LEISURE DEPT.BIG FISH

Unless you've been living under a rock submerged in Norway's Alta River and have gills, you probably missed the news announced in a press-releasestyle note last month.

- Zach Helfand

"Largest Atlantic Salmon Landed in 2025," the headline read. Underneath, the note elaborated that "250 miles inside of the Arctic Circle at around two o'clock in the morning with a still tall midnight sun overhead, Edward L. Shugrue III feels a slight touch at the end of his fly-line." The toucher: a fifty-two-pound Atlantic salmon, one of the largest ever caught.

The touchee: Shugrue, a fifty-nine-yearold mutual-fund guy.

The correspondent? "I wrote it," Shugrue said recently, in the living room of his apartment on Park Avenue. "It took, like, a week to process, but I was flying home and I thought, Holy Christ, this is a real fucking fish." You catch the big fish so you can talk about catching the big fish. Shugrue, who had mostly white hair and a salmon-colored shirt (unintentional), was telling the tale before a plate of smoked striper from his fishmonger in Amagansett. "I thought about serving salmon because we're talking about salmon, but I really can't do it," he said.