The idea of the hatfish was Aric’s. Back in October of 1999 on my first trip to Strawberry Lake, Aric brought a baseball cap declaring that the member of the Hatish Crew that caught the biggest fish of the trip would keep the hat until the next trip. And so began the tradition of the hatfish.

We each have held the hat at some point. Sometimes the streaks last a long time. Sometimes the dry spells are even longer.

The competition is friendly, but it is competition. It adds another dimension to the Strawberry excursions. It remains an underlying theme that connects everything else together. It provides a basis for trash talking but when all is said and done, I find that I’m just as happy to hand it off to a worthy contender as I am to win it back. Maybe that is because I win it more than the others…

• Hatfish October 1999
• Hatfish April 2000
• Hatfish July 2000
• Hatfish October 2000
• Hatfish May 2001
• Hatfish October 2001
• Hatfish June 2002
• Hatfish October 2002
• Hatfish July 2003
• Hatfish October 2003
• Hatfish July 2004
• Hatfish May 2005
• Hatfish October 2005
• Hatfish May 2006
• Hatfish October 2006
• Hatfish May 2007
• Hatfish February 2008
• Hatfish May 2008
• Hatfish October 2008
• Hatfish May 2009
• Hatfish October 2009
• Hatfish May 2010
• Hatfish October 2010
• Hatfish May 2011
• Hatfish October 2011
• Hatfish May 2012
• Hatfish October 2012
• Hatfish May 2013
• Hatfish October 2013
• Hatfish May 2014
• Hatfish May 2015
• Hatfish October 2015

The contents you see here has been transplanted from my old site Hatfish.com