Joel Shangle - Host

The host and creator of Northwest Wild Country, our ringleader lists a fishing, hunting and adventure resume that reads like an itinerary from "The Amazing Race": Dorado and sailfish on Hannibal Bank in Panama; largemouth bass in the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico; northern pike and lake trout in the McKenzie Range of the Yukon Territory; Atlantic salmon in the Valley of the Kings in southern Ireland; bonefish and tarpon out of Key West. The list goes on and on.

But it's his Pacific Northwest knowledge base and hard news background that supply the fossil fuel for NWWC's news-gathering horsepower. Shangle's byline appears regularly in outdoors mediums ranging from ESPN Outdoors to Outdoor Life to Hunting the West to Bassmaster.com, and he's a longtime editor for Fishing & Hunting News, the Pacific NW's largest fishing & hunting magazine. He's fished, hunted and written about thousands of the honey-holes in the Wild Country coverage zone, and has one of the most extensive source lists in the business.

Shangle is a key member of the production team of Wild Country Panama, an eye-popping HD series bound for national broadcast in 2008.

AT A GLANCE

• Favorite fishery: "Coiba Island, Panama. I can't even describe it. Everything there swims 100 miles an hour, hits like a freight train and fights like a banshee."

• Favorite NWWC guest: "Texas Tech head coach Bobby Knight. I was a gym rat in Adidashigh-tops growing up. To talk to an NCAA coaching legend about fishing was almost surreal, it was so cool."

• Favorite repeat guest: "Luke Clausen. Coolhand is just a cool cat, and a helluva nice guy for a bass-fishing millionaire."

• Dream interview: "Eric Clapton, by far. The man is a god, and loves to fish. Ditto for James Hetfield of Metallica and Hank Williams, Jr. I guess you could throw Jimmy Buffet in there, too."

• Favorite intro song: "Whiskey in the Jar by Metallica. Listen close, you'll hear two references to hunting & fishing. And who doesn't like an old Irish drinking song set to metal?"