Jerry Apps

jerryapps.com
Jerry Apps leaning on a fence.
Jerry Apps
Jerry Apps — one of Wisconsin’s most beloved storytellers, with more than 40 fiction, nonfiction and children’s books to his name — is celebrating the launch of his latest Wisconsin Historical Society Press collection, Lunkers, Keepers, and Ones That Got Away: Fish Tales from Four Generations of Anglers. Apps, who splits time between his home in Madison and his farm in Waushara County, casts a wide net here. He draws on interviews with fellow fishing enthusiasts, shares excerpts from his own journal entries recorded over the decades, revisits the weekly “Outdoor Notebook” columns he wrote for four central Wisconsin newspapers and includes educational sidebars. Best of all, you don’t even need to love fishing to enjoy these tales. Registration is required for this event at verona.librarycalendar.com.
media release: From his first experiences going fishing with his pa as a boy, Jerry Apps was hooked. Eighty-some years later, Apps reflects on a lifetime of fishing and the memories and lessons netted along the way in a new compilation of stories, Lunkers, Keepers, and Ones that Got Away: Fish Tales from Four Generations of Anglers.
Book Launch with Jerry Apps: Saturday May 3, 2025 at 2:00pm, Verona Public Library, 500 Silent St., Verona
In the book, Apps recounts the simple joys of fishing, from casting a line from shore on a warm summer evening to reeling in a lunker on opening day of trout season. He draws on interviews with fellow anglers, his own journal entries recorded over decades, and his popular newspaper column, Outdoor Notebook. Throughout, he reminds readers of the values fishing can teach people of all ages: persistence, resourcefulness, cooperation, and an appreciation for our natural world.
Along with his best-loved fish tales, Apps includes fishing-related photos from the family album and favorite fishing locales, lingo, bait, and gear. And, in a nod to the tradition of swapping fish stories, Apps also shares a few of his family and friends’ angling anecdotes—some of them funny, some poignant, many embellished, and all of them keepers. Imaginative pen-and-ink illustrations made by artist Sid Boyum to commemorate the annual fishing season opener add charm to this delightful volume.
Lunkers, Keepers, and Ones that Got Away captures the exciting, heartwarming, and nostalgia-inducing experiences that fishing brings to avid and casual anglers alike.
Jerry Apps is a former county extension agent and is professor emeritus with the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the award-winning author of more than forty fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books. Jerry divides his time between his home in Madison and his farm, Roshara, in Waushara County.
Published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, which has been sharing Wisconsin stories since 1855 in service to the mission of the Wisconsin Historical Society.