This guide is designed to help fly anglers select the proper equipment, tie knots, cast, analyze a body of water, and present a fly to a fish and successfully catch it.
Describes how to capture the top predator fish in a particular body of water with only an artificial fly tied to a light rod.
-- Covers advanced techniques and equipment.
-- Helps anglers develop a better understanding of walleye behavior.
Looking at the fishing life, the author describes his travels from the Rocky Mountains to Nebraska on odysseys with his fishing buddies, contemplating the reverence of fishing.
From the revered Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and writer, comes his National Bestseller on one of the world's oldest and most popular activities, fishing. Presented in narrative form as a conversation between a Fisherman and the Stranger, Hersey draws upon his own experiences and passion as the fisherman reflects on the age old sport, offering his own insights and thoughts. From the depths of the ocean to the creatures near the shore, Hersey perfectly answers why fishing has been such an integral part of humanity.
"Almost no one has answered "why fish?" better than Mr. Hersey . . . what he does best of all is evoke wonder."--New York Times Book Review "Blues is, of course, about much more than the pleasures and techniqu3es of fishing; it is, as Fisherman tells Stranger, about interconnections--the ties between mankind and the natural world, among others."--The New Yorker "Wonderful . . . He gives us a rich and vivid sense of ocean life. . . . The whole thing is as stately as a minuet, and as graceful."--Chicago Sun-Times
To the uninitiated, ice fishing seems improbable, wacky, and dangerous. But every winter, more than 2 million hardy northerners go to their place on the lake: literally on the lake.
Striking story-telling photographs by Layne Kennedy and engaging essays by outdoor writer and fisherman Greg Breining capture the quirky world of ice fishing--its natural beauty and solitary subzero vigils, along with its oddball practices and practitioners.
Kennedy and Breining take readers to fun-filled if bizarre festivals that include "Guys on Ice" in Door County, Wisconsin, the Tip-Up Town USA festival on Michigan's Houghton Lake, and the supremely self-mocking International Eelpout Festival on Minnesota's Leech Lake, which honors a slimy, potbellied, finny critter. Photos offer peeks inside ice houses that range from a plastic-bag cocoon to an impossibly luxurious Adirondacks ice residence with front porch and wet bar. Travel to a frozen lake in the Boundary Waters, to ice cities that form and disband overnight, and to the Volga River near Moscow, shadowed by the KGB.
Perhaps most importantly, A Hard-Water World allows the reader to enjoy the beauty, wonder, and, yes, insanity of ice-fishing all year round and in the comfort of his or her own home.
From the award-winning, bestselling author of Cod--the irresistible story of the science, history, art, and culture of the least efficient way to catch a fish.
Fly fishing, historian Mark Kurlansky has found, is a battle of wits, fly fisher vs. fish--and the fly fisher does not always (or often) win. The targets--salmon, trout, and char; and for some, bass, tarpon, tuna, bonefish, and even marlin--are highly intelligent, wily, strong, and athletic animals. The allure, Kurlansky learns, is that fly fishing makes catching a fish as difficult as possible. There is an art, too, in the crafting of flies. Beautiful and intricate, some are made with more than two dozen pieces of feather and fur from a wide range of animals. The cast as well is a matter of grace and rhythm, with different casts and rods yielding varying results. Kurlansky is known for his deep dives into the history of specific subjects, from cod to oysters to salt. But he spent his boyhood days on the shore of a shallow pond. Here, where tiny fish weaved under a rocky waterfall, he first tied string to a branch, dangled a worm into the water, and unleashed his passion for fishing. Since then, a lifelong love of the sport has led him around the world to many countries, coasts, and rivers--from the wilds of Alaska to Basque country, from the Catskills in New York to Oregon's Columbia River, from Ireland and Norway to Russia and Japan. And, in true Kurlansky fashion, he absorbed every fact, detail, and anecdote along the way. The Unreasonable Virtue of Fly Fishing marries Kurlansky's signature wide-ranging reach with a subject that has captivated him for a lifetime--combining history, craft, and personal memoir to show readers, devotees of the sport or not, the necessity of experiencing nature's balm first-hand.
This book grew from the author's desire to consolidate the many teachings that he uses in his popular fly-fishing classes. It is a textbook that includes concise and selective commentary on tackle, casting, tactics, flies and fly tying, and other related topics. The word companion derives from "one with whom we share our bread." After more than fifty years of fly fishing, the author would like to sit at the streamside and share these observations with readers. Here is the knowledge and understanding that he wished he had when he began fly fishing.
While the handmade steel hooks, horsehair lines, and carefully crafted wooden loop-rods have long given way to nylon and fluorocarbon leaders, multipiece graphite rods, and synthetic lines, the fundamentals of the craft have remained basically the same. In The Fly-Fisher's Companion, the author carefully goes through all the basics, all within the context of modern fly-fishing situations.
This companion may serve as a foundation or a supplement for fly-fishing instruction. It may also be a reminder or reference for the more experienced angler. As a retired educator, the author recognizes that instructors present material in different ways. Instructors may wish to select only those topics that fit their syllabus while omitting others. Over the years, these instructions and commentary have produced a host of competent fly fishers. We all learn by image, word, and action. Since the sepia days of Walton and Cotton, fly fishing has been an enthralling sport. And, as this companion hopefully makes clear, there is more to fishing than fish. There is an infinite amount of pleasure in learning a skill and doing it well.
