Every year I find myself at this point. We run a pretty chaotic schedule here at The Fisherman with weekly deadlines hitting with the pulse and precision of a drum machine from April through mid-November. When it begins in April, it feels like being swept into a raging river, sort of a trial by fire, forcing myself back into that weekly rhythm. By May, I’ve found the groove and it becomes a routine.
For me, the thing that links all of these issues together is the Editor’s Log. Because I can (for the most part) write about whatever I happen to be feeling at the time. As you know, it might be some little thing I hyper-focused on during a recent trip in the surf, it could be some regulatory change that’s blown a bee into my bonnet, it could be an old memory that has relevance to the time of year, or it could be stumping for a cause that I feel like we (you, the readers and us here at the magazine) can work together on to enact change.
I don’t just love the Editor’s Log for the opportunity to chronicle my thoughts, I love them because it’s the best practice for staying sharp as a writer that I have ever undertaken. Another thing that means so much to me, is the feedback, even when it’s negative. You may remember an editor’s log I wrote over the summer titled The Unspoiled Angler – click the link if you’d like to read or refresh. The basics of that story were that I saw two young anglers fishing the surf, they really weren’t in a great spot, and, thanks to the conditions at the time, I felt that they were facing an evening of weeds and failure. I was with my wife and daughter, and I opted not to intervene because I felt that so much of what made me the angler I am today, is that I made all those mistakes and learned the hard way. Additionally, two teens who were not glued to YouTube to get all the answers and putting in the up-front effort on their own, is such a rarity that it almost seemed like some version of a “last of a species” situation.
A reader wrote in and shared that when he was ‘figuring it out’ as a kid, he would have given anything to have a mentor and that he felt I had missed an opportunity to be that for these two boys. That’s kind of the way it goes when you’re honest in your writing, you get honest feedback. It made me realize that it was presumptuous of me to assume that these boys would appreciate taking the hard road just because I felt like it worked so well for me. And it’s not like I haven’t mentored other anglers, but the thought that I was somehow doing these kids a favor by not intervening, is far from guaranteed. So this reader changed my perspective. I responded to that affect and he never wrote back, but what I often say about fishing, that my only goal each season is to get a little better at it, also applies to being a good human being, and this reader ensured that I achieved that during the summer of 2026.
In that way, and in so many other ways, writing the weekly Editor’s Log is therapeutic; by the end of our 38 issue marathon each season, I find that I feel like something is missing in my life through the cold of the winter. Silly as it may seem, my life as a writer has become about having experiences, identifying moments that have relevance in “story form” and then writing those things down before they fade into the background. When I don’t have that outlet, there’s some mental… for the lack of a better word… constipation that sets in.
I think we all hope to find ourselves doing the thing that we were meant to do, and writing really is that thing for me. It’s a creative outlet, it’s an opportunity to share the things I love and care about, it’s also a chance to preach and sometimes, to be humbled. I couldn’t put into words how grateful I feel when someone tells me they never miss an Editor’s Log, and as the weeklies pause for the winter, there’s a part of me that’s already looking forward to getting back into the weekly grind and cranking out an Editor’s Log each week in the spring.
