A long cast : reflections on 50 years of visiting the Martha's Vineyard surf /| Mike Carotta.

Our passions have a way of doing that for us: extending our lives

In 1971, a father and son ventured out of their apartment in New Jersey to the Island of Martha' s Vineyard to try their hand at surfcasting. That trip began a life of Spring trips to the waters' s edge in search of bluefish and striped bass. Fifty years later, Mike Carotta takes readers along for thirty straight nights and days of fishing.

This is not a How To book. It does not contain the secrets to a fantastic fishing career. Rather, hard fishing has a way of revealing lessons from the shore and the people who gather there- binding together strangers in conversations and gestures, failures and successes, new learnings, and, eventually, creating old friends.

Through it all, more than fish are caught- and shared. The result is a profound collection of essays on life with some notes from the trade filtered in. Join Mike on his pilgrimage back to where the distance between heaven and earth gets a little thinner and the real "keepers" of the trip go far beyond the fish on the end of the line.

"I am not a good surf fisherman. There are no helpful fishing hints here. This is a collection of recollection: stories of saltwater characters, occurrences, and conversations. Like stars in the night sky, they are best enjoyed when you get some distance from the lights of other stuff." – Excerpt from A Long Cast