first memory in life is catching bait for his grandfather on the family dock in Boynton Beach at age 3. At age 5, his family traded the waterfront of Southeast Florida for the rolling hills and wooded valleys of a ranch, trout stream and fish hatchery in Northeast Nebraska.
The miles of stream, 37 hatchery ponds and isolated miles for hiking and hunting proved the perfect venue to further his outdoor education. His first job, at age 6, demonstrated the prosperity to be attained from a life on the water, when his father agreed to pay him the fabulous sum of 25 cents for every 100 green sunfish he could extract from the golden shiner rearing ponds with an antique bamboo fly rod or cane pole. At 8, with improved math skills, he ventured into selling live snapping turtles and giant bullfrogs at a dollar apiece for jumping contests as far away as Mark Twain’s fabled Calaveras County event in California.
His skills as a trout angler expanded exponentially when the federal government unceremoniously dumped 3,000 surplus trout in the family creek. Upon seeing local anglers catching and keeping the 7-inch rainbows, Jerry launched a personal campaign to keep the little guys out of the frying pan, catching 1,102 of them and raising them to adulthood at the hatchery. He kept his own personal pet rainbow trout for 11 years.
Jerry attended the University of Nebraska and later Florida Atlantic University. He left the education field to join the Florida Sportsman staff in April 2000. Pastimes include teaching skeet shooting and cooking at outdoor workshops. He maintains a fleet of kayaks to accommodate his love of flats fishing for snook, trout and redfish, with plans to add offshore kayaking for tarpon and cobia to his fishing resume.
He has two children, Jennifer, age 12, and Michael, 9.
