In The New York Times, Chris Santella (author of Fifty Places to Fly Fish Before You Dieand Fifty Favorite Fly Fishing Tales) goes fishing with shark fishing guru Conway Bowman in the seas off of San Diego and discovers it’s “not a dainty game.”

“The notion of fly-fishing for sharks seems as if it were the product of an overactive (and likely distraught) imagination — perhaps a scribbling from Hunter S. Thompson’s notebook after a cocktail of espresso and mescaline.”

Is the loss of interest in fish and duck stamps, as some artists claim, a sign that no one is interested in wildlife art any more? Or have changes in taste and state economies driven stamp artists out of business? In the Wall Street Journal, Barry Newman writes about sporting art’s latest endangered species.

“To lure collectors, states issued a lot more stamps than they had hunters or anglers. A stamp glut compounded the print glut. The revenue stamps often cost more to print than they raised in revenue. As a result, Mr. Dumaine now counts 15 states that have eliminated duck stamps, on top of the 16 that have dropped their trout stamps.”

Paul Greenberg of The New York Times explores the global decline of the “totemic” bluefin tuna, stemming from commercial overfishing, global sushi “appetites outstripping supply,” and a patchwork of ineffectual “high seas” multinational agreements responsible for maintaining viability of the species.

“Tuna then are both a real thing and a metaphor. Literally they are one of the last big public supplies of wild fish left in the world. Metaphorically they are the terminus of an idea: that the ocean is an endless resource where new fish can always be found. In the years to come we can treat tuna as a mile marker to zoom past on our way toward annihilating the wild ocean or as a stop sign that compels us to turn back and radically reconsider.”

photo credit: Stewart Butterfield

Scott & Nix did an excellent interview with fishing artist, book illustrator and fly fisher Flick Ford this week. Flick fly fishes “99 percent of the time,” with most of his days spent in the Delaware River system, Berkshires and northeast coast.

“On average I would say [I fish] about 90-100 days a year, down a bit from when I used to fish 100-150 days a year. Gas, time, money is in shorter supply these days, but no complaints.”

Ford was most recently illustrator of the popular book FISH: 77 Great Fish of North America.

Of the American Mountain Guides Association’s 294 certified rock, alpine, and ski mountaineering guides, only 26 are women. Working as the only full-time female climbing guides in New York’s six-million-acre Adirondack Park, climbers Karen Stolz and Emilie Drinkwater would hardly notice this fact.

The New York Times sat down with them both to talk about climbing origins, choosing challenging (but safe) routes, and the mental and physical demands of full-time work in the backcountry:

“‘You have to have a physical aptitude and the right kind of mind frame,’ Drinkwater said. ‘It’s fun, but it’s also hard and scary. I like big mountains. I like long routes. They don’t necessarily have to be the hardest things.’”

photo credit: mariachily

The Mars Ocean Odyssey: Sailor Reid Stowe has spent more than three years at sea aboard a 70-foot schooner (he built himself), battling loneliness, sewing torn sails, even growing his own food–all intended to break the record for the longest sea voyage.

He did have a partner early on–Soanya Ahmad–but she had to leave 10 months into the voyage to deliver their child.

Recently, Stowe sailed into New York, putting an end to his epic journey, and allowing himself to see people and his new son for the first time in years. “He viewed his trip in the tradition of religious hermits who go off by themselves: ‘You not only enlighten yourself, but you nourish the spirit of your culture,’” reports John Tierney of The New York Times.

photo credit: ktylerconk

Renowned adrenaline junkie, Jeb Corliss has hurled himself from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Seattle’s Space Needle, the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Stratosphere casino in Las Vegas, and even received three years probation after being arrested trying to breach (famously) New York’s Empire State building.

Now, Corliss has set his sites on an even more radical departure: “becoming the first man to jump from a plane and land (alive) without a parachute.”

“‘Everybody has a gift, something they’re good at — and my gift is fear. I can do things with fear. When most people are crippled by fear, on the ground, puking, that’s when I’m at my best,’” reports Bill Gifford of Men’s Journal

photo credit: robertpaulyoung

First serialized in The Century Magazine (1900), Sailing Alone Around the World tells the story of adventurer Joshua Slocum circumnavigating the world solo. Sailing from Boston in April 1895 aboard the Spray, a thirty-six foot wooden sloop, Captain Slocum eventually sailed forty-six thousand  miles over three years. Recently republished in Nowhere: Travel Stories.

“For, one day, well off the Patagonian coast, while the sloop was reaching under short sail, a tremendous wave, the culmination, it seemed, of many waves, rolled down upon her in a storm, roaring as it came. I had only a moment to get all sail down and myself up on the peak halyards, out of danger, when I saw the mighty crest towering masthead-high above me.”

photo credit: gabriel amadeus

Todd Balf of Outside heads to the coastal town of York, Maine to attend a weeklong surfboard building workshop offered by Grain Surfboards, and tries to explain his newfound obsession:

“…I’m still trying to figure out why I felt the need to come here. Partly it’s because I want to build something nice, to prove I can—despite a barnful of half-assed projects back home that say I can’t. And I want to find a path into a sport that, up until now, I’ve resisted. More and more, guys I used to ride bikes with are absent, gone surfing. My kids surf. So do my basketball buddies. I live only minutes from a nice little Massachusetts break.”

photo credit: rowland_rick