I’ve never been an early adopter of the latest fishing techniques, baits, and tackle. Instead, I’ve tended to stick to the tried and true ways I learned. Stubbornness is not a good trait.

Bob Dylan did not write “the answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,” here on the East End — it was probably in a brownstone apartment in Greenwich Village — but if the Nobel laureate has been in these environs over the past 10 days or so, he most certainly would have been inspired to pen that familiar refrain, as the gusty winds have been unrelenting of late, thwarting many a planned fishing trip.

Everyone who fishes has his or her share of fish stories. Some are impossible to believe, while some are clearly embellished and need to be taken with a grain of salt, along with a wry smile of doubt. But some are actually the honest truth, no matter how far-fetched they may sound.

The ruby-crowned kinglet is as small as my nose

It’s not a national holiday, but Tumbleweed Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, passed by us a few weeks ago.

It’s been almost two months since I last filled my boat up with diesel fuel. I hold about 85 gallons in each of two tanks below deck, and given the high price of fuel this year, I’ve consciously slowed down my cruising speed when heading out for a day of fishing or lobstering.

There is a raging battle going on throughout Long Island’s two non-city counties, Nassau and Suffolk. It splits the inhabitants into two camps, environmentalists and pro-developers.

On Friday morning I had to make a trip to Riverhead and the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a new driver’s license. Not only was it set to expire shortly, but the picture of me on the front was at least 25 years old.

Nature has many survival tricks up its sleeve when it comes to the possibility of being eaten. `We all know how the monarch butterfly is able to escape predation and fly 100 miles or more in a day during its annual migration without suffering a single molestation.

t was the wise Greek Archimedes who in 250 B.C. formulated the principle of buoyancy and that a chunk of something that drops into the sea and floats displaces its own mass. If it sinks below the surface, it displaces its own volume. When a glacier slides off a mountain face into the ocean, it displaces its own mass, and the sea rises proportionately. As it slowly melts away and becomes one with the sea, the sea rises a bit more.