Angler Activist

Florida Sportsman founding editor-in-chief still fighting for the environment at 70

By Mike Jayne

Seventy is a good age to retire and go fishing.

Karl Wickstrom, JM 1957, has “gone fishing” for 40 years. Known more as an environmental crusader than an angler, the founding editor-in-chief of the fishing monthly magazine Florida Sportsman has no plans to put down his pen anytime soon.

“I have a do-gooder gene I can’t get rid of,” he says.

For more than 20 years, Wickstrom has rallied readers through his Openers column. He spearheaded a citizen initiative that amended the state constitution to ban gill nets inshore and helped redfish stocks rebound by helping remove them from commercial fishing markets. 

His latest battle lies along the St. Lucie River, where pollution flows from Lake Okeechobee through the river into the Indian River Lagoon, North America’s most diverse estuary. Wickstrom and his defense fund, Rivers Coalition, are embroiled in a legal showdown with the big sugar firms whose farms border the lake.

The coalition blames the farms for the pollution and wants them to forfeit land that can be used to redirect the runoff that’s diluting the estuary’s salinity.

“[Wickstrom’s] definitely got a soapbox,” says Judy Sanchez, U.S. Sugar Corp. communications director. “But you need to look for a real solution, not just what sells magazines.”

Wickstrom’s been at odds with South Florida sugar companies for years. In 1996, he discussed the Everglades with President Bill Clinton.

“I was sitting next to him and I said, ‘Mr. President, the public is solidly behind saving the Everglades.’ ”

“Not everybody,” Clinton countered with a chuckle and pointed at scores of sugar workers who leapt from buses waving signs imploring the president to “save our jobs.”

Wickstrom wants the government to persuade sugar companies to sell the farmland or invoke eminent domain.

Spend a few minutes with Wickstrom in his new waterfront office, with walls hidden behind a bulwark of issues dating back to the magazine’s founding in 1969, and you might get the impression he hasn’t a care in the world. His bone-deep sunburn, casual clothes and calm demeanor belie the missionary zeal that characterizes his work.

A typical day is a “flurry of phone calls to different people to line up evidence,” says Wickstrom, originally of Rock Island, Ill.

“He has more stamina than any person I have ever met,” says Jeff Weakley, a senior editor who works down the hall. “Staying power should be his middle name.”

In 1953, Wickstrom followed his uncle Earl Martinson, an engineering professor, to UF on a partial tennis scholarship. After dabbling in “triangles and higher math” as an engineering major, he switched to journalism. He drew cartoons for the Alligator.

“Journalism was more interesting because of its connection with people,” he says, noting that the change was not prompted by pressure from his father, an editor and columnist at the Rock Island Argus.

“My dad helped instill a lot of my principles,” Wickstrom says. “It’s a little self interest. You want the fishing to be good.”

Although he ended up following his father’s footsteps, it was his father and family who followed him to Zephyrhills.

“They came down to visit and were ready for a change,” he says. “And they bought this weekly, the Zephyrhills News.”

First his father and later his brother served as editor and publisher of the paper for 25 years until their deaths. Wickstrom helped in the summer and during long holidays.

After graduating, Wickstrom did a six-month stint in an Air Force reserve program, then worked at The Orlando Sentinel for a year and a half. He spent most of the next decade at The Miami Herald. He worked on the police beat alongside former attorney general Janet Reno’s father, Henry. When Wickstrom became an entrepreneur, Janet would be his first company attorney.

In 1967, he left the Herald to serve as executive assistant to state Sen. Eddie Gong, D-Miami. After his tenure ended, he founded Wickstrom Publishing and created Aloft magazine for National Airlines.

Something else happened to him that year.

“I got the fishing bug in ‘67 and realized Florida could use a good magazine,” he says.

Everyone remembers his or her first time. Vacationing in Sanibel, Wickstrom watched with growing interest as an angler reeled in a few fish. “I took my drugstore rod and caught a pompano really quick,” he recalls. “The guys there helped me clean and prepare it.” He was hooked.

A fishing magazine was a novel notion in 1969. The trial issue circulated around Miami. He used the revenue from Aloft and got “30 months of credit extended on my word” to finance the fledgling journal.

“We printed about 100,000 to boat owners for free with subscription cards,” he says. “I took some magazines to Joe’s News. I didn’t want any money. I just waited to see how they’d sell.”

While Aloft plummeted in 1980 after National Airlines merged with Pan Am, Sportsman boasts a paid circulation of 112,873. Readers get fishing advice and a little muckraking.

Never the armchair general, Wickstrom marched with a volunteer army on Tallahassee in the late 1980s to save the beleaguered redfish. His troops surrounded the building and set up speakers so they could hear Wickstrom’s conversation with then-Gov. Lawton Chiles. In 1989, redfish became the first species to be taken off the commercial market and granted game-fish status in more than 30 years. 

Wickstrom contributed $14,000 to help create an artificial reef, donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Florida Oceanographic Society for research and public education and helped effect a reorganization of fragmented fish and game agencies into a single, revamped Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. But most conservationists contend that it was the role he played in support of the Save Our Sealife constitutional amendment passed in 1994 that has had the most impact.

Frustrated with the “cozy” relationship between commercial fishing and the Legislature, Wickstrom and the Coastal Conservation Association began a two-and-a-half-year, grassroots petition drive to put a constitutional net ban on the 1994 ballot. Being the publisher of the state’s most popular fishing magazine is a good way to get the word out. On Election Day, it passed by 72 percent.

He hopes to impart his passion to a third generation of journalists. His three sons play key roles in the family business. The oldest, Blair, ADV 1983, took over as publisher two years ago. Drew does art and Eric serves as the online editor. His daughter, Holly, a legal secretary, is unaffiliated with the company. All are from his first marriage. He’s been married to his second wife, Sheila, for 25 years.

His company has published a sister magazine in recent years, Shallow Water Angler, and Wickstrom has done more than 25 televised fishing shows around the state. Wickstrom shows no signs of slowing down. After all, he has a state to protect.

Does the 70-year-old plan to retire? Not anytime soon, he says. “I feel like I’m 40.”