My name is Rick Bach and I'm a freelance writer with a heavy emphasis on outdoor writing. Inspired by my heroes, such as Ernest Hemingway, Thomas McGuane, the late John Merwin, Jerry Gibbs, Bill Heavey, John Gierach, Jim Harrison and many others, I've taken to a life toiling away in words and waters. I have fished in 28 of the lower 48 states, caught 53 different species of fish in more than 100 towns and cities. I've written for and been published in (or on the website of) Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, On The Water, The Drake, The Fly Fishing Journal, The New Jersey Angler and others. After losing my father to Melanoma in 2013, I turned my attention to battling this disease using my history and contacts in the outdoor writing world.
I set up this blog to chronicle a journey, thanks to Outdoor Sportsman Group and our first sponsor, Buff, to "fish for a cure." Buff donated a dollar per pound of fish caught to the Melanoma Research Foundation, and we raised more than 700 dollars fishing throughout Florida.
This coming winter I am repeating the journey, this time up and down the coast, from South Carolina to Florida, for the great people at B.A.S.S. and their affiliated publications. But we're not just dealing with one sponsor this time, we've got four! The people at Native Eyewear, Get Vicious Fishing, Sunology Sunscreen, Hanes, and Rick Roth at Mirror Image T-shirts in Rhode Island have all contributed to the cause. Some have given dollars (Sunology and Get Vicious), some have donated products (like Native Eyewear and Hanes), and some, like Rick Roth, have given their time in making something unique, like our shirts, for the journey.
I'm more than grateful to any of you who follow the journey, and if you'd like to give to the M.R.F., please do. And if you send me your confirmation of a gift of $25 or more, with a shipping address, I'll put a Catch a Cure T-shirt in the mail for you! Thank you for reading.