If you ever read multiple novels by Carl Hiaasen, you can't help but notice recurring themes. Crooked Florida real estate developers, for one. Fishing, for another.

Hiaasen himself is a championship fisherman, but he is not Jewish, which led us to thinking: are there any Jewish fishermen that are worth of a profile? (Our uncle doesn't count. Sorry.)

So we went to Google, and... nada. A search for Jewish fishermen pretty much begins and ends at Saint Peter, which is neither here nor there. Mostly not there.

Well, we've already profiled Saint Peter, and we are not gonna profile the uncle (sorry), so let's talk about Michael Lerner. No, not the radical-slash-rabbi we just profiled, and no, still not the Michael Lerner from the Coen Brothers' movie. This Michael Lerner was a "pioneer of big game angling", specifically for giant tuna. He once caught a 450-pound fish! That seems a lot... He also did a lot for marine research, founding the American Museum of Natural History's Lerner Marine Laboratory in the Bahamas.

In any case, this Michael Lerner came from a Jewish family that owned a chain of clothing shops that eventually became New York & Company. His life ended after retiring to Hiaasen's beloved Florida.

If you ever read multiple profiles on our website, you can't help but notice recurring themes...