I first saw this hat in a fly shop across the street from my hotel in Missoula, Montana in 2015. I’m not much of a fly fisherman – in fact, I’d just caught my first fly rod trout a few days earlier on the Bitterroot – so I don’t know if Nautilus is a quality product. Based on their website, and their pricing, it appears that the Miami-based company does make good gear.

We are headed to Alaska shortly, where we hope to catch multiple species of salmon, trout and char. It’ll be my third trip and Hanna’s first, and while fishing at Bear Trail Lodge is the primary purpose of our adventure, I’m thrilled to see her reaction when we go to the famous Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park. Fishing around dozens of bears, and going from freaked-the-hell-out to remarkably ho-hum in a matter of hours is an experience that every angler and lover of the outdoors should enjoy.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that Giant Trevally are one of my bucket list species, preferably on some pristine and idyllic flats like those found in the Seychelles or the Maldives. Their brute strength and willingness to eat topwaters makes them a no-brainer. I just hope that I have enough tackle to survive the inevitable break-offs.

With the exception of a few crusty contrarians, it is a truth universally accepted by anglers that bananas are bad luck in the boat. While I’m not generally superstitious, this is one I buy into. Despite the fact that I love banana pudding, banana bread and regular old yeller nanners, I won’t eat them within 24 hours of getting on the water – except in Brazil, where they grow naturally and I’ve unilaterally decided that they don’t mess up the peacock bass bite. Other than that, caveat emptor!

I don’t quite get it, but to our brothers and sisters from the north walleyes are like a religion. Up in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and all throughout Canada, they revere these fish. Not surprisingly, a simple search finds that many of them have added these fish indelibly to their bodies.

My first fishing memory – the one that spawned or at least unearthed this obsession – was on the Chesapeake Bay. It was the summer of 1976, and my dad and two of his friends decided to charter a boat for bluefish and bring along the three 6 year-olds. At some point during the day, everyone else stopped to eat, but I couldn’t stop fishing. Yes, that jug-eared, emaciated kid on the right is me.

Flounder: I can’t believe I threw up in front of Dean Wormer

Boon: Face it, Kent, You threw up on Dean Wormer.

A little over a decade ago, Hanna and I were driving to her cousin’s wedding just outside of Bar Harbour, Maine when we saw a big striped bass and a tarpon staring at us from the side of a barn. We pulled over to a small crafts and souvenir shop to investigate and fell in love with the big colorful metal striper. We were still more or less newlyweds, still more or less trying to get our financial footing in the world, and the high three-figure price scared the hell out of us, so we left without buying it.

The New Orleans Bassmaster Classic in 2011 was a tough one for me. While everyone else was out having fun in the evenings, I was either finishing a story or gearing up for the next fog-bound boat ride. When I’d get up to go to work, my wife would be stumbling back to the room draped in beads. Hey, I don’t judge.

You may not want to head to a foreign country any time in the near future, but if you’re jonesing for a trip to the Amazon like we are, there are other ways to think of exceptional South American fishing. Depending on where you live, and your level of risk-tolerance, the next best thing might be a tattoo. Here are some we like.

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.

When snakeheads first showed up here on the Potomac, they were a guilty pleasure for many of us. I don’t know that anyone was bragging about chasing or catching them in the early days. Now, they’ve become a cottage industry, selling all sorts of specialized equipment to proud fanatics who love their size, their fight and their wiles.

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.