Recently in Fly Fishing Books Category

Author and fly fisher Peter Matthiessen received the National Book Award for fiction last night, almost three decades after winning his first for the non-fiction The Snow Leopard (1979). The award was given for Matthiessen's Shadow Country (Modern Library, April 2008, 912 pages), a reworked trilogy of novels from the 1990s that includes a retelling of Lost Man's River. "Matthiessen, a world traveler, naturalist and founder of the Paris Review, is one of the great names in modern letters, but few -- including Matthissen -- expected to see him nominated this year. His novel, neither new nor old, condenses and deepens his previous work about a ruthless landowner from the Florida Everglades."

Shadow Country (Modern Library) on Amazon.

In the Chicago Daily Herald, Mike Jackson sings the praises of Muskie On the Fly, one of those sleeper titles that he thinks might not be getting the attention it deserves. "Tomes preaches a different mantra. He's as committed to 'de-snobbing' fly fishing as I am, as well as convincing a novice fly caster that thrills are not limited to just a largemouth bass attacking a surface plug and then taking to the air."

For a taste of what Tomes's new book is all about, read our excerpt on "Top-Water Retrieves."

Muskie on the Fly (Masters on the Fly series) on Amazon.

Frank Amato Publications recently released a limited-edition compilation of short stories, essays and photos entitled The Creel: North Umpqua Edition. Edited by Bob Wethern, the book is another in a series belonging to "The Creel" publications by the Fly Fishers Club of Oregon. "'The stories are those of who fished the river for the past 110 years ... their feelings and observations of the river. As far as fly fisher publications, this is the pinnacle. It's not going to be matched. This is the story of the North Umpqua.'" Craig Reed on NRToday.com.

As a writer enjoying a re-birth in popularity, David Rhodes is about as unlikely as they come. Before his 1977 motorcycle crash, which left him paralyzed from the waist down, he was considered one of the country's most promising young writers. His new book is notable not only for the praise it has achieved, but because it takes place in another forgotten corner of the U.S. -- the Driftless region of southwest Wisconsin, an area that many local fly fishers would prefer to keep secret. "The region's peculiar terrain is due to its having escaped glaciation during the last glacial period. The term 'driftless' indicates a lack of glacial drift, the material left behind by retreating continental glaciers - something of a subtle and elaborate metaphor for the novel where people are relatively unmoved by the passage of time, the progression of modern society that seems to roll along all around them but never directly contacts their lives." John Holt writes about Driftless (Milkweed Editions, September 2008, 352 pages) in the California Literary Review.

Driftless on Amazon.

"It's been a dismal eight years for the U.S. Forest Service. When the Bush administration took office, it immediately suspended a popular measure to protect 58 million acres of backcountry public forests from new roads. Instead, the agency became consumed by firefighting. Since 2001, stopping fire has grown from about 15 percent of the agency's budget to nearly 50 percent today." In the Denver Post, Chris Wood makes a compelling argument that the U.S. Forest Service has gone way off track but still holds great promise as a vehicle for "reconnecting people, children and communities to the landscapes that provide their food, energy resources."

If you're feeling the least bit inspired by last night's presidential election to begin contributing to government again, start by lending your insights as a fly fisher to your community and especially to youth. A good start can be found in one of the great books available for teaching kids about nature.

There are more than two or three wonderful quotes from Holly Morris's 1997 essay on fly fishing literature in The New York Times, but this may be my favorite: "While baseball is among the sports (some might include golf here) that inspire a certain devotion, even fanaticism, fly-fishing leads its lovers into fundamental connections, inviting a slow dance with the whimsy of the natural world, a love affair with line and rhythm and simplicity. Angling delivers the wily spiritual satisfactions that come with giving yourself to something that offers only intangible payback." The next time someone asks you "Why fly fishing?," send them this link and suggest they buy a copy of the Jeffrey Pill/AMFF DVD. If those won't hook them, nothing will.

In this week's New Yorker, Dan Chiasson writes about the quirky correspondence of poets Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop in the mid-twentieth century. "Staying at the home of Pauline Hemingway in Key West and deep in what she called her 'female Hemingway' phase, Bishop wrote of catching amberjack and jewfish. Lowell, fresh from charming William Carlos Williams's ninety-one-year-old mother, responded that he had once 'tried swimming' but 'was nearly drowned and murdered by children with foot-flippers and helmets and a ferocious mother doing the crawl.'"

If you're a poetry fan, Bishop's "At the Fishhouses," published in 1947, is a wonderful escape to the northeast U.S. coast and to a fast-fading picture of what commercial fishing once was.

Graham Hall recounts a life of trying to balance between the siren call of fish and the enticements of his wife. "Every day of our honeymoon, I fished. Every day, she also fished; precisely at noon, she donned a fishnet bikini, toss her gleaming black hair down her back and walk barefoot to the river. I, too, was in that river, chest deep, casting my line far downstream. She always managed to lure me to shore." On Beliefnet.com.

From Chicken Soup for the Fisherman's Soul: Fish Tales to Hook Your Spirit and Snag Your Funny Bone (Chicken Soup for the Soul) (HCI, May 2004, 384 pages).

This morning, Wall Street Journal writer Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg talks about the recently released DVD "Tarpon" in the paper's Weekend Journal section. Trachtenberg begins, "A recently restored film featuring a trio of writers fishing for tarpon in the early 1970s has started attracting attention in literary and fly fishing circles."

You can read the full article and watch an outtake here.

Idaho-based novelist Kim Barnes, whose new novel A Country Called Home (Alfred A. Knopf, 271 pages) includes a main character who shirks family responsibilities to go fishing (a tragic hero?), talks about her idea of bliss: 'I definitely have that impulse, and I spend almost the whole summer with my husband fly-fishing in a wilderness area on a river and living in a tent, and I'm never happier."

Jenny Shank also offers this review on New West.

A Country Called Home on Amazon.

I often find myself referring to a 1998 Salon interview with Jim Harrison -- who at the time was on a book tour for his novel The Road Home -- because interviewer Jonathan Miles gets the jumper cables so firmly attached to the novelist's battery. "We met slightly prior to Harrison's strict 4 o'clock cocktail hour -- the only pinch of discipline, he says, that he regularly upholds. A few minutes into the discussion, however, Harrison ordered a glass of Côtes du Rhône."

Harrison's latest novel The English Major (Grove Press, 304 pages), just out in October, involves a 60-year-old protagonist who sets out to rename all the states and official state birds to something more meaningful. As Publisher's Weekly says, "In Harrison's funny, spirited latest, Cliff, a 60-year-old former Michigan high school teacher, bids adieu to his inherited family farm (lost in a shady real estate deal); his wife, Vivian, of 38 years (who has been cheating on him and orchestrated the deal) and dear departed dog Lola (the truest woman in my life); and sets off on a yearlong, countrywide jag."

The English Major: A Novel on Amazon.

In the Wall Street Journal, Joseph Rago reviews the new collection edited by O. Alan Weltzien of the University of Montana and notes: "The action in Maclean's autobiography-infused fiction is outwardly simple, rich in suggestion. The prose derives its power from words and their sounds and cadences: Meaning is unstated but nonetheless intensely felt. Nothing much happens, in other words, except everything."

The Norman Maclean Reader on Amazon.

The framed and matted original cover art for Gary LaFontaine's Dry Fly: New Angles -- including a shadow-boxed fly tied by the author himself -- is up for auction at The Book Mailer Web site. The art has been in the home of the artist, Gretchen Grayum, for eighteen years. Grayum said of her "assignments" for LaFontaine: "After getting an illustrating assignment, it became quite normal to find myself crawling around river banks trying to find nymphs emerging [which I managed to find!] ... so that I could better illustrate that sequence for Gary. He would talk in depth to me about the different water patterns which occur as a fish jumps or surfaces to take a fly. I was continually amazed by the complexity of Gary's observations of the natural world, and the microscopic perception they would encompass." Bidding closes in a week, and the top bid currently stands at $500.

Syndicated political cartoonist Jack Ohman's delightful new book of drawings and light-hearted satire is a perfect example of how so often an enormous talent from outside the world of fly fishing enriches our sport with something of permanent value. An Inconvenient Trout (Headwater Books, September 2008, 128 pages) manages to be both penetratingly observant and hilarious -- the kind of thing that helps you forget about any personal or angling shortcomings and focus on the stuff that really matters: laughter. There isn't a page that didn't make me smile in this book, but a few of Ohman's "favorite Web sites" from the Age of the Internets are worth mentioning:

www.orvishasmylifesavings.com
www.guidesIwanttoslug.com/hitmen
www.drivefourhourstoseeonerise.com
www.ijustspentseventybucksonchickenfeathers.com/mark-up

The real magic, of course, is in Ohman's witty cartoons. If incessant political pendantry and the collapsing economy are getting you down, do yourself a favor and buy this little book today.

An Inconvenient Trout on Amazon.

This morning Roger Phillips does terrific interview with world-famous photographer Charles Lindsay, who did the photographs for one of my favorite fly fishing books, Upstream: Fly Fishing in the American West (Aperture, 2000, 96 pages). "I would love to see art from bass fishing or catfish fishing, and I predict it will arrive. Hopefully in technicolor, and I don't mean the Velvet Elvis corner at Cabela's. There is a lot of work produced and sold in the name of fly fishing which is just crap. I can only hope my work rises above that." (In the Idaho Statesman.) If you haven't seen this book, put it on your seasonal gift list, either for yourself or a good friend. In addition to Lindsay's startling black and white images, the book contains fine essays by Thomas McGuane.

Upstream: Fly-Fishing in the American West on Amazon.

Skyhorse Publishing -- owned by Nick Lyons's son Tony -- will publish Lefty Kreh's memoirs in October. I've read My Life Was This Big (Skyhorse Publishing, 6 October 2008, 288 pages) and have to agree with Eric Sharp that it is a real page-turner, especially if you are not familiar with the larger-than-life character that Kreh has become in the half-century or so that he's been fly fishing. The book is co-written by Chris Millard, who has ghost-written lots of other books by sports celebrities, including Jack Nicklaus and NASCAR's Bill Elliot.

My Life Was This Big: And Other True Fishing Tales on Amazon.

Dizzying Heights author Bruce Ducker has just released a new collection of 16 short stories about fly fishing. Home Pool: Stories of Fly Fishing and Lesser Passions (Stackpole Books, August 2008, 192 pages) uses a variety of characters -- from a cantankerous old man to a fish-savvy housewife to a Hassidic scholar with incredible beginner's luck -- to illustrate human relationships.

We picked up on a story this morning by Janet Urquhart, who offers this bit on Ducker's writing history: "Ducker's fishing stories have appeared in sporting publications, but he calls most of his work -- unrelated to angling -- 'serious, somber pieces' that appear in various literary journals. He has also authored eight novels, including 'Dizzying Heights,' a comic novel set in Aspen, where he previously owned a home." In the Aspen Times.

Home Pool: Stories of Fly Fishing and Lesser Passions on Amazon.

Lefty Kreh once said, "You haven't lived until you've caught a catfish on a cane pole." Well, if you have caught a catfish or two on a cane pole, what you might consider next is catching a 50-inch northern pike, or even a monster muskie, on a fly rod. And do it with a topwater fly.

This week Robert Tomes shares an article on the techniques for doing just that from his upcoming book Muskie on the Fly. "The Muskie Top-Water Retrieve" will tell you everything you need to know about the sweep-and-strip retrieves that work magic on big muskies (and other big freshwater fish).

A first of its kind, Ken Hanley's new book on tying furled flies -- really tying flies with furled bodies -- takes the author's impressions of what the best tiers have considered the keys to their success, observation and application, and applies them to some unique construction techniques. Hanley, a Californian who is the author of six books and a contributor to two instructional DVDs, set about designing flies that were both more durable and did a better job of imitating mayflies, caddisflies, even dragonflies and alevin. All the while he suggests that furled flies do a better job of addressing an overlooked part of fly presentation -- keeping the fly in the fish's mouth:

"Texture is an often-overlooked element of design, but it is one of the most important features in my work. I strive to create patterns that reinforce what the natural food item might feel like to the fish. Examples include meaty, soft, chewy, and crunchy on the outside -- all represent textures that would provide an extra positive reaction to your fly. Most of the patterns in the book emphasize a meaty and chewy texture. If the fish hold onto the fly longer because of a positive reaction to texture, you will have a longer chance to set the hook."

In addition to more than 500 photos of the steps for tying the 21 patterns in the book (about half of those are color variations), Hanley offers tips for presenting and fishing them properly. The writing is clear and informative, and the photos are top-notch. This is another book from Jay Nichols's new Headwater Books publishing house, which seems to be bringing an extra level of attention to fly fishing books this year.

Buy Tying Furled Flies: Patterns for Trout, Bass, and Steelhead (Headwater Books, 144 pages, softcover, September 2008) on Amazon.

John Berry reports that FFF affiliate Mid-South Fly Fishers in Memphis has just come out with latest edition of their indispensable guide book Home Waters, which covers Arkansas and Tennessee. Besides listing all accesses and directions for how to get there, the book includes details on how to fish each location, written by seasoned guides and veteran anglers. "Another feature that will appeal to the traveling angler is the accommodations matrix. It lists all of the accommodations available near the streams in the guide and provides contact information. It includes a lot of data concerning extras (fireplaces, kitchens, pets and adjacent restaurants), fishing facilities and boat rentals. There is also a listing of guide services and fly shops by area with contact information." The 192-page book is available from local fly shops for $34. In the Baxter Bulletin.

No one learns the importance of knot strength until it really matters. In my case, that was after chasing permit with a client for three days, seeing him finally hook a fish -- and then watching my poor excuse for a Clinch Knot fail. Twenty-three years later, it still hurts. Now I can just about tie a triple Surgeon's Loop with my eyes closed, but it's that miserable moment that reminds me to re-tie any knot that is even slightly suspect.

Fortunately there are tippet-to-fly loop knots that are less awkward to tie than a triple Surgeon's and just as strong. An important one is Lefty Kreh's variation of the Mono Non-Slip Loop. This week we show his demonstration of the normal Non-Slip Loop -- already a close-to-one-hundred-percent knot -- and then the slight modification that makes the knot even stronger.

Morgan Lyle describes Paul Weamer's 2007 guide to fishing the classic streams of the upper Delaware as a sometimes dull read that is nonetheless "brilliant" as a guide. "There are some anglers -- not to mention guides -- who don't like to give away their hard-earned knowledge of a river and its secrets, and resent others who do. I don't know if Weamer has gotten any flak from Delaware regulars, but he's done a great service for those of us with limited time who live a good distance away from the rivers." In the Schenectady, New York Daily Gazette.

Fly-Fishing Guide to the Upper Delaware River on Amazon.

Publisher's Weekly highlights a new anthology of Norman Maclean writings collected and edited by O. Alan Weltzien. "The book includes six previously unpublished pieces, five of them chapters from his uncompleted book on Custer, written between 1959 and 1963. Another standout piece is a 1986 interview in which Maclean ranges widely from the rhythms of prose, his own influences and his native state of Montana to creative writing, fly-fishing and publishers who rejected A River Runs Through It."

The Norman Maclean Reader on Amazon.

John Gierach's latest book seems to have split the angling literature crowd in two: half think it is the work of an fishing writer in his finest form, and the other half think it is tired and not quite up to the standard set by Trout Bum. John Corrigan offers his opinion in the Concord (New Hampshire) Monitor. "Longtime Gierach readers will understand why I penned 'wow' in the margin where the author announces that the last four rods he bought were graphite. He clearly revels in the contradictory role of a hard-core bamboo lover who has discovered new lines of graphite rods described as 'affordable even by modern standards.'"

We mentioned the new book by Van Gorman Egan on Roderick Haig-Brown a couple of weeks ago (see "New Limited Edition Tribute to Roderick Haig-Brown"), but since then a couple of stories have popped up about the book and about how Haig-Brown, who originally intended to settle in Washington state, ended up in B.C. In the Times Colonist, Jack Knox writes that being unable to renew his U.S. visa let him to cross the border into Canada: "Roderick Haig-Brown came out from Britain at age 17, toiling in Washington state as a logger and weekend prizefighter before an expired visa chased him north to Vancouver Island's Nimpkish River in 1927. Still only 19, he worked in the woods again, but it was writing that got him fired up."

By the way, if you hanker to experience a little literary history first-hand, you can actually stay in the house formerly owned by Roderick and Ann Haig-Brown on the banks of the Campbell River.

Roderick Haig-Brown on Wikipedia.

In The New York Times, in March of 2004, Nick Lyons describes the rewards of reading about fishing. "Angling writing mingles biology and the architectonics of minute feathered concoctions, midlife crises and family bonding and a search for one's true self, or any self, and friendship, adventure, cunning, triumph and abject failure at the pleasure of a creature with a brain the size of a pea."

The plot of John Galligan's forthcoming mystery, after his well-received The Nail Knot and The Blood Knot, revolves around a murdered cow girl and the tortured fly-fishing protagonist Ned Oglivie (aka Dog). Publisher's Weekly says "At the outset of Galligan's stunning third Montana-set fly-fishing mystery (after 2005's The Blood Knot), Ned 'Dog' Oglivie, a self-described 'traveling drunk' and 'trout hound' who lives out of his asthmatic 1984 Cruise Master RV, has befriended a jailed bull rider's daughter, Jesse Ringer, and her black boyfriend, D'Ontario Sneed."

The Clinch Knot on Amazon.

Rangeley-Wilson suggests an even mixture of titles by U.S. and U.K. authors in his list of the top ten fishing books. Beyond his inclusion of a couple of excellent non-fly-fishing books -- The Secret Carp by Chris Yates and I Know a Good Place by Clive Gammon -- I'm pleased to see that he mentions fly fishing books by James Babb, Ted Leeson and Negley Farson. "A foreign correspondent between the wars, Farson worked all over the world, accompanied by a typewriter and his fishing rods. Where there was water, he fished, and in spare and vivid prose, he brought to life his adventures in revolutionary Russia, on horseback in the Caucasus, or living hand to mouth in British Columbia." In the U.K.'s Guardian.

GUY DE LA VALDENE is a mystery to most fly fishers. If his name is known widely, it is because he hung out with Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison, Richard Brautigan, Russell Chatham and Jimmy Buffet in Key West in the late sixties and early seventies. He is also, of course, an author of two books on game birds and a novel, and the co-producer of "Tarpon," the cult classic that was finally released on DVD this summer. But de la Valdene is, by almost all accounts, a recluse. In fact, when we finished our four-hour interview with him, he said, "I don't think I've ever talked this much."

Our conversation transported us back to the post-war "boom" in destination fly fishing, the era of the pioneering Florida Keys guides, Parisian film studios, and to the days when de la Valdene and his friends enjoyed a heady mixture of talent, freedom and experimentation that blurred the lines between fishing and life.

Long-time Haig-Brown friend Van Gorman Egan has just published Shadows of the Western Angler, about Roderick Haig-Brown and his visionary writing and conservation efforts. From the description by Mark Hume in Canada's Globe and Mail, this book sounds like much more than a simple tribute. "He writes of first meeting Mr. Haig-Brown on the river, of swapping flies and fishing stories - and he touchingly includes, tucked into a pocket inside the back cover - two hand-drawn maps his friend gave him, with X's on the river to mark the spots where the trout lie." There were only 1000 of the books printed, and they can be ordered only direct from the publisher, Campbell River Courier-Islander (email: editor@courierislander.com).

This seems to be the year of the Lefty Kreh book, with the arrival of at least three titles by or about the most recognizable name in fly fishing. The first, All the Best (Collector's Cover, July 2008, 215 pages), which just arrived in the mail, is a voluminous tribute in words and photographs written and compiled by Flip Pallot. The images themselves provide a history lesson on the many notable anglers Kreh has fished with, and personal written contributions by Lefty's many friends make up almost a third of the book. In the Washington Times, Gene Mueller mentions one error in the book but readily gives the title two thumbs up: "The many color plates alone are worth the price of the book and Pallot's text is thoughtful, alive, interesting and a well-deserved salute to one of the great names in sport fishing."

All The Best - Celebrating Lefty Kreh ** Signed ** Brand New on Amazon.

Seven years ago in The New York Times, Nick Lyons wrote a short essay in which he asked, in response to be forced into the computer age by his kids, "Is faster better?" "I liked its responsiveness to my touch, even the pain it bred in my shoulders when I typed for too many hours. I liked to correct my words by hand and even retype a slew of pages, whereby I often found more that I wanted to be corrected. Didn't the heart, not the machine -- to paraphrase Quintilian -- make the eloquence? I wanted less speed, not more."

If you ever happen to meet Jim Lepage, you'll quickly learn that he is good at a lot of things. Just as an example, the vice president of rods and tackle at Orvis, who came up with the Helios fly rod design, is a mushroom expert and cook. Lepage is the co-author, with Paul Fersen (manager of the company's retail outdoor division), of the new Guide to Great Sporting Lodge Cuisine (Thomas Nelson, April 2008, 232 pages), which contains 140 recipes from 42 sporting lodges around north America. John Waller writes about the book in this morning's Bennington Banner. "Lepage said some of the recipes are more difficult to recreate than others, but even a novice chef can make the lobster thermidor served at the Shoal Grass Lodge and Conference Center in Aransas Pass, Texas, if they follow the directions carefully. 'We tried to edit the recipes in a way that would make it easy to do the cooking,' he said."

The Orvis Guide to Great Sporting Lodge Cuisine on Amazon.

I just finished reading Michael Dahlie's new debut novel about a guileless New York fly fisher who is hamstrung by his inability to see around the corner at the things life is throwing his way. It's a very relaxing read -- perfect beach reading and a nice change of pace for those of us tired of reading how we're doing everything wrong when it comes to fly selection and arm motion.

Janet Maslin reviews A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living (W. W. Norton & Company, 281 pages) in The New York Times this morning, describing it as a fine first first start for an author who seems to have just stepped out of a New Yorker cartoon: "Michael Dahlie's fictitious Maidenhead Grange is a beloved Catskills fly-fishing lodge that is home to the Hanover Street Fly Casters, an exclusive group founded by 12 Manhattan financiers in 1878. The group named the lodge during a fit of boozy Anglophilia. Membership is hereditary. And each man's room is strictly his own, filled with a lifetime's worth of irreplaceable mementos."

A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living: A Novel on Amazon.

Jack Ohman did a fine interview with John Gierach when the author was in Portland, Oregon, recently. In it, Gierach says some suprising -- and not surprising -- things about how and why he writes. "'I wish I could say that I had seen this cultural opening in fly fishing. And I wish I could say I saw the moment for a manifesto and wrote it. I didn't. I just wrote the book I felt like writing. And it slowly, very slowly, but steadily got more popular. To this day, I think I wrote too quickly after "Trout Bum." And for better or worse, it made me. I have great affection for that book. But I don't think it's my best book, by a long shot.'" In the Oregonian.

No, it's a not a fly fishing novel. Rather it's the latest book from the author best known for his Dave Robicheaux mystery series. But Jeff Bredenberg's review, and particularly one passage in which Burke quotes Steinbeck, make me want to go out and buy it:

"In his fiction, Burke uses place - terrain, vegetation, weather, architecture, culture and local history - the way a carpenter uses wood. Place for him is not just a decorative element, it's the underpinning of the story, the supporting structure. Here's a sample, as the author describes the river country where western Montana meets Idaho:

The riparian topography of those particular waterways is probably as good as the earth gets. The cottonwoods and aspens along the banks, the steep orange and pink cliffs that drop straight into eddying pools where the river bends, the pebbled shallows where the current flows as clear as green Jell-O across the tops of your tennis shoes, all seem to be the stuff of idyllic poems, except in this case it's real and, as John Steinbeck suggested, the introduction to a lifetime love affair rather than a geographical experience."

Swan Peak: A Dave Robicheaux Novel on Amazon.

On July 10, all three authors will come to their alma mater's Wharton Center's Pasant Theatre for an authors' event moderated by Bill Castanier, who writes this very detailed piece on the authors' connections. "For more than 40 years, authors, friends and Michigan State University alumni Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane have exchanged letters, documenting a trove of their trials, tribulations and careers. The letters reside in sealed boxes in university archives; McGuane's at MSU and Harrison's at Grand Valley State University. The letters may be signed and delivered, but as of now remain sealed from public view, and they probably will stay that way for some time." In the Lansing, Michigan City Pulse.

Alice Munroe, author of the best seller The Beach House and of the new book Time Is a River, says fly fishing isn't just about catching fish. It's about feeling life. "Monroe says she is taken with the spiritual and intellectual aspect of fly-fishing, just as her character Mia is. 'You'll experience it today,' Monroe says to a fly-fishing novice. 'You'll feel life. You'll study the fish, what they're doing. It's what brings you back every time, trying to figure it all out. It's all about doing the dance with the fish.'" Craig Wilson interviews the author for USAToday.

Paul Weamer's new book gets rave reviews from Mark Sturtevant, who says his only criticism may be how much information the book contains: "Weamer breaks down the rivers by section relative to the coldwater influence of the New York City reservoirs that ultimately shape the character of the trout and the insects they feed upon. He offers detailed descriptions and directions to the public access points, and certain private access areas traditionally open to public use." On InYork.com.

Outfitter and author Patrick Straub has a new book out detailing just about everything you'll need to know for taking a Montana fly fishing trip. "This comprehensive guide provides everything an angler will need to plan a trip to Montana: how to find a guide or outfitter if you want one, how to pick your destination and directions for how to get there, angling etiquette, and selective listings for where to stay and eat while you're out there. Also includes an informative chapter about threatened fish species, invasive plant species, and other serious biological considerations. 50 black & white photographs, 16 maps." (From the Amazon editorial summary.)

Montana on the Fly: An Angler's Guide on Amazon.

It's been a long time coming -- thirty-four and a half years, to be exact -- but UYA Films has finally released the commercial version of the film "Tarpon." The re-mastered and color-corrected film is out on DVD, and having watched a bootleg copy of the original about 100 times, I was surprised by the quality of the new digitized version. Sure, there are a few "newsreel" scratches in the opening frames, but the scenes that matter most to me -- the young Tom McGuane talking with Richard Brautigan, Jim Harrison sitting in a hammock "coming to terms" with the fish, and especially the magnificent tarpon jumps -- are even more mesmerizing.

Some quick backstory for those who've never heard of the film: "Tarpon" was filmed by Christian Odasso and Guy de la Valdene in Key West in 1974. They were inspired by the top guides of the era -- Woody Sexton, Gil Drake, Steve Huff and others -- to make a statement about what fly fishing for tarpon was really like and at the same time illustrate what threatened the fish and their habitat. The result was what Carl Hiaasen calls "a work of art."

But the best way to get a sense of what the film is all about is to watch the trailer, which we're happy to be able to show for the first time this week.

Yesterday I spoke with Tom Pero, editor of Fish & Fly magazine, who said that the current Tackle and Travel issue, almost in the hands of subscribers, will be the last for the publication under Turnstile Publishing. Turnstile, which owns the magazine, also shut down Master's Athlete today and laid off 15 employees. This continues a series of shutdowns of periodicals by the company, which has been hurt by the decline in their golf magazine business following an editorial debacle last winter, when a cover of their flagship Golfweek magazine carried a hangman's noose to illustrate a story on a comment made by a Golf TV announcer regarding Tiger Woods. Apparently large investments in in-house video capabilities also did not pay off. Turnstile and Pero are now working to find another publisher to take over the title and its circulation of approximately 20,000.

But it seems to me that the demise of Fish & Fly -- which more than any other fly fishing periodical in recent years took editorial chances, with longer, more detailed articles, more photographs, and harder-hitting gear reviews -- says more about the state of the fly fishing magazine business than it does about Tom Pero's editorial leadership, which I think was inspired. We've all heard complaints about milquetoast journalism in fly fishing, and F&F wasn't it. Pero chose to focus on in-depth content, and he believed that the readers and advertisers would pay for it. As it was, periodicals that spent more resources on becoming effective direct mail engines survived him. Even the fact that the latest issue of F&F is packed with advertising becomes a footnote when magazine publishers in general are experiencing lower subscription renewal rates, higher production and postal costs, and a shift in younger readers to the Internet.

What does that say about the future of fly fishing periodicals? I wonder. Maybe advertisers will be happy to have their choices narrowed on the print side of the business. But they lose out when an audience that is willing to pay for substance and a distinct voice is absorbed into the crowd. Personally I hope that other print publishers will take the example of Fish & Fly and improve on it by lowering their frequency and upping their production quality, but especially by spending more money on authors' and photographers' work. Pero's publication is evidence enough that is not editorial costs that will sink the ship. Indeed, if the inside story on Turnstile's failed attempt to move into video proves anything, it's that magazines should do what they do best. Print needs to adapt: not to compete with the Web, but to complement it. Nothing delivers high-resolution like print, and nothing appeals more to the human desire to hold information in our hands -- at least not yet.

Anyone desiring more information about Fish & Fly can contact Tom Pero at tom@wildriverpress.com.

One of my favorite fishing books of all time is Upstream: Fly Fishing in the American West. In it, Charles Lindsay's startlingly ethereal black and white photographs are interleaved between passages of Thomas McGuane's writing -- writing which comes as close to poetry as anything McGuane as published.

This morning's New York Times features the Rensselaerville, N.Y. home of photographers Catherine Chalmers and Charles Lindsay, which Chalmers, who is noted for her images of insects and small animals, describes as "where the head beast lives."

Upstream: Fly-Fishing in the American West on Amazon.

Robin Carey writes about a return to a childhood dream, of hunting garnets and catching cutthroats, in Gray's Sporting Journal. "A tad off center, along the crystalline axes, shone the star. So the star was there, as the cutthroat had been, but the facets were gone, and the right creek ran in another drainage."

This week on MidCurrent, Tom Helgeson offers his take on John Gierach's 16th book, Fool's Paradise. Gierach's new collection of essays hit bookstores only a couple of weeks ago, and we hear that some sellers are already having to re-order.

But does Fool's Paradise have the energy and wit of classics like Trout Bum and The View From Rat Lake? As Helgeson says in his review, "This is a nice, often humorous collection of stories carried on a soft, steady current by a good man who is thoughtful about his fishing and writing."

The Cleveland Plain Dealer's D'Arcy Egan interviews John Gierach and talks about the author's latest book, Fool's Paradise, which recently arrived on store shelves. "'I love fishing and I love writing,' said Gierach by telephone from his rural Colorado home. 'I don't know which one I'd ever give up. Charles Waterman, who is one of my favorite authors, once said that writing about fishing can be more fun than actually fishing.'"

This morning's reading turned up a little gem from Charlotte Observer staff writer Bob Simpson, who shines a light on the facets of the addicted fly fisher. "To a truly addicted fly fisherman, and this may hold true for all fully addicted fishermen, fishing is terribly important, primarily because he is positive that most of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant."

Place this one firmly in the category of history's ironies: Zane Grey, who became so passionate about the Oregon's upper Rogue River that he bought a mining claim there, may see his property added to the National Register of Historic Places. That would probably strike the famous angler-author as quite a twist of fate. Why? Grey bought the mining claim as a last resort, since all the land around the river was owned by the federal government in 1926. The Trust for Public Land bought the land from the Haas family, who owned it, and then sold to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. That's the same BLM who is fighting conservationists all over the U.S. west for more drilling access in unspoiled wilderness. Hmmm....

John Gierach's first book in three years arrives in readers' hands May 16. Fly fishers can hardly wait, and there are plenty of non-angling adherents of the Gierach view of life waiting for the UPS truck to arrive.

This week on MidCurrent you can watch and listen to Gierach as he draws the connections between fly fishing writing and the sport itself. As far as we know this segment, from the "Why Fly Fishing" DVD, is the only time Gierach has ever appeared in film. "We who fly fish," Gierach says, "think it's deeply meaningful until we try to explain why it's meaningful, and then suddenly it's just fishing again."

For his upcoming new edition of Spey Flies and Dee Flies: Their History and Construction, Oregonian John Shewey traveled to northern Scotland in search of flies tied by the legendary ghillie Geordie Shaw. He found them, after years of searching, hanging on the wall of the Craigellachie Hotel.

John Shewey's Spey Flies and Dee Flies: Their History & Construction on Amazon.

When the Wall Street Journal ran a story on Carl Hiassen's new book The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport, I couldn't help but once again notice the similarities that might compel a fly fisher to play golf, and vice-versa.

WSJ: Have you played golf since finishing your book?
Hiaasen: I actually played yesterday. I hadn't played in a month. I disgraced myself completely. A lot of the strategy in golf involves getting your excuses lined up. This time there were no alibis, it wasn't windy, there were no snakes on the course. I shot an abominable 97." We don't have many snakes on saltwater flats, but we do have rays. And more than one beaver has spoiled a perfect drift of the fly.

By the way, you won't see Hiaasen fishing "like a putz." He's recognized as one of the top bonefishers around. You can see his fly box on MidCurrent.

If you hadn't heard yet, John Gierach's first book in three years -- Fool's Paradise -- is being published this month. Jeffrey Mayor recently landed an interview with him and got Gierach to talk about how his style has changed in the 20 years he's been writing best-sellers. "'The first couple of books were written by a kid. I'm in my 60s now, I hope I've learned something. Hopefully the style has matured. I have people still come up to me and tell me their favorite is "Trout Bum" (published in 1988). That was written more than 20 years ago by a kid I hardly remember. As I get older I take a longer view.'" In the Tacoma, Washington News Tribune.

By the way, this coming Wednesday MidCurrent will be publishing a video interview with Gierach that is part of the new DVD "Why Fly Fishing." To be among the first to see it, subscribe to the MidCurrent fly fishing newsletter.

Author John Gierach and guide, artist and illustrator Bob White will mark their 100th column together in Fly Rod & Reel's July/October issue. Their first collaboration was in July of 1988, when Bob illustrated John's article, "East Big Fish." After Lee Wulff's death in 1991, the editors at Rod & Reel asked John to take over the assignment of writing the magazine's closing column, and Bob was asked to illustrate it. Their first regular column together, "The Sporting Life," was published in March of 1992. The illustration for the 100th column is a painting of John fishing his home water, and is titled "Close To Home." The accompanying image has yet to be released and will be unveiled in the 100th issue.

Bob has produced a set of limited edition prints from the paintings that illustrate the 1st and 100th "Sporting Life" columns, and Fly Rod & Reel will be giving two of these sets away in a sweepstakes that is described on Fly Rod & Reel's website at www.flyrodreel.com. In addition to the prints, the grand-prize winner will receive a new Boron II-MX rod courtesy of the R. L. Winston Rod Co.

To check out more of Bob's fine artwork visit his Web site at www.whitefishstudio.com. You can also see his work represented on MidCurrent's Fly Fishing Artists page.

If you are familiar with the life of poet and children's writer Ted Hughes, who was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death in 1998 and who was married to Sylvia Plath, you might expect a quirky and highly personal take on fly fishing. And that is what you get, from the new Letters of Ted Hughes (Faber and Faber, 756 pages), edited by Christopher Reid. "His letters reveal a Waltonesque obsession with angling: 'Dry Fly Fishing is a psychologically determined activity -- making slight understatements at the surface in the hope of interesting the organic mysteries and terrors in the depth ...' But for him, it was a dangerous activity; it could put you off your work: '... the whole motive of writing finds perfect and satisfying expression in fishing. Fishing is a substitute for symbolic activity that simply short-circuits the need to write.'"

More about Hughes on Wikipedia.

Verlyn Klinkenborg's entertaining thoughts on specialized vocabulary in The New York Times are a reminder of how peculiar our response to words can be. I consider myself tolerant of those who don't "speak the language," and I love a good malapropism, but if someone asks for a "rope" (instead of a line) or a "map" (instead of a chart) on my boat, it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Then again, my seven-year-old's favorite trick when driving the skiff is to try to hit all of the "boobies" (crab pot buoys), a terminology saved from age three because he knows it will make me laugh and reach for the steering wheel. And I'll sigh deeply and loudly over any kind of pontification, given that it is usually filled with errors of fact and judgment. Truth is, every nomenclature can help define expertise, but set it loose in common conversation and it becomes pretentious bilgewater. It's OK for fly rod designers to argue "spine" versus "spline," but lord save me from a room full of rodbuilders frozen in disagreement over the same.

"I realize that I’ve spent most of my life happily sailing into fogbanks of specialized language. Some, like the vocabularies of philosophy and literary theory, never lost their slightly foggy quality, thanks to their inherent abstraction. But others, like the languages of fly-fishing and hog-raising and horse-riding, cleared up just as soon as I laid hands on the objects they named."

Led Leeson has written some of the most beautiful essays in fly fishing (witness The Habit of Rivers and Jerusalem Creek), but lately he has become quite adept at observance of the sport itself, and especially how we adapt to the accelerating pace of change. In this month's Gray's Sporting Journal, he creates a long and rich list of the good and the bad. "When we don’t view the past in sepia tints through a Vaseline-smeared lens, we are apt, as the Stones say, 'to paint it black.' But Dickens was right: Human experience is equivocal. The Dark Ages had their bright spots, and the good ol’ days weren’t really all that good. From the French Revolution to fly fishing, history happens in shades of gray."

Read a longer sample of Leeson's writing in "A Moveable Feast" on MidCurrent.

John Holt reviews Taylor Streit's new book Man vs Fish: The Fly Fisherman’s Eternal Struggle for the California Literary Review. "I didn’t give Man vs Fish five stars because it’s written as well as say Trout Madness or Trout Magic by Robert Traver or anything by Roderick Haig Brown, though I suspect that as Streit progresses as a writer he will approach these two in delivery. The book received the top rating because of its honest, humble approach to something I care deeply about. A rare thing these days."

An unsuspecting angler might pick up Richard Brautigan's 1967 book Trout Fishing in America and guess wrongly that he was about to read a guide to the country's cold water fisheries. In fact, the book has almost nothing to do with trout fishing but provides a condemnation of a cultural turn away from nature.

Interestingly, Brautigan was also featured in the UYA production of "Tarpon," made in 1974, and coined the phrase "fishing on the ragged edge" in the movie: further evidence that some of the roots of counter-culture literature in the U.S. are closely entwined with fly fishing.

This from the Wikipedia entry on Brautigan: "To his critics, Brautigan was willfully naive. Lawrence Ferlinghetti said of him, 'As an editor I was always waiting for Richard to grow up as a writer. It seems to me he was essentially a naïf, and I don't think he cultivated that childishness, I think it came naturally. It was like he was much more in tune with the trout in America than with people.'"

This little gem of a quote is hidden in a retrospective by popular Irish sports writer Con Houlihan in Ireland's Independent: "Local fame is like a name carved on a tree destined for the sawmill. Anglers, despite popular belief, are not liars. Such strange things happen on the water that if they told the truth, nobody would believe them. And so they tell lies in an attempt to capture the truth." Read the whole piece; there's some really fine writing here.