It began to rain, and so we headed for the woods, where we could pick them from the earth and pocket them for bait. "I haven't done this since I was four," I said. "Yeah, it's fun, huh? You don't realize until after college that the best things are what you did when you were four," Hans said.

When the rains grew heavier, and we gave up on the nightcrawlers, the line and sinker, we went knee-deep in the water by the mayflies hovering inches above, and cast flys into the shallows. This was fishing the way it had always been done; a glorious line snapping back and forth, and no fish to be caught. Just us, the water and the rain. No more worms, no more lures, no more bobbers.

Any fisherman who doesn't take it all too seriously will tell you the same thing. Its not about catching fish, but for me, fishing was about food, and that's why I had taken under Hans' direction. In the wood, a large-format photographer doesn't have an idle pack to fill, and to go farther than a day hike, we have to learn to what they call 'fishin' and foragin'.' In Minnesota, fishing is king. One neighbor describes the best date as a heated ice house, an ice drill, and two lines. Fish have always been a part of my life - I was an aquarist for 15 years, and then I learned to spear, which I had trouble with since my catch rarely died, and instead went limping and bleeding into the depths.

Later, I would work in a fish meal processing plant in Bremen, where I learned to take the horrid smell of dried fish, and learned that Germans didn't appreciate me sitting near them on the train home. Later, I began an unsuccessful seafood export company, where I met Mr. Phu and Mr. Hand. Mr. Hand said, "I cannot believe you sell dried sea horses!" I said, "my sea horses are farm-raised, but you (The Vietnamese) eat them (as a male aphrodisiac) and take everything from the sea!"

I told him that the Vietnamese had over-fished the squid in the South China Sea, and why did they continue to do it? In his middle years, Mr. Phu worked directly under the socialist Minister of Agriculture, as a squid drier. I said, "I can get you squid!" He said how much? I thought, two-thousand dollars a ton. I said, "eight-thousand dollars a ton!" I called the Peruvians and said, "I need you to dry squid!" They said, "we can dry squid for you, Meester Gauger!" For a year we went about perfecting the process of drying squid into flat pancakes through a fishmeal facility.

Great Plains Catfish Heaven, Paddling and driving the Louisiana Bayou Paddling and driving the backwaters of bayou country with a swamp maverick who claims that Louisiana will sink, or face horrific damage from a hurricane, unless efforts are made to reverse the damage to the coasts and bayous. Flyfishing with Mr. Phu, Lake Minnetonka Fishing with brothers on the shore of that all-Minnesotan lake in this Northern Great Plains suburban center. Port Sulphur, Louisiana Notes on fishing with Andre in the gulf after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the coast. Harmony, Minnesota Driving along the Laura Ingolls Highway. Texas Hill Country Texas' heart is a place unlike the rest of Texas, and also symbolic of the Great Plains. Stepping into the Hill Country.