Our Team & Contributors

Ernie Marlan, Founder

Ernie Marlanis the founder of Mixed Bag Sportsman and the person who runs it day to day. He's a lifelong outdoorsman — the kind who has spent far more time on the water and in the field than behind a desk — and that experience shapes everything about how Mixed Bag operates. He started the brand as a digital outdoors magazine, built on years of relationships with the guides, captains, and anglers who actually make their living chasing fish and game.

Those relationships are what turned a magazine into a last-minute deals service. Ernie Marlankept hearing the same thing from captains he knew: trips regularly leave the dock with a few unsold seats, and they'd rather drop the price and fill the boat than sail with empty rails. He built Mixed Bag to get those open seats in front of the right anglers fast — without anyone having to pay full freight.

The most important part of his role is the one most people never see: Ernie Marlan personally reviews and approves every deal before it goes live. When a captain submits open seats, he checks that the trip is real, that the price is a genuine discount, and that the details are complete and accurate before it's published or shared on social. That approval step is the reason anglers can trust what they see on Mixed Bag — and the reason a stray link can never put a bogus deal out under a captain's name.

Our contributor network

Mixed Bag isn't the work of one person. Behind the magazine and the deals is a network of genuine outdoorsmen — avid anglers, hunters, and top-level guides and captains — who supply the on-the-water knowledge that makes the brand worth following. These are people who fish and hunt for real, not aggregators rewriting someone else's reports.

On the editorial side, our contributors write the in-depth hunting and fishing content that goes well beyond a quick social-media post: tactics, seasonal patterns, gear that actually earns its place in your bag, and the kind of local insight you only get from decades on the water. Because the writing comes from working guides and captains, it reflects what's really happening on a given fishery — not theory.

On the deals side, that same network of captains and charter operators is the source of every open seat we list. They submit their own genuine availability, and we promote it only after it clears review. The result is a tight loop between the people who run the trips, the people who write about them, and the anglers who want in.

We're always looking to grow that circle of trusted captains and contributors. If you run charters in California or know these fisheries well enough to write about them, we'd like to hear from you.