August 2020
introduction
You are reading: Best books on fishing
Coronavirus has given many of us time to fish and also to catch up on reading and reflect a little on life. When I’m out on the water and I catch a fish using a technique or flight that I read about years ago, I sometimes find myself remembering the best fishing books I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. some taught me a new technique like using a dry eyedropper while others were fiction and sheer joy of reading. If you search online, you will find numerous lists of the best 10, 25, and even 50 best fishing books. Of course, these lists change from decade to decade as new works are published, older books go out of style, or interests change. For example, the 1970s and 1980s saw a plethora of tomes like the Swisher and Richards Selective Trout that took a more scientific approach to fishing. once you finished reading some of these, you were almost qualified as an entomologist. far fewer of the kind have been published in the last decade. The list I offer here is entirely personal, and given my advancing age, I hope it will present some of the best publications of the past, especially pre-2000, to today’s energetic and up-and-coming young blood fishermen (aka anyone under the age of 40).
The format I have chosen is somewhat different than most other “best” lists. I find it difficult to compare a serious piece of literature by someone like Tom McGuane’s The Longest Silence with a raucous, funny tale like Carl Hiassen’s Skinny Dip or Gary Lafontaine’s technical tome on caddisflies. So I’ve divided my list into dozens of baker categories with a few select books in each. I end up with a category of books that I have yet to read but are “must haves.” I will publish the list in a series of five installments. this first installment focuses on the category “best literature”. I hope you enjoy perusing my options and would love to hear any additions you may have.
link for installment 2: https://hooknfly.com/2020/08/09/the-best-fishing-books-of-all-time-installment-2/?fbclid =iwar3ubfsuusqqaaihnie6lt3jhu -pycm_18sjjmiqesmognnyj-8lvyny-34
installment 3 link: https://hooknfly.com/2020/09/11 /the-best-fishing-books-of-all-time-3/
share 4 link: https://hooknfly.com/?p=7807
Issue 5 link: https://hooknfly.com/2020/10/22/best-fishing-books-of-all-time-installment-5/
the categories:
best literature (discussed in detail below)
- the longest silence (tom mcguane)
- a river runs through it (norman maclean)
- the river why (david james duncan)
- the story of nick adams (ernest hemingway)
- my moby dick (william humphrey)
the narrators
- the trout madness (robert traver)
- the trout tramp (john gierach)
anthologies
- fisherman’s bounty/full basket (nick lyons)
- silent season (russell chatham
- to the bottom (lamar underwood)
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rarities
- fishing for trout in america (richard brautigan)
- blues (john hersey)
- the thief of feathers (kirk wallace johnson)
funny bone-tickling
- Double Whammy and Skinny (Carl Hiassen)
- True Love and the Shaggy Bastard (Dave Ames)
- So Long and Thanks for All the Fish: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the galaxy book 4 (douglas adams)
the zen of fishing
- the longest silence (tom mcguane)
- goodbye to a river (john graves)
- the zen of fish: the story of sushi (trevor carson)
how to/technical expertise
- riverside guide to naturals and their imitations (artistic film)
- fly fishing in mountain lakes (gary lafontaine)
- small stream trout ( dave hughes)
- the orvis guide to small stream fly fishing (tom rosenbauer)
- fly casting techniques (joan wulff)
- lo what the trout said (data proper)
- in the ring of ascent (vincent marinaro)
- through the fisheye (mark sosin and john clark)
- little lefty kreh fly fishing tips
science and entomology of fisheries
- match hatch (ernest schwiebert)
- selective trout (doug swisher and carl richards)
- flies (carl richards, doug swisher and fred arbona, jr. _
- caddisflies (gary lafontaine)
- the complete book of western caddisflies (rick hafele and dave hughes)
- food guide for brook trout (dave whitlock)
- mayflies (malcolm knopp and robert courmier
- hatch guide to western streams/lakes (jim schollmeyer)
- bug book (paul weamer)
trips/guides
- fly fishing the 41st (james prosek)
- 52 rivers: one woman’s fly fishing trip (shelly walchak)
- the hunt for giant trout (landon mayer )
- 49 trout streams of southern colorado (mark williams and w. chad mcphail)
- gunnison country fly fishing (doug dillingham)
- alpine lakes of central colorado hiking and fishing guide (tom parkes)
salt water
- saltwater fly fishing (joe brooks)
- saltwater fly fishing (george x. sands)
- saltwater fly fishing (lefty krey)</li
- complete book of saltwater fishing (milt rosko)
- blues (john hersey)
- ninety-two in the shade (tom mcguane)
history of fishing
- The Complete Angler (Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton)
- American Fly Fishing: A History (Paul Schullery)
- The History of Fly Fishing in Fifties flies (ian whitelaw)
fish that shaped the world
- cod: a biography of the fish that changed the world (mark walker kurlansky)
- shad: the founding fish (john mcphee)
- a completely synthetic fish: how rainbow trout fooled america and invaded the world (anders halverson)
the “to read” list
- river music (james babb)
- fishing for buffalo (robb bufler and tom dickson)
- fifty women fishing (steve kantner)
- hungry ocean: the voyage of a sword sea captain (linda greenlaw)
- tales of murderers and campfires: the fly-fishing heritage of the west (john monnett
best literature
I distinguish this category from others by several measures. First, does the book and writing appeal to non-fishermen? if it does, that definitely says something. Second, what do other accomplished authors who have written acclaimed books have to say about it? the authors in my list below are true craftsmen with words. and finally, was it interesting enough to make it into a movie?
1. the longest silence: a life on the fish—thomas mcguane
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The Longest Silence is a series of keenly observed essays about the lessons and insights McGuane gleaned from a lifetime spent fishing. James Harrison, a peripatetic poet, novelist, and essayist who himself wrote about fishing and whose novel Legends of the Fall was made into a movie, calls it the best book on angling of all time. I must agree. In his essays, McGuane takes us around the world fishing for tarpon to trout and introduces us to some memorable characters along the way. McGuane, who lives in Montana and continues to write and fish, wrote several other notable books on the outdoors and fishing including his debut novel, The Sporting Club, a dark comedy about the intergenerational conflict between young whippersnapper Baby Boomers and the Greatest Generation. Sound familiar Millenials and GenXers? Another good read, Ninety Two In The Shade, a tale of a young fishing guide running into trouble in the Florida Keys was made into a movie starring Peter Fonda and Warren Oates.
2. a river runs through it—norman maclean
Norman Maclean was an English professor at the University of Chicago while I was studying to become a lawyer there. He never wrote a book until he retired, but when he did in 1976, Maclean produced a harrowing, lyrical semi-biographical story that became a box-office hit. a line on a river running through it describes how many of us fishermen feel about our sport: “I’m obsessed with the waters.” In 1992 Robert Redford directed an excellent movie true to the book starring Brad Pitt and Tom Skerritt. Plus, Maclean’s son, John, wrote a fascinating book, Fire on the Mountain, about a wildfire that claimed the lives of 14 firefighters near Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
3. the river why—david james duncan
How can any angler resist a book that mixes fly fishing, family, and baseball? However, this is a book that has probably been read by more non-anglers than any other on this list. The main character Gus is a child fishing prodigy who after he graduates from school sets out to fish his brains out according to a rigourous schedule on the mythical Tamanawis River. After he finds the body of a dead angler, Gus starts his real journey in life, finding love along the way. The author Duncan wrote several other acclaimed novels, and The River Why was turned into a movie starring Zach Gifford, Dallas Roberts, and William Hunt that unfortunately did not live up to the book.
4. great river of two hearts: ernest hemingway
Hemingway won a Nobel Prize for his story Old Man And The Sea, so I risk sacrilege by saying for my money his Big Two-Hearted River, the concluding installment in his semi-autobiographical series The Nick Adams Stories, is a better one, especially for anglers. This tale is about a young man, Nick Adams, just back from World War I and suffering from shell shock, who takes off on a fishing trip to clear his head. Hemingway’s writing in Big Two-Hearted River is his usual spare, pure style. As a young law school student in Chicago and aspiring fly fisherman, I loved that title, read the book, and set out to fish the Big Two-Hearted River in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Fortunately, before I set out I learned that like many in the fishing fraternity, Hemingway was damned if he was going to give away the name and location of a favorite fishing spot. It was actually the Fox River which I fished one summer between classes, a canoe trip that featured clouds of man-eating mosquitos, few fish, and ended in near disaster when our canoe flipped and we lost our paddles 10 miles from civilization in a dense forest. Fortunately soon after we started to walk out I spotted one paddle in a sweeper, and we were able to retrieve it and float to safety.
5. my moby dick—william humphrey
Of all the books on this list, this spare short one is probably the least known and rarely mentioned in the same breath as any of the others. But as one reviewer wrote, “one of the finest fishing stories ever published, My Moby Dick is a small masterpiece about a whale of a fish.” In a nutshell, Humphrey spends an entire summer chasing with his fly rod a huge one-eyed trout that he serendipitously stumbles on in a small creek near his vacation home. Along the way, through his elegant, erudite writing, English professor Humphrey shows us what real literature and writing are like even in telling a fish story. Humphrey came to writing My Moby Dick after penning acclaimed non-angling books such as Home From The Hill and The Ordways. Thank our lucky stars he was also an aspiring angler and shared this hilarious tale with us. It is chock full of wry, smart observations about fly fishing and anglers who pursue trout. Here is but one example:
“I had never met a fly fisherman. ever since my ignominious failure to get one and my throwback to maggots, I hadn’t wanted to meet one. …But even if I had met one, had known him well, I wouldn’t have trusted myself to seek help from him now. in fact, he would have avoided it altogether. surely he would have noticed my excited state. his curiosity would have been piqued. my eagerness, my impatience to learn and put my knowledge into practice, he would have given me away. a wild look, that of one who has seen wonders, haunted my eyes in those days. fly fishermen are a suspicious crew, and their suspicions rest on one thing. my secret would have been guessed, and I would have been shadowed to the bottom in the stream of shadows.”
honorable mention:
A couple of other books that could be on this list are howell raines’, fly fishing through midlife crisis and harry middleton’s, earth is enough: growing up in a fly fishing world, trout and elders. . Raines had a storied career at the New York Times before writing this book after a nasty divorce, producing a beautiful meditation on the “disciplined, beautiful, non-essential activity” we call fly-fishing. Middleton’s book is a memoir about raising him in the Ozarks and hunting trout with the two old men who raise him. In the process, he learns not only the art of fly fishing, but also the beauty and value of nature in life.
The next installment of the best books will cover narrators, anthologies, and rarities.
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