By John Merwin

There was a little fish-type activity here over Christmas weekend, despite its being a cold and blustery winter holiday. I warmed things up a bit by making an old-fashioned New England fish chowder. Here’s how it worked.

Traditional ingredients are local to the New England coast, but can be found anywhere: salt pork, cod or haddock (or any sweet, white-fleshed fish from freshwater or salt), onions, potatoes, water, milk or cream or both, salt and pepper. The trick is in adding ingredients in the right order to account for differences in cooking times.

By John Merwin

Happy winter solstice. Today being the first official day of winter, I’m reminded of the aching twinge I feel in my right (casting arm) shoulder when it gets cold.

After about 60 years of repetitive casting motions, especially with fly rods, my shoulder was a mess, somewhat like that of an overworked baseball pitcher. The rotator cuff was rough, plus a little bone-spur growth, plus arthritis...it had gotten to a point at which I could no longer cast without substantial pain.

By Joe Cermele

Fish don't care one lick that you've set a day (or three) aside to film an episode of a web fishing show. I've learned much about this since I started putting "Hook Shots" together back in the spring. I'll come clean: for every episode you've seen this season, I've had at least two misses in between. So for the final episode of 2009, I thought I'd go out on a humble note and show you some of the intended Hook Shots that just never came to pass. Hopefully, you'll get a laugh or two.

By Joe Cermele

Last night I was digging through my freezer and buried beneath the Ellio's Pizza and a few venison backstraps, I found this lone vacuum-sealed trout. I thought quite hard about where it came from. I'm usually pretty good about marking the date and species on all sealed fish, but this 12-inch brown trout, no doubt a local stocker, is anonymous and apparently slipped out of view during cold storage. Its origins remain a mystery.