Luke Ovgard

Luke Ovgard is a lifelong angler and vocal advocate for conservation, outdoor education, and outdoor participation. One of his earliest memories is trout fishing at a small, Southern Oregon lake with his father at age 3. From there, fishing grew into an all-consuming passion that shaped the course of his life. Luke has caught fish in all 50 U.S. states plus Washington, D.C. He has now caught fish in a total of 25 countries. He holds the worldwide Fishing Big Year Record, having caught 416 species in 2021. As of 2023, he holds more than a dozen International Game Fish Association (IGFA) All-Tackle World Records and currently ranks fifth in history for the total number of fish species caught, with 1,285 species (about 3.5 percent of all fishes on Earth) as of March 2024. Luke serves as a medical officer in the United States Air Force who loves puns and dad jokes — much to the chagrin of his coworkers but hopefully not his readers. His driving passion is traveling to fish and then writing about it. He has written a regionally syndicated travel and outdoors column called “CaughtOvgard” for a host of newspapers in the Pacific Northwest since January of 2015. His primary goal in life is to travel, fish, and write about his experiences full-time, despite being born a few decades too late for this path to be easily realized. Regardless, it is a goal for which this book is a step in the right direction so long as you enjoyed it and tell all of your friends about it, so they can share in the journey. If you did enjoy it, the author appreciates your kind words. If not, he will cry himself to sleep later.