Matt Straw

Field Editor
In-Fisherman Magazine
2019 Freshwater Hall of Fame Inductee
315 Bluff Ave.
Brainerd, MN 56401-2648
Freelance writer, photographer, editor, author
218/828-8136

His friends call him "trout." He's even rumored to have an adipose fin. As a kid and young man Matt Straw spent many a summer day crawling on hands and knees up to trout streams no more than a yard wide, stalking gem-speckled brookies 6- to 10-inches long. In college he spent his free days chasing steelhead in patched-up, leaky waders autumn through spring. He graduated from the University of Michigan on the dean's list with degrees in English and communications, but spent his time between classes in the biology library, learning more about fish. He was a teacher then a city-desk reporter, but spent the last 28 years as an editor for In-Fisherman magazine-a job that sent him after trout, char, salmon and steelhead from Ireland to British Columbia and everywhere between. He has seen and practiced a wide variety of techniques employed for steelhead-then photographed and wrote about those experiences well enough to be admitted to the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame as a Legendary Communicator in 2019. In addition to placing more words in In-Fisherman magazine than any other writer, his articles on steelhead, trout, bass, pike, walleyes and other species have appeared in Field & Stream, Outdoor Canada, Fly Fisherman, Game & Fish, Salmon-Trout Steelheader, Great Lakes Angler, and many other publications. He neither admits nor denies the adipose fin rumor, which is a bit suspicious-but his passion for all things related to trout remains unabated.