For me, fishing and journalism touched the same places in my head. In comparison with that of poets, the fly fishers' and the journalists' experiences are probably pale flavors, but they carry nonetheless a hint of ambrosia.

When I am home alone I like to scatter my tackle across the floor and play with it. I may pretend I am working on it, performing preventative maintenance, but really it is playing.

I have learned that I am also a person who has to be able to go fishing whenever I can and for as long as I want to go. It is a silly thing, but there it is.

Anything is possible in the life of a man if he lives long enough. Even maturity.

I stepped on a land mine named Jayson Blair.

And believe me, to have been in the city of Tuscaloosa in October when you were young and full of Early Times and had a shining Alabama girl by your side--to have had all that and then to have seen those red shirts pour onto the field, and, then, coming behind them, with that inexorable big cat walk of his, the man himself, The Bear--that was very good indeed.

Frankly, no newspaper is set up to monitor for cheats and fabricators.