BE MORE PLASTIC FOR TROUT

31 CLEAN ’EM AND COOK ’EM

With all those trout you’re gonna catch this summer, here’s how to get the besttasting filets at the campground or on your backyard grill. In their latest From Field to Fire feature, Scott and Tiffany Haugen provide a full-service how-to on cleaning, fileting and preparing your catch for the pan. Not sure how to serve your fish? Try Tiffany’s smoky dip for the ideal summer appetizer!

45 GO WITH THE BOW

One of Tim Hovey’s buddies had an invasive carp problem in his ranch’s canal system, but despite lacking experience fishing with a bow – let alone ever hunting with one – Hovey decided to give bowfishing for carp the old college try. Here’s how ingenuity, a little practice and an assist from one of his daughters allowed Hovey to try and do a buddy a solid.

51

Get Ready For Socal Bluefin Tuna

Long-range anglers who are willing to bunk aboard a charter boat can get in some outstanding bluefun tuna fishing way out in the Pacific, well past where local anglers are stuck jigging. Saltwater fisherman Joe Sarmiento has taken plenty of these extended trips and has the skinny for newbies looking to fight some of these giants of the Pacific.

As I write this, Mother’s Day is just around the corner. By the time anyone reads this space, Father’s Day will be looming. Given that I have lost both of my parents – Mom in 2007 and Dad in 2019 – I usually have equal parts of emotional responses on those May and June days that we honor our mothers and fathers. I find myself being a little sad since I miss them, a little happy knowing they led long lives, a little reflective and a lot nostalgic. There are so many memories to look back on with some reverence.

And thank you to our correspondent Lance Sawa (an expat Southern California native also known as our “American Angler in Japan” columnist) for his moving piece on a return to the Eastern Sierra as a tribute to his own late father Mark, a constant fishing partner (page 15).

Sawa and I both can think back on past fishing adventures with our dads (though my pop wasn’t much of a fisherman; then again, neither was I. But that doesn’t matter). But admittedly at times I have a hard time collecting my thoughts when writing about those times. I asked Lance if he too struggled to put all those feelings into words when recapping his trip to Bishop.

“The story was very emotional and difficult to write. I sat on it for months, not touching it. When I went to Bishop on my last trip I knew it would be hard, but not as heartbreaking as it was,” he said. “By this time I had gone through most of my own grieving process, but the feeling of loneliness was heavy. His old rods are now mine. His old spots are now mine. The memories of our time together are now mine alone.”

That’s what makes certain days throughout the calendar year a little more difficult for me, knowing that I don’t have my parents to