About

My first memory is fishing off the family's Boynton Beach dock at age 3. My parents dragged me from the waterfront of southeast Florida to the rolling hills of a northeast Nebraska ranch and fish hatchery, just in time to enroll in one of those classic white, one-room, coal-burning, pot-belly stove country schools. Today that would constitute blatant child abuse, but it somehow worked in my case. When the governor began flying my monstrous bullfrogs to Mark Twain's fabled Calaveras Frog Jumping Contest in California, I hit the media jackpot; organizations lined up to pay a buck apiece for live frogs for their own frog-jumping fundraisers. I left the education field to join Florida Sportsman's editorial staff in 2000. A second magazine, Shallow Water Angler, was added a few years later. I now teach kayak fishing and continue as a freelance outdoor writer and photographer specializing in kayak fishing. The lessons of a youth spent observing fish in hatchery ponds and miles of family trout stream have proven perfectly valid in Florida's tidal estuaries. I still pursue seatrout, snook, redfish and a dozen other species on an almost daily basis. Come spend a day with me in my classroom, the Indian River Lagoon, the most biologically diverse estuary in North America.

Education

• Florida Atlantic University
• Orchard High School

Favorite saying

• ""Life in Lubbock Texas taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.""