I’m the kind of guy who thinks about quality and value in my fishing. I sit and study the hatch, for instance, before casting. I appreciate the environment in which this sport takes us. I linger and loaf on in-stream rocks and watch caddis dance over the Batten Kill, for example—there go the jumping, flitting bugs. I’ve been accused of being a slacker while fish were feeding on the surface at, say, the Madison in Montana or Lobsterville Beach off of Martha’s Vineyard—watching, appreciating, taking it all in…. My answer to the critics? Achieve equipoise. Appreciate what we see. Behold the beauty. Time is a priceless commodity. Time to fish, time to enjoy what we care about. Time to escape.

Like fishing this past summer with my friend Capt. Tony Biski, who heads out of the outer reaches of Cape Cod. Tony had the flats of Monomoy dialed in, and then Mother Nature threw us a curve. Monomoy used to be the place to be in the Northeast for sight-fishing for striped bass and bluefish. Used to be was about 10 years ago. Then after a big blow the barrier island around which the fish migrated changed, permutated. (The shifting sands of time, indeed.) So we can’t easily take a boat to where the fish are, or where they used to be. But stripers still migrate, and we still cast for them…

In the boat with Tony this past summer casting sinking lines and large flies, we found big, hungry fish in the rips outside of Chatham, Cape Cod—a little different variety of fishing than stalking the fish on the flats but offering a lot to appreciate. Quality and value, thanks to Tony and the fish.

What you hold in your hands is all about quality and value. We’ve upgraded our pages to 100; we’re printing on heavy paper stock; we’re binding the magazine so you can stack it and keep it on, say, your fly-tying table. We’re investing in quality, for you, our readers.