One of the most famous quotations in sports mythology and inspirational meme-world is Wayne Gretzky’s “You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.” It’s true that once an opportunity has gone by that particular window has closed. As such, I have certain regrets in my fishing career, but none of them can’t be fixed.

Old Mark Zuckerberg apparently knows what he is doing, because one of my targeted ads last year hit me square between the temples and lured me in: Sportyfish shirts from Singapore. Their catalog reads like a “who’s who” of my bucket list fish – peacock bass, giant trevally, yellowfin tuna, sailfish and others.

While I have had great fun catching many fish that were objectively ugly—giant Alaskan halibut, Potomac River catfish and Brazilian wolf fish immediately come to mind—there is something particularly gratifying about catching a species that’s all lit up with vibrant colors, the type that no camera can fully capture. Here are four that occupy my “hit list.”

Hanna and I continue to max out our retirement funds and put more away on a monthly basis so that if all goes right we’ll be done with our full-time gigs no later than the end of the decade. That’s both exceptionally exciting and a little bit daunting. Setting that rough timeline puts us on a path where we’ll need to have some plans and some envisioned deliverables.

I’ve repeatedly made it clear that fishing the flats for giant trevally with big poppers is at the top of the top of my list of bucket list experiences. Until then (or perhaps never) I will not be getting a GT tattoo, nor will I be spending a thousand bucks apiece on high-quality popping rods and reels – but a hat might be a more reasonable expenditure.

As we fished in Panama I started to wonder if a long enough lull with a particular species qualifies you as a “born again angling virgin.” To wit, when my father and I went to Costa Rica in August of 1995, I caught both a blue marlin and several roosterfish, among other quarry, but I’ve yet to catch either of them again in the subsequent 25-plus years.

With 50 species of fish to be caught in the Gulf of Chiriqui, I still wasn’t certain I’d catch my bucket list species, but I put in my time targeting them inshore. We went inshore and targeted them. We cast, we trolled and we CAUGHT my rooster. In fact, I caught two of them.

We’ve caught lit-up sailfish by the dozens in Guatemala, no-two-are-alike peacock bass in the jungles of Brazil, and gorgeous leaping rainbows in Alaska – yet some of our favorite catches were of fish that many people would consider “ugly.”

I’m not real big on buying hats because I get more than my share of freebies over the course of the year. Besides, I tend to narrow my “game day” selection down to a choice few in any given season. I’m not Steve Kennedy, who wears a single Auburn hat until it wears it, but I know that only certain lids fit my head properly, and I also know that some of them just have bad fishing mojo.

It’s nice to celebrate specific fish with beers named after them. I’m not superstitious, thinking that if I drink a “Giant Trevally Pale Ale,” I’ll never catch one, but at the same time I’d like to save some of these for the moments that they’re made for.

Every time I fish with my friend Chichi Rodriguez at Anglers Inn Lake El Salto in Mexico, I make sure to ask him early in the session what time it is. Without missing a beat, he pops open the cooler, opens a Pacifico (or two) and responds, “Beer thirty.”

As summer approaches, I am anxious to get back to Alaska, mostly because I had such an incredible trip with Keith Combs last year and want Hanna to get that same experience, but also because we’re running out of halibut. I shipped home a crateload of it after Keith and I fished with Captain Chris Hanna, but between our own stomachs and those of our friends, our stock is low.

Because of my dad’s job, most of my childhood summers were spent in the back seat of a sedan driving someplace across America. I’m not sure I appreciated spending so much time with my family and seeing our great country much at the time.