Love ‘em or hate ‘em, snakeheads are in many of our waters to stay, and if we’re not careful they’ll continue to spread. During this time of COVID-19 shutdowns and extreme cautiousness, they can provide a taste of exotic species at a time when most of us are unable or unwilling to go to where. I was reminded of this when I hooked my first snakehead of the year on Friday May 8th while chasing bass. The bite should only get better as the weather warms up.

If you’re flying to an exotic fishing trip, I strongly recommend that you do whatever you can to bring your reels in the airplane cabin with you. Many lodges, guides and outfitters provide rods, so If you lose your sticks, you can probably borrow some. If your lures get misplaced, you should be able to buy or grab a few from a sympathetic friend. I can tell you from experience, however, that borrowing reels is often a nightmare.

You know that warm feeling you get when you get in your car and the sun has been beating down on the dash? To me, that is absolute heaven. I love it. I hate being cold.

It’s no secret that many small businesses – especially those in the fishing and travel industries – are hurting now. If you’re like me, you want to see the ones who support us emerge from this disaster as unscathed as possible.

I’ve been on oceangoing boats dozens of times over the years, and I’ve been seasick once, which was enough to know that I never want to experience that again. On a later trip I was out in rougher conditions and did not get sick, so I don’t know what triggered that one bad episode.

I know that the one-piece purists among you will shudder, because I used to be one of you, but I’ve started to come around and I’ve amassed a selection of travel rods, but most of them are pretty generic in terms of action: 6- to 7-foot medium action spinning rods, and 6’6” to 7’6” medium-heavy baitcasters. This is the first one that has a specific purpose, in this case throwing big baits. It might not handle true giants like the Mother Chaser, but it’ll handle anything up to about 4 ounces exceptionally.

I’ve had long hair for a long time, and I love it, but sometimes it’s a pain. It takes a long time to wash and dry, it requires all kinds of “product” and if you’re not careful when you go for a boat ride you’ll end up with knots or looking like Medusa. These are the problems that confront lady anglers (or Seth Feider).

I’m 100 percent happy to be a woman, but I must admit that there are certain advantages to being a man. I mean, you have no “time of the month” and, as my husband says, “the whole world is your urinal.” I’ve always wondered what it would be like to (as Elaine said on Seinfeld) “walk around with one of those things.”

There are plenty of dumb ways to spend your money, but in my opinion one of the dumbest is super-expensive luggage. I mean, if you want to spend $9,100 on a Louis Vuitton Bisten suitcase that’s your business, but I can pretty much guarantee you that the baggage handlers will treat it every bit as harshly as they treat a bargain basement roller from the discount store. In fact, they might resent you enough that they’ll treat it worse. If you’re flying on your own Gulfstream, that might not be quite as much of an issue, but nevertheless I’m sure you can find plenty of better uses for that cash.