Three Foragers Go Fishing

What three experts, three Spidermen and one giant brown trout taught me about friendship

I watched the movie Spiderman: No Way Home for the first time last night and immediately thought about the previous week’s adventure with two of my friends, Alan Bergo and Sam Thayer. There are some weird but fun parallels.

At the risk of spoilers, the movie explores the multiverse, where the same person can exist in different universes. At one point in the film, all three actors who have played Spiderman appear together in a fun — and very meta — action finale. It’s a really great movie.

When I invited Sam and Alan to come fishing on Lake Superior with me, I had a hunch it might turn into a weird wild plant vortex that would befuddle Captain Alex and his mate Carl. And I was right. We are all so much alike that we kept finishing each other’s sentences the way old lovers do.

In some circles, our shared experiences could have metastasized into toxic one-upmanship — I’ve seen this many times on fishing boats and in hunt camps — enthusiasm, not ego, was our dominant feeling. That happens to be one of the most touching aspects of the Spiderman movie: All three spidermen — Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland — support each other, sometimes literally lifting each other up.

We shared our insights into everything, from plants, mushrooms, and animals, to geology and food. Each of us has a home field: I am the strongest hunter and angler (although Sam is no slouch as a hunter). Alan is the king of the mushrooms. And Sam? Well, Sam is probably the most famous forager in America. It was weird being the third-best forager on that boat…

But we were on a boat. Where I am most at home.

We were trolling around Wisconsin’s Apostle Islands for trout and salmon. I am a huge fan of lake trout, so that’s what I am usually looking for — although I have yet to catch a really nice brown trout, so that’s in the back of my mind, too. I have probably spent 3000 hours trolling for fish in my life. Sam has spent maybe 10. Alan? None.

Given this, I asked Sam to be first on the rod, then Alan. I’ve caught plenty of fish, so I’d bat third. It wasn’t long before we had a strike, and Sam grabbed the rod, reeled… but the fish popped the hook. It happens.

I usually shrug off a lost fish, but this time I smiled because Sam immediately grilled Carl the Deckhand about what had happened, where he had gone wrong, and how to fix it. I love this. All three of us do this constantly, with everything.

Why did that recipe fail? How did I miss that deer? Why weren’t the mushrooms where they were supposed to be? I already know that you can do everything right and the fish will still win sometimes. Sam was learning this in real time.

We kept Sam on the rod, since he missed, and he easily landed the first fish of the day, a decent brown trout. Then Alan and I each missed fish. Sam caught another, a little coho salmon; it still weirds me out seeing Pacific salmon in the Great Lakes.

A long while passed. Sam and Alan were chatting about Sam’s trip to Vietnam — Sam has a magic ability to get himself into absurdly hilarious adventures — when the center rod went off; this is a rod with the most line out, running deepest.

Alan got that rod and started fighting the fish, when a second rod, on a dipsy diver, hit, too. I grabbed that one. A nice fish. Heavy head shakes, then weight. Definitely a laker. Lakers need to be coaxed in because they have weak mouths, and you can tear the hook out of their jaws on a moving boat if you try to horse them in.

Even reeling slowly, I landed my fish long before we could even see Alan’s. As I’d suspected, it was a good laker, maybe 6 pounds. I popped its gills to bleed it while Alan fought on.

He was nervous, listening intently to Carl’s guidance — and following it explicitly. I love this, too. So many times, I have encountered men who either think they know the task at hand implicitly (of course I know how to land a fish!), or know they don’t but fake it rather than risk looking foolish. Both often fail.

But the three of us are all inherently curious, all wise enough to know when we don’t know something, and humble enough to ask basic questions.

The two older spidermen bring that same kind of hard-earned humility to the movie. Both have lost people they love. Andrew Garfield’s Peter admits that grief made him bitter and rageful. Tobey Maguire’s Peter knows that revenge did not heal him. Tom Holland’s Peter needs their wisdom.

Alan’s arms were aching. I was thinking this was a king salmon, which can top 25 pounds in Lake Superior. But then we saw it: brown trout! A gigantic one.

Now the whole boat was on edge. Don’t screw this up! Closer, closer. The fish went berserk when it saw the boat, but Alan listened to Carl and kept it buttoned up.

Finally, Carl netted it and holy kittens was it big! By far the biggest brown trout I’ve ever seen in person. And yeah, I definitely wished I’d grabbed that line because it was way, way bigger than any I’d ever caught. But that feeling passed in a few heartbeats because Alan was grinning like an idiot he was so happy.

His first-ever trout, and second-ever fish, was a 30-inch brown! Easily 12 pounds, maybe 15. We forgot to weigh it before I bled and gutted it.

In the end, Alan landed the biggest fish of the day, Sam caught the most, and I got that nice laker plus a bonus coho I later smoked whole.

The next day, the tables turned. Alan, Sam, and I went to the northern Wisconsin pine barrens in search of berries and chanterelles. Very quickly we realized that this part of the Badger State was in serious drought. All our mushroom spots were crunchy dry. Boo.

We went to a blueberry spot Sam had recommended. Two years earlier, Sam and I picked this spot and it was so good I ended up picking 21 pounds (!) of wild blueberries. This was not that year. The drought was taking its toll.

Alan and I arrived early and slogged through it. I love wild blueberries, so I managed about 5 pounds. Alan got a few pounds, then switched to sand cherries. Sam and his wife Melissa arrived as we were leaving and likely picked until dark. They don’t mess around.

The rest of the day was a fun exchange of knowledge. Alan had the spots. I drove. He found pin cherries. I found beaked hazelnuts. He found meadowsweet. I found fireweed. It was a great day.

All these balanced differences created a harmony unlike anything I’ve experienced before. Like Tobey Maguire’s Spiderman — the only one who can shoot webs directly from his wrists — each of us added something to the whole. To borrow another superhero (and Wu-Tang Clan) reference, when Sam, Alan, and I form like Voltron, we are unstoppable.

Success is not a zero-sum game.

Sam has written some of the most successful foraging books of all time. Alan is a genius chef, has a baller website, wrote a foraging cookbook (and soon a meat book!), and is a wizard with mushrooms. Me? Well, while my first book has foraging in it, I’ve mostly stuck to fish and game.

Our work overlaps, but it is complementary. We do not need to compete.

This is what it’s all about. Find this in your own life. In your work team, your family, your friend circle. And, yes, your love life, too. Find people secure enough to teach, curious enough to learn and generous enough to celebrate when someone else lands the biggest fish.

That is the kind of camaraderie, of friendship, that I long for: confidence without chest-thumping, competence without pretense, and ambition without viewing another’s success as your loss.

It took all three spidermen to win the day. They weren’t identical. Each brought something the others needed. No ego. Just teamwork.