Reel Masters. Susan Schadt

There are many things that I love about fishing. One of them—maybe not even the most important one—is fish. I also treasure sunset on the water and moonrise over the hills, peanut butter and banana sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, friends I haven’t seen for too long, yet, whenever we fish, it’s as if no time at all has gone by. I thrill at the strong sense, just before a fish hits, that the water is somehow pregnant. I marvel at the towering thunderhead bearing down and the calculation of “how much time do I have before I have to crank up and run for shelter?” And at day’s end, after the gear is put away and the fish cleaned and gutted, there’s the soothing melody of ice in a rocks glass as you pour whiskey in it and the way it catches the firelight as you wait for your cooking coals to whiten over with ash.

EVERY CHEF in this book—in fact every angler I know—has fond memories like these. They always come out sounding like poetry, or phrases from a holy trance. That may be part of the allure of this ancient pastime. Fishing taps something in our deepest soul. I believe, fundamentally, that is because it arises out of one of our most basic drives: the quest for sustenance. Whenever we fish, we are taking part in a pursuit that is older than humanity itself. I’ll bet that all creatures feel something akin to the angler’s exhilaration: a trout closing in on a frantic minnow, an eagle with talons extended as it poises to snatch a rabbit, a lion about to leap on a luckless zebra. All creatures great and small need to eat, and fishing grants us a pleasure born of primal instinct.

When I fish, clocks and the passage of time have little meaning. It is always simply now. I could fish for an hour, a day, a week, and it all feels like one eternal moment. As far back as I can recall—back in the day when I was a burger flipper at summer camp—cooking has had the same effect on me. From the instant that I lift my knife to peel an onion to the first waft of aroma bearing the results of the alchemy of cuisine, I am in the moment. To me, this is one definition of pleasure: being present. Although the chefs in this book have a lot more clatter and clamor going on in their kitchens, each one will tell you that what led them to their career was a similar love of cooking.

Cooking and fishing are what make me who I am. The rest is just what I do so that I can cook and fish some more. But that only begins to tell the story. The fishermen in these pages can recount, with great affection and wistful longing, a dad or granddad rousing them from slumber in the cold early light of dawn and bundling them into the front seat of the family’s car. While these younger versions of the heroes of this book were still half-asleep, listening to the struggle of the ignition until the car finally turned over and they headed for the lake, river, or shore. Or they can summon up the spirit of a grandmother who sat on a dock watching her bobber for the tell-tale sign of a blue gill about to take a fatal nibble. Or they can reawaken the sense of liberation that came with grabbing a cane pole and a can of worms on a morning that was surely made for hooky. So I stand corrected. More than being just about the present moment, fishing is as much about the memories it summons up and the ghosts of days and people gone by that come along for the ride whenever you pick up your tackle box. There’s a lot of yesterday in fishing. And a lot of now.

In the years that I wrote for the “Big 3” outdoors magazines—Field & Stream, Sports Afield, and Outdoor Life—I traveled and fished frequently in the Southeast, which is where most of this book takes place. I got to know a part of the country that often seems as foreign to New Yorkers as the Khyber Pass. With the fervor of a born-again convert, I took to fried crappie, hushpuppies, country ham, sorghum molasses, barbecue, and grits.

Later, as a food writer, I discovered that alongside these ancestral foods, a new generation of chefs had adapted the mind-bogglingly rich variety of fresh ingredients with which the South is blessed. They created imaginative new recipes—many of them in this book—that delivered all the power of tradition with the finesse of master craftsmen. Not coincidentally, every chef I met on assignment hunted and fished. I was even fortunate enough to fish with two of them in this book. Jeremiah Bacon took me for a morning’s redfishing in the salt marshes north of Charleston and later cooked our catch at his restaurant along with some heritage breed pork that a farmer friend brought by. With John Besh, the meal was less of a home game. We were in Alaska judging a seafood contest and had gone fishing near the town of Homer. We boated a huge haul following which John and two fellow chefs cooked up a meal of white salmon, trout roe, wild strawberries, and chanterelles. It sounds fancy, but its simplicity stands as a testament to how a great chef can do more with less, especially when the fish is so fresh. Another of the chefs in this book, Donald Link, and I have never fished together, but it seems whenever I have gone to his restaurant, Cochon in New Orleans, we sip on a cold one and vow to fish next time.

Come to think of it, there’s an awful lot of “next time” that animates the hope of every fisherman.

When I fish, clocks and the passage of time have little meaning. It is always simply now. I could fish for an hour, a day, a week, and it all feels like one eternal moment.

PREFACE BY SUSAN SCHADT

REEL MASTERS: BEYOND A LIMIT

With their teeming culinary calendars, perhaps the most tempting tonic I could cast out to our eight celebrated chefs was, “Let’s go fishing!” It’s a potent phrase that stirs the soul of every fisherman, especially these chefs, passionate about conservation and resolutely hooked on the beloved sport. In short order, they readied their rigs, enlisted family, friends, and guides, and planned strategy and season,

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