For some species, the answer will naturally be off-shore hatcheries. This is an expensive proposition, of course, but then again, so is the depletion of man's healthiest meat. Countries who eat fish as a primary staple are our healthiest: the Japanese live the longest, Hawaiians are America's healthiest. And the Trobrianders, despite malaria, live unusually long and healthy lives. When Pacific Islanders give in to spam, they get fat. Samoans have almost no fish in their diet and the King of Tonga recently directed a national campaign of fitness in which people who lost the most weight won prizes. Curiously, spam is produced in Minnesota.

Fishing with a fly-pole is much the way fishing has always been done. And for that, it is one of the last respectful forms of fishing. Marine aquarists have brought rare species of reef fish near extinction, tropical fishermen use chemicals and bombs to bring fish to the top. They sell the poisoned bodies to places like Minnesota, frozen. But the fly-fisherman, despite his inherent elitism, is the last true sport-fisherman: no mechanized reels plated in gold, no embroidered 'team' shirts, no 'its 360 horsepower!', and no big guts. Fly-fishing is one fish at a time, with a stove grilling near shore.

A pharmacist, well into his seventies, floated past us in an outboard. "Good day for fishing!" he said, and when we said, "yup", he swung around and showed us his fly-pole. "Check out my grubs," he said, opening a pill bottle of larva and chatting about 'good fishing', and isn't a nice day? That was Minnesotan, to talk about weather. Minnesotans are clean, and educated. They are also wealthy, and have given in to sprawl. They are willing accomplices to 'Jesse Ventura', and the 'Mall of America', they are proud of the attention they get to 'cold weather', but most of the talk of stoicism and 'sixty below' is a bunch of hot-air, or as they would say in Minneapolis, 'a bunch of baloney, ya know?'

Minnesotans sue people less. They get less funding per capita from the Federal government than any other state outside of Wisconsin. They eat potatoes. They like snowmobiles. They are innocent, in many ways, of the rest of America. Like Alaskans, or Puerto Ricans or Guamanians, they are somewhat bewildered by the rest of the country - they are isolated, and happy with that. But Minnesota Public Radio, and rigorous education, and a penchant for reading make Minnesota a rather nice place, at least to fish. But the Pharmacist, like any number of lake-people, are a different breed.

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.