Drew Wilcox Jr. defines the phrase “avid fisherman.” Actually “insatiable” might be more accurate.
And he has a knack for catching the big ones.
But it wasn’t always this way for him. Wilcox said he struggled with heroin addiction and has been clean for two years. Although his grandfather, who owns Dick’s Taxidermy in Lisbon Falls, and his uncle taught him to fish at the family camp at Allen Pond when he was a young child, he didn’t discover his passion for the sport until he stopped using the narcotic, he said.
“Fishing is my new addiction,” said Wilcox, who will be 20 in July.
Now he’s a fishing machine. He caught a big salmon this spring during his first time trolling for that fish in an unspecified lake in Cumberland County.
He lit up when he told his story about catching the fish.
Wilcox said he had one rod in the water and thought he had hooked bottom as the boat moved along slowly. The line on his 5-weight fly rod was straight behind the boat and it was peeling out, he said, just like it does when a hook snags on something.
But it soon became apparent it was a fish that was determined to stay down in the water column. Wilcox fought for 10 to 12 minutes to bring it into the boat, he said.
“I freaked out when I got a first look at it,” he said. It was a 24-inch, 5.86-pound landlocked salmon.
Wilcox generally practices catch and release, and he tried to revive the big salmon. It didn’t work, so he kept the legal fish and is waiting to find the right taxidermist to mount it for him.
But his favorite kind of fishing is striped bass. So far this season, he has caught a 24-inch striper on a fly rod, had another break a regular rod when it struck the bait, and landed his biggest fish of the season — a 42-43-inch striper he estimated to weigh 20 pounds.
His dad Drew “Andy” Wilcox Sr. got a nice striper too, estimated at 35 inches, Wilcox Jr. said.
After a couple of successes, Wilcox Jr. was bitten by the striped bass bug. He then experimented with different baits, talked to more experienced striper fishermen and found places to fish he hadn’t tried before.
One day he caught 13 on one swim bait, then replenished his supply and caught 40 more fish, one right after the other, he said.
“The only reason I left was because my arms were tired,” he said.
He is well-equipped for fishing in any weather with his 16-foot tri-hull boat powered by a 50-horsepower Johnson motor. The boat has a top and side curtains to protect him from the rain, plus downriggers for deeper water fishing.
Wilcox’s dad said his only son gets his outdoorsy nature from his mother’s side of the family. Wilcox Sr. likes to fish for stripers but he hasn’t done much with other types of fishing. That could change now that he’s reunited with his son after the more than two years they were kept apart by Wilcox’s substance abuse disorder.
“I just like spending time with him,” Wilcox Sr. said.
The time Wilcox Jr. was on drugs was very difficult. His father said he would go to bed wondering if this would be the night he would get a call saying his son was gone.
Wilcox Jr.’s parents pushed him toward a hospital in Lewiston and made him stay about three days. Their son recovered, and three or four months after his hospital stay, he asked for his deer gun to go hunting.
Wilcox Sr., who works for Bath Iron Works, said giving him a gun was a very difficult decision but they had to start building trust again. His son got a deer, and hunted for turkeys in the spring. He then discovered fishing, which has become his passion.
Wilcox Jr. works for Almighty Construction, a roofing and siding business his friend Chandler McKeage started 2 1/2 years ago. The job was part of the new life he was building after dealing with substance abuse disorder for more than two years.
He said he started taking a relative’s prescription pills at age 16 during the COVID-19 pandemic. He left high school, and eventually found himself on heroin.
Around his 18th birthday, Wilcox Jr. decided to quit drugs to avoid ending up in the adult court system. He got a job, has a girlfriend and fishes every available minute.
He has his sights on his next fishing challenge — tuna — and he’s not looking back.
“We’re texting and communicating more and it’s fishing that brought us together,” Wilcox Sr. said. “I love him and think about him all of the time. I’ve never seen him this intense about anything.”
