A Long Cast

Reflections on 50 Years of Visiting the Martha's Vineyard Surf

Mike Carotta

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Paperback

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English

Torchflame Books
05 August 2025

Memoirs; Sports & outdoor recreation; Fishing, angling

Our passions have a way of doing that for us: extending our lives

In 1971, a father and son ventured out of their apartment in New Jersey to the Island of Martha's Vineyard to try their hand at surfcasting. That trip began a life of Spring trips to the waters' edge in search of bluefish and striped bass. Fifty years later, Mike Carotta takes readers along for thirty straight nights and days of fishing.

This is not a How To book. It does not contain the secrets to a fantastic fishing career. Rather, hard fishing has a way of revealing lessons from the shore and the people who gather there-binding together strangers in conversations and gestures, failures and successes, new learnings, and, eventually, creating old friends.

Through it all, more than fish are caught-and shared. The result is a thoughtful collection of essays on life with some notes from the trade filtered in. Join Mike on his pilgrimage back to where the distance between heaven and earth gets a little thinner and the real ""keepers"" of the trip go far beyond the fish on the end of the line.

""I am not a good surf fisherman. There are no helpful fishing hints here. This is a collection of recollection: stories of saltwater characters, occurrences, and conversations. Like stars in the night sky, they are best enjoyed when you get some distance from the lights of other stuff."" - Excerpt from A Long Cast

""We read books for all kinds of reasons. Learning to fish is not the reason to read A Long Cast. Learning why we go fishing certainly is. ... [This book] is a compendium of those warm memories that keep us going through the offseason and keep us coming back to those places we love. This is not about the fish we catch, but about the people who have been caught by the fish in a magical place."" -Rip Cunningham, former Editor-In-Chief and Publisher of Salt Water Sportsman magazine, an inductee into the Fishing Hall of Fame, and a friend of the fish

""Carotta admits, again and again, that he's not all that great at fishing, and that humility makes the book sing. ... He isn't afraid to mix the mundane with the profound. One page has him fumbling with tackle, the next has him brushing up against something eternal."" -Literary Titan

By: Mike Carotta
Imprint: Torchflame Books
Edition: Large type / large print edition
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 14mm
Weight: 372g
ISBN: 9781611537116
ISBN 10: 1611537118
Pages: 264
Publication Date: 05 August 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Mike Carotta has a doctorate in Leadership Education and is a lifelong religious educator and surfcaster. Mike began fishing the Vineyard at the age of nineteen. He has driven to the Island every Spring from five different states over the years, including the last twenty-one from Omaha, Nebraska. He and Catherine have recently moved to North Carolina where he has to adjust to a very different saltwater fishery. He is now trying to make a decent pizza.

Reviews for A Long Cast: Reflections on 50 Years of Visiting the Martha's Vineyard Surf

""We read books for all kinds of reasons. Learning to fish is not the reason to read A Long Cast. Learning why we go fishing certainly is. ... [This book] is a compendium of those warm memories that keep us going through the offseason and keep us coming back to those places we love. This is not about the fish we catch, but about the people who have been caught by the fish in a magical place."" -Rip Cunningham, former Editor-In-Chief and Publisher of Salt Water Sportsman magazine, an inductee into the Fishing Hall of Fame, and a friend of the fish ""Carotta admits, again and again, that he's not all that great at fishing, and that humility makes the book sing. ... He isn't afraid to mix the mundane with the profound. One page has him fumbling with tackle, the next has him brushing up against something eternal."" -Literary Titan