Fishing for Facts

Exploring the old memory banks, my earliest and strongest recollections of the 70's era energy shortage came through a peculiar avenue. My great passion at the time involved fishing, fishing, fishing, arranging my tacklebox, and reading about fishing. I had my favorite magazines, Fishing Facts and the regional Fins and Feathers. (None of the conventional outdoors mags like Field&Stream, Outdoor Life, and Sports Afield -- not enough fishing articles!) However, Fishing Facts also had a slight slant on top of its fishing coverage.

As it turns out, the publisher of Fishing Facts, George Pazik, liked (and perhaps felt compelled) to editorialize on the looming energy crisis. As a teenager, this did alter my perspective. I came this close to keeping the issues over the years, but the editorials did resurface in the following link on "Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis" by Albert A. Bartlett, U of Colorado. This appears in a late 1970's white paper, but catch this footnote:

33. G. Pazik, in a special editorial feature, "Our Petroleum Predicament," in Fishing Facts ("The magazine for today's freshwater fisherman"), Northwoods Publishing Co., P.O. Box 609, Menomonee Falls, WI 53051. Nov. 1976. Reprints are available at $0.30 each from the publisher. This is an excellent summary of the present situation and of the way we got into our petroleum predicament.

As I recall, the editorials mainly talked about the long term impacts and revealing comments of oil usage by different forms of transportation (airplanes, cars, etc). Basically riveting stuff for a teenager. Mr. Pazik was definitely an entrepeneur in the field of scientific sports publsihing and an independent thinker.

The America Outdoors site has this note by a contributor who recently contacted Mr. Pazik. Thank you, FF.