At the risk, perhaps, of revealing a foolish sentimental streak....I'll confess that, as I've grown older, I'm inclined when fishing to take more time to ponder the past and wonder what has happened in that area over the years. What was the fishing like? What about the landscape - were there pines and hemlocks where today there are maples and mixed oak forest? When was this eel weir built?
I sometimes find this proclivity to be odd as - again, while getting older - I'm personally focused these days more on practical things and straightforward issues and much less likely to ponder abstractions than when I was younger.
Yet with fishing, it's just the opposite. When in my twenties, I was much more focused on catching fish and pursued this relentlessly. I'm still pretty focused but am much more inclined these days when fishing....to set down the rod and ponder. Hhmmm.
Anyway, this book is a good one. It describes the river back in the day (there were actually seals in the river all the way up at least to Lewistown in the 1700s!) even if most of the focus is on the misery of life on the frontier. The author's various float trips are good too and provide a realistic expectation of what one can expect rather than the all too often glowing accounts of "hundred fish days" and similar nonsense in other books and articles. It should perhaps be remembered that, having been published in 2003, this book came out before the bass crash that has impacted the fish populations somewhat in the lower Juniata.
Nevertheless, an excellent read
