Catching Up With… Mike Sepelak

There were always two types of bloggers. There were the writers, and then there were the people who wrote. While most outdoor bloggers tended to be the latter (pot meet kettle), on occasion you’d encounter someone with the true skill of articulating experiences, observations, and feelings through words that deeply connected with the reader through the screen. One example, and one of my “must reads” was always Mike’s Gone Fishin’… Again.

See, Mike Sepelak is a writer; he’s one of those talented people I described above. He often wrote about fishing, as well as a bit about other outdoor pursuits, but there was always a story, a message, and often an emotion expressed in his entries. Even when the subject was as simple as a trip report. They were never pretentious and often injected a touch of dry wit. The kind of humor you can imagine him writing with a sly wink and devilish smile. (A few of Mike’s personal favorites can be found here.)

Okay, enough introduction (and adulation), let’s catch up with Mike Sepelak…

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Mike, what have you been up to over the last ten or so years?

It’s been a rollercoaster ride, these past ten years.

The first five were jam-packed with fishing travel. Alaska to Abaco. Saskatchewan to the Mexican Baja. British Columbia to Louisiana to Michigan to the swamps of the Okefenokee and darn near every place in between. Crazy, fun stuff. Then came Covid.

The pandemic shut me down harder than many as both Mary and I have skeletons in our medical closets that could have made exposure problematic. Right or wrong, we retreated to our home here in the woods of North Carolina and settled in for a long, long time. There are certainly worse places to become hermits.

Seclusion had its silver linings, though. We learned a lot about ourselves. I was also able to go eighteen months without a haircut or shave. It wasn’t pretty.

As the dust settled and we finally began poking our noses out again, a couple of those medical skeletons also got loose and another year or so was lost to a litany of doctor appointments, procedures, and recoveries. We are incredibly fortunate to have each other, Mary and I, and together we pushed through quite a lot.

Things have stabilized for the time being (knocking on wood here) and we appreciate our surroundings more than ever, though in a very different way. Life is now fully confirmed to be fleeting, not to be taken for granted, and that’s a sobering realization, especially as you approach your seventies. We’re still homebodies to a large degree, but adventure continues to call and we’re getting better about answering it more often.

In the meantime, it’s awfully nice here.

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Do you miss the fishing blogging community at all? Have you kept in touch with anyone from that bygone era?

I miss the sense of comradery and the raw creative expression that filled the blogosphere of that time. I especially miss the energy I drew from it. I’ve tried, off and on over the past few years, to crank the writing machine back up but its engine struggles to start. There’s water in the gas tank, wren nests in the carburetor, and squirrels chewing on the wiring. Mostly, those subtle, pivotal moments that occur during adventures that fueled my pieces have been fewer and farther between. I’m not very good at making things up and need to experience a spark of truth firsthand to get something started. (All bets are off after that, of course.)

The good news is that, despite my dry spell, many of the relationships that I established within the writing community remain strong. No matter how far-flung, my “blogging people” are still some of the very best friends that I have.

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Are you still fishy? Do you still find time to fish? If so, how often, where, and for what?

Honestly, I’ve never considered myself fishy. I’ve fished a lot, yes, but the act of catching a fish has always been secondary to stuff that happens all around it. I like to think my writing reflected that. I do still get out, but not as regularly as I once did. It’s a sad fact that many of my home waters have been hit hard by escalating development, industrial malpractice, and climate-driven mayhem, and I find myself visiting them less and less often as time moves along. I have been spoiled by what they once were and that’s hard to look past.

I do still try to make annual trips to some of my favorite destinations with my favorite people (and the terrific crews they put together). Winter redfishing in Louisiana and summer carping in Michigan with Cameron Mortenson, Autumn musky hunts in Wisconsin with Bob White and Tim Schulz, and, whenever possible, places salty and warm for bonefish or permit with Chris Hunt or Louis Cahill. These trips, and more importantly, these people, have done more for me than I’d ever be able to express.

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I found most people wrote their blogs as a personal journaling exercise or a creative outlet. What’s your creative outlet today?

What’s new in the past ten years is my revived pursuit of music. I played guitar in a bar band in my teens and early twenties but sold it all when the kids arrived and it came time to start putting food on the table. Adulthood sucks. Even while not playing, I’ve been a rabid rock/blues junkie and after nearly forty years I asked myself what I was waiting for. I bought a Telecaster and started over. Warning: Guitars are like fly rods. You always need another. And another. And a bass. And amplifiers. And all kinds of pedals. It’s insidious. Just like my fly fishing (and my photography, for that matter), my skills fall far short of my ever-expanding instrument collection but the gearhead in me just can’t help it.

I also continue to find great joy on the soccer pitch and I still knock heads with a fantastic set of guys a couple of times a week. All in their 60s and 70s, some that I’ve played with for more than 30 years, they inspire me every time we lace up the boots. In truth, I may have missed this outlet more than anything else during our healthcare interruptions, fishing included. There’s something purifying about chasing yourself into exhaustion and then having a pint (or three) afterwards with your mates. We should all have such people around us.

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I’m interviewing you today. Is there anybody from outdoor blogging’s past you think I should track down and interview next?

Where to start?

You’ve just interviewed Chris Hunt, the person who started me down this path and to whom I owe so much. You might also give Cameron Mortenson a shout. His influential Fiberglass Manifesto continues to this day, as does Louis Cahill’s Gink and Gasoline. There’s also Erin Block and Matt Smythe whose Mysteries Internal and Fishing Poet inspired me to put pen to paper (figuratively, of course) in the first place. Matt Copeland and Steven Brutger’s Stalking the Seam always got to the heart of things for me and, after all these years, my sides are still a bit sore from laughing at Quill Gordon’s exploits on The View from Fish in a Barrel Pond.

Oy. I’d forgotten how much I miss those days. Thanks for the reminder.

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Is there anything you’d like to add that I didn’t ask you?

Yeah. I described this past decade as a rollercoaster ride. The fact is that for every gut-wrenching drop there are equivalent exhilarating climbs. I’ve been blessed to have family and friends in the car with me for both, rise and fall, including many who I would not have come to know without that amazing blogging community. I am forever grateful to it. It’s been one hell of a ride, in large part because of the blog, and I am excited to see what’s around the next bend.

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Finally, assuming you’d want to be found, where can some of your old blog friends find you today?

Oh, I’m not hard to find. The blog’s still out there, though untouched for quite some time. Just blow off the dust. And there’s the usual socials. Feel free to give a shout.

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Many thanks to Mike Sepelak for “Catching Up With…” us today.

Post Script: If you’re wondering why I’m interviewing these random people, or just what “Catching Up With…” is all about, visit this page for a brief backstory.

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