Fishing for Spotted Seatrout

 

Fishing for Spotted Seatrout: From the Carolinas To Texas

Jan S. Maizler

In Fishing for Spotted Seatrout, Jan Maizler, a world-renowned light tackle expert, shares more than 30 years’ experience and innovative tactics for catching this popular fish in its range from the Carolinas to Texas. For beginners and veteran fishermen, Maizler covers every aspect of angling for this magnificent gamefish. This book belongs on your bookshelf and in your tackle bag.

“Maizler’s name has been inexorably linked to seatrout for decades. This book is an overdue, welcome, and essential addition to our angling literature. Kudos to the master!”—Glenn Law, executive editor, Salt Water Sportsman Magazine

 

 

How did you first develop a love for fishing?

My father moved to Miami Beach during the 1950’s hotel building boom. We settled on South Beach, only a few blocks from both the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay. By the time I was ten years old, I was catching snappers, ladyfish, jacks, and pompano from these waters and the rest is history.

You’re a former International Game Fish Association world-record holder, and you’ve caught so many varieties of fish. Why did you decide to write a guide for specifically catching spotted seatrout? What made this fish stand out?

If you did a survey on inshore saltwater fish popularity from the Carolinas to Texas, it’s quite possible the spotted seatrout would top that fishy totem. Since I’m a light tackle inshore angling and travel writer, this statistic convinced me to write a guidebook that would reach and teach the greatest numbers, and, more importantly, future shallow water marine anglers in this wide swath of habitat.

How is your day structured when you write? What’s your writing routine?

After I see my psychotherapy patients and my other obligations are fulfilled, I set my sights on writing. After having nine books and maybe a thousand articles published, I’ve found the quiet hours of the night the best time to reflect on ideas, theories, and sheer factual content and write about it. Interestingly, I’ve never had a dry or blocked period in my career.

From all of your fishing experience, what is your favorite fish to catch and where?

If you forgive the conundrum, I have many favorites. Because of my love of hunting for and sightcasting to shallow water game fish, I have a forty plus years romance with bonefish, tarpon, permit, snook, redfish, and of course, “laid-up” or tailing gator seatrout.

What’s your most exciting or awe-inspiring fishing story?

It is definitely the conquest of my IGFA world record permit: 23 pounds, 15 ounces on four-pound test line. This silvery gladiator fought a long and crafty battle over a vast field of coral-topped flats and rock strewn channels. The struggle lasted over an hour and my success was equally due to Captain Frank Garisto’s skillful boat handling in chasing down the permit and keeping my line as straight up and down as we could. Kudos to all!

What are you currently reading?

I continue to write far more than I read. At present, the latter consists of reviewing current events and world politics each day for about thirty minutes.

Who are your favorite authors, and how have they influenced or informed your own work?

My favorite author is Vladimir Nabokov for sheer genius of wordplay. And then, there would be Faulkner. But for the kind of didactic (fishing) or insight-based (psychotherapy) writing I do, my actual clinical experience is the well I draw from.

You’ve written several books as a fisherman and a few as a therapist. What are you working on next?

My plans call for writing a book exploring the notion that much of our behavior is governed by ideas, beliefs, and decisions we’ve made about life all the while being almost entirely unaware of these influences because of the sugar coating we apply to get through each day. I feel this is a far broader conception than Freud’s idea of repression of impulses and memories being “sent” to the unconscious mind. For now, these are just cobbled sketches stuffed in my muse’s pocket and subject to revision.

What’s the first piece of advice you would give to beginners hoping to catch a spotted seatrout?

Honestly, to read Fishing for Spotted Seatrout.