The Eternal Allure of TAHITI

The fundamentals of fishing make us all explorers because the quest for that next bite can often take us far and wide. Even when we just go back to the same place we were yesterday, we can find something we have never seen before. Some of us, though, seem genetically predisposed to go see what writer Charles Gaines entitled his superb fishing book—The Next Valley Over—even if that valley is some far-flung spot on the globe.

Back in high school, winter often cloaked my Texas home in a cold gray for days, but books transported me to the South Pacific, where it was always hot with sunny blue skies. In Wanderer, Wake of the Red Witch and The Navigator, the Argonauts had it pretty good. Herman Melville prefaced Typee with, “Sailors are the only class of men nowadays who see anything like stirring adventure”—and that was 175 years ago.

If you think this stuff sounds as exciting as I did when I was young, you might want to read between the lines, because following in the footsteps of captains like Hayden and Ralls, or even writers like Gaines, can land you in hot water. Buried deep in elegant prose and romantic scenes are often some hard rules one must learn out in the far-flung places. Rule No. 1: Sometimes, the pioneers get the arrows.

IMPARADISED

Only a few years after school, I actually