Our Story — The Sporting Archive

TANNER AND HIS LINGCOD · ENSENADA, MEXICO · JUNE 2014

OUR STORY

Some days you want to keep forever.

In June 2014, I took my oldest grandson, Tanner, on his first trip to sea, just the two of us, aboard my sportfishing boat, Tight Lines, out of Ensenada, Mexico.

I woke him at first light. He watched me rig sardines with his eyes locked on every knot. A seal stole both our baits. Then his rod bent double, and when the fish finally came up out of the deep, he yelled for me to grab the gaff. That lingcod was “as big as a cow.” By noon he’d caught four, and on the ride home he took the wheel and steered us in, grinning the whole way.

ROD BENT DOUBLE

I took pictures all day. When we got home, I wrote the story of that day and made it into a book for his birthday: My First Time at Sea: Just My Grandpa and Me. I ended it with a wish that one day he’d take his own grandson out, and it would be just the two of them.

That’s when it locked in for me. The fish are long gone, but the book is still here. Photos get lost in a phone. A story written down and handed to someone becomes something they keep.

STEERING US HOME ON TIGHT LINES

Before there was a Sporting Archive,
that book was the first archive I ever made.

WHERE IT STARTED

An Iowa farm, a Red Ryder, and my dad

I grew up on a farm in Iowa, carrying a Red Ryder BB gun for miles along creeks and railroad tracks. Before one pheasant opener, my dad handed me a single-shot 20 gauge. By eleven or twelve, I was running traplines with him for muskrat, raccoon, mink and fox, learning the skills step by step from my dad.

NEBRASKA PHEASANTS

After I moved to Arkansas, I got into quail and duck hunting, and a friend’s dad sent me home with a high-running pointer pup named Checker. I had no idea how much talent, heart and desire she had. Having her, and me, trained by Ronnie Smith was the best decision I ever made. We chased birds from the South Dakota opener in October to the close of the Texas season in February for years. Looking back, I didn’t know how lucky I was.

Man, was she a machine!

CHECKER AS A PUP

CHECKER BACKING HER SON, BUCK

MOOSE CAMP · A FLY-IN NORTH OF RED LAKE, ONTARIO · FALL 1991

A LIFETIME OUTDOORS

Every one of those stories still gets told

That life outdoors took me to Ontario in October 1991 for a fly-in moose hunt north of Red Lake with a friend from Arkansas, and back to Ontario in the late ’90s to hunt bear with my good friend Dallas. There have been more whitetail hunts than I can count, in more places than I can name. When we lived in Southern California, I hunted all over the state, especially waterfowl in the Imperial Valley, where it seemed every duck and goose in the Pacific Flyway came to winter.

RED LAKE, ONTARIO · OCTOBER 5, 1991

THE ONE RULE

Our guide gave us one rule: never shoot a moose in the water. An hour after sunrise on our second full day, a bull came crashing out of the timber and stood on the bank above the river. I touched off one round from my .340 Weatherby, a perfect shoulder shot, and he dropped. Then he lunged forward, rolled down the bank and landed right in the river. Ten hours later, we had him quartered, portaged out and hanging back at camp. What a day.

CUBERA SNAPPER · PACIFIC COSTA RICA · 2016

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

In 2016, I fished the Pacific coast of Costa Rica with my dad, my best friend, Ron, and the friend I blame for my love of offshore fishing. On that trip, I landed what the captain called the largest cubera snapper ever caught on one of his boats. It couldn’t be revived, so we weighed it, took pictures and gave it to the crew for their families. At dinner that night, the captain looked up the record: by his scale, it beat the 30-pound line-class world record. The fish was long gone by then, so it never made the book. All that’s left are a few photos and the story. But it’s a trip we still talk about to this day.

Every one of those stories still gets told.
Not all of them were written down.

SARA ON THE SOUTH HOLSTON RIVER, TENNESSEE

SARA

I founded The Sporting Archive with my wife and business partner, Sara.

“Fishing has always been close to my heart. From chasing crappie on a Texas lake as little kids to wading for trout in the cold waters of the South Holston and the Caney Fork rivers in Tennessee, it has always been the time my brother and I share. The two of us on the water, talking when we feel like it and letting the quiet say the rest. It’s a serene, beautiful way to slow down, remember, and stay connected to each other.”