ginkyhackle
Member
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2007
- Messages
- 87
"How to" fly fishing books are abundant. Too abundant. It's the other genres that deal with our sport that interest me.
Short Story -- Hemingway "Big Two Hearted River" - Wonderful short piece in which Hemingway's protagonist the indomitable Nick tosses live hoppers at Brookies in northern Michigan.
Natural History - Brook Trout by Nick Karas. This is an incredible book which gives the most complete natural history of the fish imaginable. -- Did you know that Long Island was once a Brookie mecca? So was Manhattan. Did you know that Daniel Webster caught a 14 and 1/4 pound Brookie in the early 1800s? Do you know the story of the muddler minnow? All this and more in this book!
Fiction - A River Runs Through It is, objectively an excellent book. Certainly, it has become a fly-fishing cliche, but it is none the less iconic and powerful.
Poetry - Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet writes brilliantly about spin and fly fishing for trout and salmon. He's a completely brilliant poet and fisherman who knows the natural world intimately. Here's an example:
"It seemed to be all rise
and shine, the very opposite
of uphill going – it was pure
duration, and when it ended,
the pulse of the cast line
entering water
was smaller in your hand
than the remembered heartbeat
of a bird. Then, after all of that
runaway give, you were glad
when you reeled in and found
yourself strung, heel-tip
to rod-tip, into the river’s
steady purchase and thrum."
Wow!
Short Story -- Hemingway "Big Two Hearted River" - Wonderful short piece in which Hemingway's protagonist the indomitable Nick tosses live hoppers at Brookies in northern Michigan.
Natural History - Brook Trout by Nick Karas. This is an incredible book which gives the most complete natural history of the fish imaginable. -- Did you know that Long Island was once a Brookie mecca? So was Manhattan. Did you know that Daniel Webster caught a 14 and 1/4 pound Brookie in the early 1800s? Do you know the story of the muddler minnow? All this and more in this book!
Fiction - A River Runs Through It is, objectively an excellent book. Certainly, it has become a fly-fishing cliche, but it is none the less iconic and powerful.
Poetry - Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet writes brilliantly about spin and fly fishing for trout and salmon. He's a completely brilliant poet and fisherman who knows the natural world intimately. Here's an example:
"It seemed to be all rise
and shine, the very opposite
of uphill going – it was pure
duration, and when it ended,
the pulse of the cast line
entering water
was smaller in your hand
than the remembered heartbeat
of a bird. Then, after all of that
runaway give, you were glad
when you reeled in and found
yourself strung, heel-tip
to rod-tip, into the river’s
steady purchase and thrum."
Wow!
