Barry Fitzpatrick inherited his love for fishing from his dad who was also a keen sport fisherman.  His dad, B. T. Fitzpatrick, even caught a world record Atlantic Sailfish (92 lb. 8 oz. in approximately 1957) that hangs on Barry’s wall to this day.

Fitzpatrick family childhood vacations involved trips to the seashore or to the Chesapeake in search of flounder, bluefish and rockfish.  Fitzpatrick’s high school and law school classmates were avid fishermen, as well. He waded the Potomac River for smallmouth bass every year for more than fifty-five years and regularly floated the upper Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers in search of smallmouth, as well, and until 2012 fished the Susquehanna River during the rockfish spawn.

Fitzpatrick was bitten by the billfishing and tuna fishing bug in his late twenties and early thirties.  Already a member of the Ocean City Marlin Club, Barry became a member of the Ocean City Light Tackle Club (OCLTC) in 1971.  He was fishing offshore Ocean City with two friends for billfish nearly every weekend in season, at least every weekend he could get away with it when he was in his early thirties.

Fitzpatrick then began to travel extensively for sport fishing in the 1970’s as he met more OCLTC members, and this travel continued through the decades until he had to stop traveling due to illness in 2012.  Barry fished in Ecuador at Salinas; in Peru at Cabo Blanco; in Venezuela at Caracas.  He fished in Australia on the Barrier Reef and in Port Stephens.  Fitzpatrick fished in Canada at Prince Edward Island and on the Gaspe Peninsula at Paspebiac.  He fished in Central America in Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica, and in Mexico at Cozumel, Cancun and Cabo San Lucas.  He fished in Vanuatu.  He fished in Madeira.  And, of course, he fished at all of the summer and winter sport fishing locations here at home in addition to the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.  In all of these venues through all of the years, he made many friends—fellow anglers, their spouses, mates—people with whom he maintained contact and who remain friends to this day.