good reading

Like for many, an important part of the fishing experience for me is the reading that comes with it. Generally, most devoted fishermen spend some amount of time researching and reading on the topics and other useful information that allow them to fish in the first place (weather, locations, regulations) or catch more fish (tips, technical data, species behavioral info). There is another kind of reading that I find equally and sometime more interesting are those stories about the concepts of fishing. Sometimes it’s about how we relate with a particular fish, the beauty of nature, the friendships that are formed while fishing, and sometime about not catching any fish at all. The romance of fishing can make a situation more beautiful than it ever can be in reality. It’s like being in love, and the fact that you are in love makes each moment extraordinary and each individual precious.

Fortunately, there are many good reading on fishing and often I find myself at this section of bookstores. These days, I am equally fascinated with discovering new books & rediscovering authors I’ve read from the past, as much as catching fish itself. I’ve had the opportunity to discover John Gierach when my friend Jim gave me one of his books, and since then I have become a pretty big fan. I am reading his books one by one, and savoring each page. Although he has many books and I have not read many of them, I find myself reading extra slow sometime, because I want to discover his stories in full. John Gierach writes in a way that is refreshingly simple, seamlessly elegant, and it feels as genuine as any writing can get. You see, I don’t have long history with fishing, and my childhood memory is not filled with fishing or with nature. In fact I’ve grown up pretty much the opposite, born in the heart of one of the largest cities in the world, and I’ve spent most of my life in major cities like that. I’ve had my share of camping and exposure to nature in my childhood, but I don’t recall when the car or comfort of a house was out of sight. I sometimes feel that I am reading his books so carefully, in order to make up for some of that experience that I wished I had growing up. If that is a reason for someone to read books on those subject, then I guess John Gierach is probably not a bad choice. If you fish, and want to understand what American fisherman’s thoughts are made of, then I highly recommend picking up some of his books (Trout Bum, Even Brook Trout Get the Blues, The View from Rat Lake, Where the Trout Are All as Long as Your Leg, Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing, Still Life with Brook Trout, Standing in a River Waving a Stick, Dances with Trout, Another Lousy Day in Paradise, At the Grave of the Unknown Fisherman, Signs of Life, Death Taxes And Leaky Waders…among others).

http://www.midcurrent.com/articles/books/gierach_profile.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gierach

Excerpt from: Dances With Trout – One Fish
… A dozen things could have conspired against getting the right drift at the moment the fish was there to see it, and even then he might have decided he didn’t like the fly or he might have taken a natural right next to it. In other words, the spiritually profitable attitude here is not pride but humility.

Excerpt from: Standing In A River Waving A Stick - Grizzly Central
… they were romantic as hell, being trout that could trace their ancestry directly back to the last ice age with no interruptions, no detours through a hatchery. They were pretty gullible, too. Even with no hatch on, they’d rocket off the bottom of a four- or five foot- deep pool for a big dry fly without a hint of suspicion. There’s a kind of fisherman who calls wild cutthroats stupid – and I guess I’ve said that myself a time or two, just to make the point – but really they’re just unused to the idea of human fisherman, without a clue that some godawful shaving brush of a fly could be anything but real, edible bug.

Excerpt from: Standing In A River Waving A Stick – Belief
Down at the core of every fisherman’s heart is the belief that on any day something wonderful and unlikely could be made to happen, and that if you’re careful and patient it could happen to you. It’s not quite as simple as the gut certainty that there’s always a bigger fish in the water than the biggest one you ever caught there (a fish can be cosmic for reasons other than size), but that probably comes close enough without getting too mystical about it.