Coming soon: A book of stories from an angling life

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It’s been said that the best time to go fishing is when you can. If you’re like me, you’ve fished for more years than you’ve done almost anything else except breathing, sleeping and eating. I was on a fishing outing with my father the day when, three years old, I stepped off a riverbank, ending up (so Dad told me) submerged except for the curls on top of my head. My new book, You Shoulda Been Here Last Week, to be released this spring by Cornerstone Press, takes readers through a lifetime of angling, with all the joys, disappointments, rapturous moments, and connections with family and friends that such a life entails.

I’m now in my seventy-first year and, living on a lake, have the privilege of fishing often, daily if I want, even if only for an hour here and there, over some seasonal stretches. The appeal has not diminished. I simply don’t tire of fishing, even when it means many evenings on the lake where I live, floating in the same boat above the same rock bar, soaking the same kind of minnow on the same slip-bobber rig, tempting walleyes and smallmouth bass.

Yes, I love to fish; love is not too strong a word. I also love to write about fishing, and it’s my privilege to share these stories I’ve collected over the past four decades, give or take. Here are a few examples:

Opening Day. The start of fishing season is not a date on the calendar. It is a feeling, a time of the heart.

Read’s Cottage. A boy learns to fish and to love the North Country through family vacations at a lakefront cabin.

Trophies of the East Twin. A boy persists through years of disappointment as he strives to catch his first carp from his hometown river.

Seasonal Certainties. A father and son fish together for the first time after the son’s treatment for and remission from cancer.

Dad. A son remembers fishing with his father and sees their roles reverse when the father becomes legally blind from macular degeneration.

It Really Is Impossible. Fishing with a best friend helps a teenage boy through first love and heartbreak.

I hope you’ll watch for more news of this book, which comes with illustrations by my wife, Noelle. I’ll keep you posted with news and more snippets of the contents up until official release.