No fishing this weekend - building up brownie points with Jaq - for the last week of the season - I even went clothes shopping with her yesterday!!! (and we're still talking).

 

Also got lots of reading to catch up on - just finished a wonderful anthology by Charles Rangeley-Wilson which as ever I've reviewed for AN (see below too). Next up will be The Glorious Uncertainty by John Aston - just started it and I'd have to say that so far its even better than his first book (A Dream of Jewelled Fishes).

 

 

Chalkstream

 

 

 

 

Fishing the Perfect River by Charles Rangeley Wilson

 

What a great idea - an angling anthology celebrating my

favourite rivers. The only puzzle is why did it take me nearly eight years to

discover it? I love a good fishing anthology and I’m struggling to fathom how

this book hasn’t been on my radar until now – after all I’ve already read

everything else Charles Rangeley-Wilson has ever published in book form. (I

even reviewed ‘Somewhere Else’ and ‘The Accidental Angler’ 6 years ago for

Anglersnet – see: http://www.anglersnet.co.uk/book-and-media-reviews/somewhere_else_accidental_angler.html)

 

In truth though there’s not much of Charles’s actual writing

in this. He and his editor Tony Hayter have assembled a large selection of

articles and arranged them by catchment and river. Thus we have chapters

entitled Wessex, Thames, East Anglia, Eastern Wolds & France (Normandy).

Each major river and many, many minor ones are then acclaimed through the writing of others.

All the classic angling writers of the 2Oth century are featured:- Sheringham (repeatedly!), Skues, Hills,

Plunkett Greene, Venables and Walker to name half a dozen. Well nearly all.

There is a bias in the writing towards trout which probably explains why

there’s no articles form Chris Yates – which is a shame as he has written

eloquently of the Hampshire Avon and Kennet – though usually of barbel. Still,

it is a somewhat puzzling oversight given that one of the Dick Walker articles

is the Dace chapter form No Need to Lie.

 

The book is sumptuously illustrated with colour plates, most

taken by the compiler and often at the very spot where an accompanying story

unfolded (often decades previously!) There are maps of every chalk stream in

England some of which took some hunting down and many of which I’ve never heard

of. Frustratingly though there is no mapping of the French rivers – which gives

that chapter a sense it was a bit of an afterthought.

 

Naturally, when I first opened the book I turned to the

articles on my beloved River Kennet and it was with a certain piquancy that I

found myself reading of venues and even swims that I have fished and knew

intimately. There’s even a colour photo of a swim I know well! However the

pleasant surprise come in the writings of some ‘lesser’ rivers – streams I’ve

never heard of like the River Hiz & River Tas to name a couple. The Field

and now long defunct Fishing Gazette are plundered in earnest for many of these

articles. Back issues of both publications are often ‘staples’ for anthologies

like this one!

 

In all there are around 90 articles, poems, diaries and

‘Letters to the Editor’. One of the

pleasures (in fact reasons) of reading a well researched anthology such as this

is being introduced to new authors and their works. There’s a few books that I

now want to get better acquainted with as a result of extracts appearing in

Chalkstream. Top of my list is likely to be A Chalkstream Chronicle by Neil

Patterson. I’ve bumped into Neil a couple of times on The Wilderness where his

book is set.

 

The book itself is produced to Medlar’s usual high

production values, glossy paper and colour photos throughout – it makes a great

present for any chalk stream angler (which is how I acquired my copy!)

 

Medlar Press (8^th Oct 2009) 2^nd Edition (1^st Edition was 4 years earlier!) £25.

 

ISBN 1-899600-86-1