The sport of angling has many lessons to teach. Whether we visit the neighborhood pond, the bubbling brook, or the open seas, the message of the waters is the same: Be prepared, be patient, and enjoy the moment. This book examines nine timeless principles based on the art of angling. Vtilizing the words of renownes fishermen, writers and philosophers, each principle is examines in light of its application to fishing and, more importantly, its application to life. Book jacket.

Told through the eyes of a longtime Montana fishing guide and itinerant fishing bum, A Good Life Wasted offers a unique perspective on an implausible period in the recent history of human civilization. When Dave Ames started guiding, Rocky Mountain locals rode horses and dug camas roots; now they’re trading stock options on cell phones. The collision of stone and computer ages was short-lived, but the deep-rooted themes of this book remain. A Good Life Wasted--a chronicle and celebration of the fishing-guide life--is poignant and spiritual; it’s Blackfoot Indians and copper miners’ daughters; it’s fiddles and guitars and the fabric of space; it’s about what happens to wild people when the wilderness is gone. From the first chapter--in which Dave Ames recalls bluffing his way into a job as a fishing guide to the rich and famous (after barely managing to suppress the overwhelming urge to go postal at the federal agency where he suffered his first, and only, “real” job in a cubicle farm)--we’re hooked. We gladly follow Ames as he describes the rite of tasting clouds of mating midges to better match the hatch, tells the story of a fabled Blackfoot fishing guide, and shares his further adventures as a guy with no job, no office, and no stress. A Good Life Wasted spins a fascinating, compelling web--a web that entices the deskbound salary slave to make a break for it, and head west to big sky and fast, cold water, ASAP.

Do trout sleep? And if so, when? And how does that affect their feeding patterns? Does a rising or falling barometer affect feeding habits? How does refraction influence a fish’s approach to a surface fly, human shadow, or false cast? How much do fish need to eat, under what conditions will they grow the largest? For the first time, an accessible, well-written title shows us what the world is like under the water, from the fish’s perspective. Geoff Mueller, acclaimed senior editor with The Drake magazine, travels throughout some of the best trout habitat in America, talking with the experts and donning swim fins and mask to meet trout on their own turf. With What a Trout Sees, curious anglers interested in taking their skill levels up a notch or two will finally have all the information they need.

‘Illusory, frightening, and deeply moving, The Fisherman is a modern horror epic. And it’s simply a must read’ Paul Tremblay In upstate New York, within the woods, Dutchman’s Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked and fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other’s company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumours of the Creek and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss them. Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir. It's a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it. ‘An epic, yet intimate, horror novel. Langan channels M. R. James, Robert E. Howard and Norman Maclean. What you get is A River Runs Through It... straight to hell’ Laird Barron More praise for The Fisherman ‘Reading this, your mouth fills with worms. Just let them wriggle and crawl as they will, though—don’t swallow. John Langan is fishing for your sleep, for your soul. I fear he’s already got mine’ Stephen Graham Jones ‘What starts as a slow, melancholy tale gains momentum and drops you head first into a churning nightmare from which you might escape, but you’ll never forget, and the memory of what you saw will change you forever’ Richard Kadrey ‘The Fisherman is a treasure, the kind of book you just want to snuggle up and shiver through. I can’t say enough good things about the confidence, the patience, the satisfying cumulative power of this book. It was a pleasure to read from the first page to the last’ Victor LaValle ‘Stories within stories, folk tales becoming modern legends, all spinning into a fisherman’s tale about the one he wishes had gotten away. Langan’s latest is at turns epic and personal, dense yet compulsively readable, frightening but endearing’ Adam Cesare

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A fiery tour de force... I could not put this book down. It truly was terrifying and unutterably beautiful." -Alison Borden, The Denver Post From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, the story of two college students on a wilderness canoe trip--a gripping tale of a friendship tested by fire, white water, and violence Wynn and Jack have been best friends since freshman orientation, bonded by their shared love of mountains, books, and fishing. Wynn is a gentle giant, a Vermont kid never happier than when his feet are in the water. Jack is more rugged, raised on a ranch in Colorado where sleeping under the stars and cooking on a fire came as naturally to him as breathing. When they decide to canoe the Maskwa River in northern Canada, they anticipate long days of leisurely paddling and picking blueberries, and nights of stargazing and reading paperback Westerns. But a wildfire making its way across the forest adds unexpected urgency to the journey. When they hear a man and woman arguing on the fog-shrouded riverbank and decide to warn them about the fire, their search for the pair turns up nothing and no one. But: The next day a man appears on the river, paddling alone. Is this the man they heard? And, if he is, where is the woman? From this charged beginning, master storyteller Peter Heller unspools a headlong, heart-pounding story of desperate wilderness survival.

This delightful book records a year in the life of an essentially English waterscape, one that is home to a vast array of wildlife and natural habitat of the keen angler – the chalkstream.

Now for the first time in ten years, The Orvis Fly-Fishing Guide appears in a revised edition that solidifies its place as the flagship title of the Orvis brand. A best-selling, fully illustrated, and comprehensive book, this large-format volume has been required reading for every angler for nearly three decades. Included here are instructions for tackle selection; casting and presentation; flies and their specific uses; successful techniques on stream, pond, or ocean; and the select tackle, flies, and methods for pursuing every major gamefish in fresh and salt water, from bass to bonefish, tarpon to trout.

The perfect fly fishing book for today's novice, enthusiastic amateur, as well as the devoted angler is part narration of the author's own angling obsessions and adventures, part practical how-to, and part meditation on a connection to the natural world.

From the bestselling author of Saban, 4th and Goal, and Sowbelly comes the thrilling, untold story of the quest for the world record tarpon on a fly rod—a tale that reveals as much about Man as it does about the fish. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, something unique happened in the quiet little town on the west coast of Florida known as Homosassa. The best fly anglers in the world—Lefty Kreh, Stu Apte, Ted Williams, Tom Evans, Billy Pate and others—all gathered together to chase the same Holy Grail: The world record for the world’s most glamorous and sought-after fly rod species, the tarpon. The anglers would meet each morning for breakfast. They would compete out on the water during the day, eat dinner together at night, socialize and party. Some harder than others. The world record fell nearly every year. But records weren’t the only things that were broken. Hooks, lines, rods, reels, hearts and marriages didn’t survive, either. The egos involved made the atmosphere electric. The difficulty of the quest made it legitimate. The drugs and romantic entaglements that were swept in with the tide would finally make it all veer out of control. It was a confluence of people and place that had never happened before in the world of fishing and will never happen again. It was a collision of the top anglers and the top species of fish which would lead to smashed lives for nearly all involved, man and fish alike. In Lords of the Fly, Burke, an obsessed tarpon fly angler himself, delves into this incredible moment. He examines the growing popularity of the tarpon, an amazing fish has been around for 50 million years, can live to 80 years old and can grow to 300 pounds in weight. It is a massive, leaping, bullet train of a fish. When hooked in shallow water, it produces “immediate unreality,” as the late poet and tarpon obsessive, Richard Brautigan, once described it. Burke also chronicles the heartbreaking destruction that exists as a result—brought on by greed, environmental degradation and the shenanigans of a notorious Miami gangster—and how all of it has shaped our contemporary fishery. Filled with larger-than-life characters and vivid prose, Lords of the Fly is not only a must read for anglers of all stripes, but also for those interested in the desperate yearning of the human condition.

Lifelong fisherman Kevin Tracewski deals in depth with which are the best of Maine's myriad lakes, rivers, streams, and brooks to fish; how to get there; and what techniques and tackle to use. Organized by region; supplemented by detailed maps and comments from area anglers.