Fishing

The handwriting is familiar, but I have a harder time picturing the boy who wrote the words.

Some of my fondest childhood memories are the days my father and I spent crabbing on Chesapeake Bay each summer.

Late spring brings a chance for Chesapeake Bay anglers to tangle with behemoth black drum

Back at the dock after a morning fishing trip, it’s the first question I get from my daughter, Lily: “Papa, did you catch anything?” On a good day — and there are lots of good days on the Maine coast in summer — the answer is yes.

Without overgeneralizing, Florida’s citizenry and I generally don’t mix well.

A popular target among anglers, the swordfish is a solitary billfish that can be found as deep as 1,800 feet below the surface. Equipped with huge, softball-size eyes that allow it to see in the darkness of the abyss, swordfish use their broad, sword-like bills to slash and stun prey. This NOAA video shows a swordfish at 1,739 feet doing just that.

It’s nice to have a place to return to year after year, through thick and thin, from childhood and the teenage years to your single-minded, hard-fishing adult decades and into whatever lies beyond.

Somewhere along the Maine coast, a man trudges through thick mud as the tide forces the river to retreat toward the ocean.

I’d known Noah since we were kids, part of a gang of feral boys who spearfished in the lighthouse cove where Fred kept his lobster skiff on a ramp that sloped down to the sea.

A dead calm settles across Chesapeake Bay, and a blazing September sun hangs low in the sky as we motor slowly around the grass-lined fringes of Goose Island. The location may be only a short cruise from Tangier Island, Virginia, but it feels as if we’re a million miles from nowhere.

In Maine, a new season is just getting underway. But I’m still thinking about the last.

Cobia — also known as blackfish, ling and lemonfish, among other names — are lean, brown, streamlined gamefish that can top 130 pounds and exhibit Mr. Universe strength when hooked.