Writing about what he loves
ST. PETERSBURG — Now 51, Andy Whitcomb still has memories of his childhood — and how he fell in love with the outdoors.
Born in Gainesville, Fla., his family moved to Stillwater, Okla., when he was 3.
“I can recall lugging my dad's tackle box with two hands as we made our way through the field to get to the pond by our farm,” Whitcomb said. “I've always loved fishing.
“I even love the smell of fish, everything about it. Going fishing almost became obsessive to me.”
Now married and with children, Whitcomb and his wife live in St. Petersburg, near Foxburg. He still fishes, but only a couple of days a week.
And he's become a successful writer as well, having won eight to 10 awards through the Outdoor Writers Association of America.
“Most of those awards have come in the excellence in craft competition,” Whitcomb said. “I've always been into writing. I used to scribble notes on napkins. I fired off (to publications) amusing fishing stuff I experienced in high school, but always got rejected.
“When my kids were old enough and I took them fishing, I could see the passion for it in their eyes. I began writing about that.”
Whitcomb met his wife, Shannon — who hails from the Rimersburg/Sligo area — at a fishing research project in Iowa. Once they had children, they decided to move closer to her family's region.
“She's very close to her family and trying to make 20-hour drives up to Pennsylvania three or four times a year just wasn't working,” Whitcomb said. “I was working on my father's farm in Oklahoma and I still work for him — remotely, doing marketing and other things on the computer.”
Writing about his kids helped him break through as an outdoors scribe.
Whitcomb submitted an article to Bassmaster magazine, owned by ESPN, in 2007 and was accepted. That led to a number of his columns being published through ESPNoutdoors.com.
“One thing led to another, I was published in different magazines and I was able to do some networking,” he said. “My freelance led to blogging and I'm pretty active that way.”
Whitcomb's had articles appear in Oklahoma Today, Paddling Buyer's Guide, Kayak Angler Magazine and other publications. He loves fishing in this area.
“In Oklahoma, where I grew up, you were limited in the species available in the waters,” Whitcomb said. “Up here, there are so many options. The river is three minutes from my house. My son and I will go to Erie. We also found a lake an hour and a half north of here.”
While Whitcomb's fishing has not dried up, his writing is far from doing so.
“At its peak, I submit six articles or so a month,” he said. “Writing something fresh about fishing is tricky. It's one of the most written about topics on the planet.
“There's unique, creative stories out there. That's what I go after.”
