Dr. Coblyn catching striped bass and bluefin tuna in Cape Cod Bay.
Jonathan Coblyn, MD, was around 10 years old the first time his father took him fishing in April to Great South Bay, the largest shallow saltwater bay in New York. It was so cold that he remembers scraping frost off the lines that tied the family’s 26-foot motorboat to the pier.
Dr. Coblyn, clinical chief of rheumatology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, grew up in Long Island and spent a great deal of time on that motorboat during his childhood years. He smiles every time he reminisces about those adventures of vacationing with his family and fishing with his father, mother and brother. Yet it wasn’t until his late 50s before he returned to the sea, catching and then releasing fish. He doesn’t much care for fancy fishing rods, tackle or gear, or even specialized activities like fly fishing. The simpler, the better, he says.
Perhaps nothing relaxes and excites him more than sitting on his own fishing boat, admiring the scenery and embracing the sun’s warmth while eagerly awaiting that first tug on his fishing line.
Horses to Whales
Dr. Coblyn graduated from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore in 1974. During the next two years, he pursued his internship and residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and spent the following year finishing his senior medical residency at Stanford University Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., becoming certified in internal medicine. His fellowship in rheumatology was completed between 1977 and 1979 at the former Robert Breck Brigham Hospital, now part of Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He’s been working at this facility ever since.