, but it was still a worthwhile trip for me, my sisters and friends from the neighborhood for various items – usually Slurpees, candy or other snacks. When I got older in the mid-1980s and was begging for a car of my own, the magazine stand was my primary reason for the trek to 7-Eleven. So while Auto Trader was a typical purchase – I would circle the cars I liked to give my dad a hint before we settled on that 1977 Mustang that somehow got me through junior college and even my first year away at Fresno State – so was the Fish Sniffer.

West Coast anglers can understand why that magazine meant so much to us over the years. Back then as a teenager I couldn’t get enough of the local fishing reports that famed publication put out. Like the used cars in Auto Trader, I made mental notes of the hot local fisheries for me and friends to head out to – at least when we had access to a car or a ride from a parent.

Decades later, my current journalism job is to edit and write stories about fishing and the outdoors, and starting this month it’s all come full circle. Cal Kellogg, a Fish Sniffer alum and former part owner of the magazine, is contributing two pieces to the August 2022 California Sportsman on Stampede Reservoir and Folsom Lake. Cal’s Fish Sniffer (and Bay Area) roots aren’t much different than mine, as it turns out.

“I started reading the Sniffer in 1987. I was in college at the time and I’d pick it up at Marina Liquors in San Leandro, where I’d buy sardines and other bait for fishing the South Bay,” Kellogg told me. Later on, he took an editor’s position there.

“At that point it was game on … I fished everywhere from Yellowstone, to central Mexico, Baja, throughout Alaska and the Gulf of Alaska,” he said. “And I fished with so many great people like Capt. Barry Canevaro (I wrote a book with him), Captains James, Jim, Chris, Jonathan and Steve Smith, Mike Bogue, Buzz Ramsey, Kevin Brock. And the list goes on and on.”

In 2008, Cal and fellow outdoors writers Paul Kneeland and Dan Bacher purchased the Fish Sniffer from the Bonslett family, and Cal stayed on until 2020, when he “was really ready to move on.”

Allen Bonslett, the publisher when Cal came aboard and son of Fish Sniffer founders Hal and Winnie Bonslett, had passed away from cancer in 2016. “When Allen passed I really felt that it left a hole in the publication, even though he was no longer the owner or running day-to-day operations,” said Kellogg. “He was a close adviser and really the spiritual compass of the publication, for lack of a better term.”

Cal now lives near Auburn in the Sierra foothills and is still chasing fish (and gold as a part- Cal Kellogg, who contributed two time prospector), and stories for this month’s we’re excited to have issue, was a longtime another Fish Sniffer fan – and one who had a major editor and eventual part-owner of the Fish Sniffer, which was impact on that magazine’s must-read content readers for years – aboard. for the editor years