Michael Powers, 38, father of Declan (5.5) and Eamon (1.5). Live in Scituate and work somewhere on the godforsaken northern stretches of 128. I've been playing at the software business for a couple of years, having done a bunch of other stuff and being currently in a frame of mind where work is well down the ladder from family and fishing I like the fact that it's indoor work with no heavy lifting and great net access.
I have always fished, but the quantum leap to mania came with the discovery of saltwater flyrodding four years ago. My father took me party boat fishing out of Plymouth when I was five, and though I haven't been tempted to get on one in a number of years, when I was growing up it seemed like the highest order of adventure. Deap sea trips were a matter of every couple or few weeks, though, so I became a worm and bobber sleuth and lived for finding streams or ponds that held fish that eat worms [and I grew out of bobbers soon, too].
We moved to Pennsylvania, I kept fishing any way I could. And I kept reading Salt Water Sportsman and living vicariously through Frank Daignault. I could never interest Dad in surfcasting, and didn't have independent access to surf, so the dream just festered. I fished a little through college, then began an urban adventure -- living a decade in NYC, getting an MBA, living some in Paris and then a couple of years in Frankfurt. During this time fishing was an occasional release valve -- drive out to Long Island to get a sea worm wet and look at water for a while.
When I was living in Germany and travelling constantly from there we had our first boy and I had a value shift. It wasn't worth it anymore. So I quit and packed and the family moved back to the States to be where we wanted to be and figure out what to do from there. We lived the summer of 93 in a rental property that we owned in Orleans and I decided to spend the summer chasing the Frank Daignault dream of big stripers in the surf.
Of course, I didn't know anything about them and did everything wrong. But I put a lot into it and loved it even though my score for the summer [that's right, the whole bleeping summer] was one bass holding onto an eel off South Beach for about five minute's fight and then appearing to simply drop it when it saw that I was attached to the other end. But there was one night...
one night I was walking out Nauset spit at midnight [foolishly chasing the slack high tide that I'd caught Long Island flounder on]. I always assumed that the more arcane, the more difficult and the more out of the way fishing was the more authentic it was. So I was carrying a bucket of eels on a 2 mile hike at midnight and feeling pretty darn authentic, when three guys came off the beach looking like Navy SEALs. They were flyfishermen, they were grinning from ear to ear, and they assured me that the wash was full of fish and they'd been catching them hand over fist. I suddenly felt like a kid with a worm and a bobber.
It wasn't until the next spring that I bought a freshwater flyrod. Caught a few hatchery pout and wondered what the fuss about trout was all about. Had started catching the occasional striper on plugs, and that summer bought my first 10 wt. outfit for the salt.
It's been all downhill from there of course. Somewhere a crack dealer has had to hock his BMW because of all the money he missed out on by me finding a different addiction. I fish when I can, which is often but not nearly enough. I have a 17' Lyman which is a beautiful piece of wood and still isn't ready for the season and a 13' kayak which is. Still, I'm mostly a wading fisherman. There's something about being thigh deep in the fish's element that gets me.
And let me add to the hosanna chorus for Reel-Time. When it debuted I thought it was the best put-together site on the web, and it happened to be about the perfect subject. I still think it's the best piece of real estate on the whole darn net. Thanks to Dave and Thorne and to all the regulars I've fished with, yakked with, traded e-mails, or just read the posts of.