Right now, Alaska is effectively closed to travelers from outside the state – at least it is for us, since we don’t have time to quarantine once we arrive. We’ll be very disappointed if we don’t make it up there this year. I want to get back because I had such an epic trip last summer, and Hanna wants to go because it’s one of three states she’s never visited.

You go to Louisiana for seafood and outdoor sports, not for counting carbs or calories. That goes double at sportsman’s paradise Grosse Savanne near Lake Charles, where the bite is so good that you power through every post-meal food coma.

Our first episode of Tattoo Tuesday featured the smallmouth tattoo on JP DeRose’s forearm, but he’s not the only brown fish freak in our sights. Smallmouths are a species that generate plenty of frustration, and drive some people to madness, but they also inspire lots of undying devotion – so much that people want to ink ‘em on their bodies.

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.”

My first time alone behind the wheel of a car was at the age of 13. After a long hot day of working on the farm I was asked to go pick melons for dessert. The look in my eyes must have said, “Over my dead body!” but I was told to just take the truck and go and get them. I got a second wind and tore out of the house, jumped in the truck, turned the key, put it into gear and off I went. I had a sense of freedom out there all on my own behind the wheel.

After an epic trip to Casa Vieja Lodge in February, I’ve become a little bit more than obsessed with sailfish. We caught 37 of them, including 23 in a single day. Every one of them stripped line, jumped at least 10 times, and put on an unforgettable show of acrobatics. Even when you finally get them to the boat and subdue them, they’re still gorgeous – lit up with iridescent colors. That likely makes them both tempting and hard to tattoo.

As far as I can tell, there’s no segment of the fishing world that embraces angling-specific tattoos as readliy as the hard core swimbaiters. It stands to reason, because they’re the closest analog we have to the world of skateboarding, and the overlap with punk rock, heavy metal and hiphop cultures is apparent.

In the early, debilitating stages of what is now a persisting pattern of Giant Trevally obsession, I searched for everything I could about this crazy species that I’ve still yet to chase. While this COVID-19 crap has shut down my exotic travel for the time being, it has cemented my decision that I will go someplace like the Seychelles, the Maldives or the Andamans to tangle with one or more of these brutes.

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.

For years my wife Hanna and I have had a Pop-R mailbox. Actually, we had the first one for so long that it wore out and we had to replace it. I suppose if we lived in a more upscale neighborhood we’d have one replicating a Lobina Lures Rico instead, but this was the best option available.

I love soup. It can be gumbo or split pea or chowder or gazpacho, and no matter the season I’ve got to have it. The first time Hanna met my parents I promised her that my dad would mess up his shirt at some point during the dinner, but I was the one who dropped a big spoonful of soup on my shirt almost immediately. It didn’t matter – I got the girl, I got my soup, and the stain came out in the wash.

Pop tarts, Clif bars and PB&J (make sure it doesn’t have too much jelly, can’t have it dripping down your arms while flying down the river) are all great, easy, fast options for a day on the water….if you are in your 20s.

A lot of our favorite fishing lodge meals are tough to recreate at home, not only because they’re complex, but also because they require ingredients you can’t find at your local grocery store. Hanna and I eat ridiculous amounts of chicken and vegetables, but lately we’ve been trying to integrate more fish into our diets so we reached out to Nanci Morris Lyon at Bear Trail Lodge to get the recipe for the salmon that I enjoyed there last summer.

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.

We all have our names for big fish – footballs, tanks, donkeys, unicorns, pigs and hawgs (or the more dictionarily proper “hogs”), among others. But how do you represent those notions graphically? As far as I can tell, artist Nate Karnes, who sells his goods through Remedy Provisions, is killing it in that area.

I’m not the kind of guy who craves steak, especially if it’s just average or subpar (Rodney: “still has marks from where the jockey was hitting it), but a few times a year I need a really prime cut and I splurge on an upscale steakhouse. The best I’ve ever had was the bone-in ribeye at Mastro’s in Scottsdale, Arizona, but I’ve also enjoyed the porterhouse at Peter Luger’s in Brooklyn, I’ve dined at Chicago’s Gene & Georgetti, and a few times a year we hit the gluttony-based-destination known as Fogo de Chao where I go overboard on their prime top sirloin known as picanha.

On my drive to the 2020 Bassmaster Classic, my first stop in the state of Alabama was not at a gas station. It was not at Dreamland for ribs. It was not at Talladega. Instead, I very purposefully made a beeline directly from my Virginia home to Scottsboro Tackle in the town of that same name.

“Chucking big fluff at big slabs” – that’s how Predator Fly Gear describes their fishing preferences. There’s nothing wrong with a native brookie sipping a size 22 dry fly, or a sac au lait chewing your mini jig, but you’ve gotta respect a company that sells clothing and art dedicated to all manners of toothy critters and piscatorial ne’er do wells.

They say that 50 is the new 40 and 40 is the new 30 and I believe that because I feel and “think” I look pretty darn good for 51 (yep, I said it).

I’ve been accused of traveling to Mexico often enough that I might be eligible for dual citizenship, and I make no secret of my love for Mexican food. Surprisingly, though, the best tacos I ate last year were not south of the border, but rather on my northernmost trip.