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The news was a shock and I don't know if it's just part of aging as you see your friends pass on, but it's been a bad year for loosing some great fishermen. Tim was a very private person and even those who knew him a very long time didn't know very much about him.
I first met Tim at Wetmores Tackle in Westbrook, he was distributing issue number 1 of the Connecticut Rhode Island Fisherman. He invited my friend Frank and I to join him in Narragansett in a couple of nights for a tour of the his RI. And what a tour it was. Tim was a displaced jetty jockey from NJ with what seemed to be some odd tackle. He pulled out his light stick, which mounted a Penn Jigmaster with 40# mono, his"go to" rod had 50. Even with such stout stuff, his drag was zinging that night.
He was still a journalism student at URI, recently returning from a combat tour in Vietnam when he landed a gig that defined his career. Earnings at the paper were meager. He lived in a shack on the salt pond that was stacked with Fisherman magazines and Dinty Moore Beef Stew cans. Tim was editor, writer, reporter and circulation manager.
Tim was quiet and reserved. The most excited I ever seen him was him throwing a fit at his rusty neck light and its 4 batteries one night on the short wall and flinging it into the channel. He was passionate and outspoken about fisheries conservation whether it was cod, scup or stripers. Though he sold bass in his days at URI, he became an advocate for catch and release long before it was fashionable. He certainly wasn't well off but he released thousands of dollars worth of bass each season back in the '80s.
Tim was a man of simple means, for years he used a bungee as a surf belt. When he switched to needlefish from Rebels, you saw an ad in the Fisherman for 4 Rebels, $2each pick up at the office. He never held onto anything that didn't have a spot in his military surplus plug bag.
This past year I saw a new enthusiasm in Tim, he was as excited as a teenager about tarpon fishing from the Keys bridges and he had a new book project on fishing Block Island.
He wrote from an experienced hand and researched his articles well, always giving credit to his sources. Tim rarely referred to himself in a story and some of his best writing was parodies of his friends.
The fishing community lost a good friend.
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