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Introduction

DAVID JOY

I was lucky in that I grew up in a family of fishermen. All my life I had people who took me to water. There’s a picture of me maybe four years old with a mess of catfish bending me sideways. I’m standing in the driveway at the house where I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina. I have the weight of the fish balanced on my shoulder, and the channel cats run the stringer from my head to my feet.

Since the beginning, fishing has been at the heart of everything I am.

When I was a kid, my family went to the Outer Banks each fall. They’d time the trip for late October or early November, try to catch the runs of redfish and seatrout as the fish pour out of inlets and turn south. I was eleven years old when I finally got to go.

My grandmother had given me my first saltwater rod that Christmas. Growing up in a family of outdoorsmen, there are moments that mark significant points along the journey—your first pocketknife, the first time you’re handed a rifle. The rod she gave me still stands out as the best present I ever got. When I think about why, it’s because it seemed to mark a sort of acceptance. I wasn’t just some tag-along kid anymore. I was one of them.

That fall I missed a week of sixth grade for the trip. Even after all these years I remember how cold my hands were as I scaled fish under the rental house, everyone in the family doing a job, all of us smiling and laughing as we cleaned the day’s catch. I can remember the way the playing cards smelled as someone shuffled the deck, a running game of Rummy continuing each night. But more than anything, it’s an image. It’s a late afternoon on the Atlantic with the sun fading, me watching my grandmother catch a fish.

A cold November wind blew in from the east, shifting sand and pushing the smell of seawater inland. Past the breakers, where the ocean flattened into one continuous line, the sky blended from cobalt to orange along the horizon; higher, flax yellow gradually rising to white. The winter sun dropped behind sprigs of sea oats, slowly sinking into the dunes. A slick pane of wetted sand shone like a sheet of glass.

My family stood along the shore, each member angling a line into sea green breakers. Their darkened silhouettes grew smaller down the beach, each shadow holding a rod that bowed to incoming tide. The profile farthest away turned hard toward the dunes and the rod doubled over. My grandmother had a fish.

Everyone along the shore turned and looked at her for a second before concentrating again on the pull of his or her own rod. I stared at my family stretched down the cold shoreline, my grandmother reeling in a spot, the first stars coming into view over the ocean. These are the types of details that have always stayed with me. Times in the woods and on water.

All I know of beauty I learned with a fishing rod in my hand.

That fact lies at the heart of why this book exists. Every writer in these pages believes there is no substitute for what can be learned by time on the water. Collectively we wanted this book to benefit the C.A.S.T. For Kids Foundation, a fishing-related nonprofit that operates three programs: C.A.S.T. for Kids, Fishing Kids, and Take A Warrior Fishing. C.A.S.T. for Kids focuses on special-needs children and their caretakers, Fishing Kids on urban youth, while Take A Warrior Fishing supports military personnel and their families, all three programs working to get people, and especially children, on the water.

The truth is I can’t imagine having grown up without a river. There were years where I didn’t miss a day on the water. Literally, not a day. Nowadays, I don’t get out quite as often as I used to, but I still fish fifty or sixty days a year. I make my living as a novelist and that allows me to be in the woods more than most. Another benefit is that I’ve gotten to know some of the most talented writers at work today, and I’m lucky enough to call them friends. This book is a culmination of those two things—my obsession with fishing and the kindness of incredibly talented friends.

In this book, twenty-five award-winning and bestselling authors were asked simply to write about fishing. Some, like New York Times bestselling author Eric Rickstad, who helped me edit, are just as passionate about the sport as I am. Others like Erik Storey self-admittedly can’t flip a button cast. But Gather at the River isn’t a collection of big fish stories. The tales here aren’t even centered on rod and reel. There are essays about digging worms, running lobster traps, and feeling like bait when you’re swimming with sharks. This is PEN/Faulkner Finalist Ron Rash writing about the mountains of his youth. It’s C.J. Box explaining where he wants his ashes spread when he dies. This is an anthology about friendship, family, love and loss, and everything in between.

With stories ranging from Puerto Rico to Australia, from chasing trout in Appalachian streams to grabbing frogs in a Louisiana swamp, these pages are filled with laughter and tears. There is grit, there is beauty, and there is the overwhelming power of memory, because as Thoreau wrote, “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not really the fish they are after.” This book is a diverse testament to that fact. But above all else, this book will get a few kids on the water who might not otherwise have the chance. So for that, dear reader, thank you.

We hope you enjoy the stories.