Book Synopsis
Do they still call it a “midlife crisis” if you’re 28? Well, it’s the only way I can describe my life during most of 2018 and 2019. Depression has shaped my life for as long as I can remember. I think high school is when I finally had a name for the general malaise, apathy, and inexplicable sadness that hovered over me like a dark cloud, but I refused to seek formal treatment out of misguided machismo, fear of public opinion, and a fundamentally American notion of self-reliance — for almost 15 years. Instead of seeking counseling or medication or telling anyone about my struggles, I tried all of the home remedies: eating well, maintaining a schedule, practicing good sleep hygiene, avoiding drugs and alcohol, exercising regularly, and throwing myself into my work and my social life. It stayed the demons and kept me from self-harm or suicide, but it didn’t make me happy. Not even close. Only two things ever made me happy: fishing and traveling.
The dopamine release when you catch a fish is palpable. Paired with exercise, sunlight, adrenaline, and the choice of solitude or socialization on the water, fishing is the ultimate remedy for depression, and long before I was diagnosed with depression and began receiving treatment, I realized nothing defeated the darkness quite like tricking trout with a shiny piece of metal or tuft of feathers. But at 28, even fishing had grown stale for me. I’d fished the same waters, chased the same fish, and even my usual vice wasn’t enough to free me from that feeling. So I decided to just drop everything and spend six weeks on a cross-country road trip, fishing the whole way.
At a time in my life when I felt stuck, trapped in the day-to-day normalcy of middle-class American existence in a small town, this trip breathed new life into the perpetual sameness. I’d lived in the same town of 60,000 for almost 30 years when I went on this trip. My world was trapped in a nutshell, but this trip cracked it open, revealing to me how much I had yet to experience. In 46 days, I traveled 12,167 miles, stopping to fish 122 times in 19 states. I landed 2019 fish, representing 211 species and notching 150 species of fish I’d never before caught. Fishing Across America tells that story, using a consistent but fluid narrative that speaks to the growth and change that this undertaking forced upon me. It is not quite like any fishing book ever written, and it will appeal to everyone who craves an adventure into the unknown.
So what? Who cares?
Fishing Across America stands out because it hinged on such a unique undertaking. There are books about life-altering road trips that spurred personal growth. There are stories of overcoming demons and finding purpose at great personal cost. There are tales of conquering national parks, trails, oceans, and individual states. There are plenty of books about fishing, too. There are no books that do all of these things so completely in a digestible, chronological format of self-contained stories that are individually wrapped within a larger package. What sets this book apart is its one-of-a-kind blend of fishing, travel, food, humor, introspection, and purpose within a single, summerlong adventure.
This book will appeal to a wide audience and be well-received, and it will not be because I check the boxes that other successful anglers check. No, it will be because my fishing experiences are so diverse and uniquely cobbled together that there’s something for everyone. I would be comfortable competing with elite trout anglers, and my resume for wild native Rainbow Trout is as strong as any other, but that doesn’t set me apart, as that is the most popular game fish in the world. Literally millions of anglers fish for them and thousands of authors have written about fishing for trout. What sets me apart is the breadth of my angling accomplishments. As of this moment, I’ve caught 875 different species of fish — nearly two percent of all known fishes, worldwide. This number doesn’t mean much until you know that exactly six people who have ever lived have caught more species of fish than me. At 29, I was the second-youngest angler in history to hit 500, and I racked up thirteen International Game Fish Association (IGFA) All-Tackle World Records along the way. When I finished the trip covered in Fishing Across America, I had caught more species of fish in six weeks (211) than anyone before me had caught in six months’ time. In 2021, I set the Fishing Big Year Record by catching 416 species in a single year.
Raw talent means nothing without an infectious passion that draws others to the pursuit — or at least the support — of that pursuit. Taking something so foreign and unrelatable as catching a fish your pet goldfish could beat up and turning it into a rich tapestry of experience, a relatable quest towards an attainable goal is what I offer. Add in a rich sprinkling of humor, attention to detail, and an engaging story of the consummate travel experience, and you have something that everyone who’s ever held a fishing rod, traveled, or laughed at a “dad joke” will appreciate.
Similar books
In the broader sense, there are books about fishing and travel and road trips and self-assigned quests. I’ve read some. Traveling every summer, I’ve read — well, listened to — hundreds of books in recent years. On this trip alone, I finished 13 audiobooks. Fishing Across America can be compared in part to many of these fishing and adventure books in the same way a peanut butter and jelly sandwich can be compared to a Reuben. They have some common elements but will never be considered competition. This book, from what I’ve seen, is peerless. Perhaps that’s because nobody wants to read a book about a man and his dogged, relentless pursuit of any and every fish he can find across a landscape as diverse as the people he intends to read it. Or perhaps it’s because most fishing authors write for their peers, for people who share that passion and common drive already and don’t need to be converted to the world of fishing to buy in. Still, it’s not too different from other fishing books. It will still appeal to readers who like traditional fishing books, but it is refreshing enough to make them tell their friends.
The books I know of that resonate most closely with Fishing Across America are Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love (2006), Cheryl Strayed’s Wild (2012), Mark Obmascik’s The Big Year (2003), and Matthew L. Miller’s Fishing Through the Apocalypse: An Angler’s Adventures in the 21st Century (2019). If you’ve not read the first three, you’ve likely seen the Hollywood adaptations, which were all very popular.
Eat, Pray, Love and Wild both tell stories of their respective authors diving into the unknown and traveling to find purpose when their lives fell apart for similar reasons (divorce, death in the family, career struggles). Now, I’m not a middle-aged divorcee, but depression is just as relatable (if not more so), and the general idea of this storyline is not only proven successful but proven to be bestseller material. The Big Year, too, connects with a layer in Fishing Across America with regards to travel, obsession, and counting species, though its central focus is three men and their competition with one another, man versus man instead of man versus nature and man versus self, as you’ll see in Fishing Across America. I finished Fishing Through The Apocalypse: An Angler’s Adventures in the 21st Century in a single afternoon, and the unique collection of stories is very similar to what you can expect in my book, though mine are chronological and tied together with the single narrative thread of a road trip. Gilbert and Strayed’s books are about self-reliance, the ability to overcome defeat, and the spiritual and transformational powers provided by a change of scenery, while Strayed adds in the layer of a challenging outdoor endeavor. Obmascik adds in humorous and competitive traces native to certain outdoor pursuits, while Miller’s book is a prophetic narrative about conservation and perspective. Mine rings with elements of all four.
Fishing Across America is an account of pain that leads to personal growth, a need for wanderlust that just happens to be sated by fishing and travel, and the story of a unique accomplishment unlike any other. Best of all? I finished writing it years ago, and it’s ready to print.