Desert island fishing book

[tiddlertamer]

If you could read just one fishing book whilst spending time on a desert island (as you do!), which would it be?

 

This thread is not about the book that snares the local piscene inhabitants but really is about which book you love most. Though dispensation is made for those that are influenced by books that are as much as about how to fish as opposed to why we fish.

 

I love the classics including authors such as Ransom and BB, but also more modern books such as ''Dreams of Jewelled Fishes' by John Aston.

I have to have a fave though:'How to fish' by Chris Yates is my choice. Even though it really should be titled, 'Why we Fish'.

[Vagabond]

If you could read just one fishing book whilst spending time on a desert island (as you do!), which would it be?

 

 

 

"How to build your own deepsea fishing boat"

 

There is such a book.

"From Tree to Sea - the building of a wooden steam drifter" by Ted Frost (Pub by -: Terence Dalton, Lavenham, Suffolk. 1985) You might have to grow a few palm trees and gather driftwood for a year or two though.

Edited November 22, 2008 by Vagabond

[MikeT]

The Compleat Angler, naturally (and since How to Fish has already been taken). There's so much in it to while away those desert island hours.

 

Are we allowed a 'Luxury Item'?

[tiddlertamer]

The Compleat Angler, naturally (and since How to Fish has already been taken). There's so much in it to while away those desert island hours.

 

Are we allowed a 'Luxury Item'?

 

 

A luxury item sounds good though, much as I hate to ban things, it's a music free zone! (they'll be people with bivvies and radios on the island before too long)

[MikeT]

In that case, I'll have a Witcher Centenary Coxon centrepin reel, thanks. I don't mind which one of the two that were made. I could sit there happily spinning that baby until the rescue ship arrives.

[chesters1]

all 3 volumes of the art of angling ,fag and bog paper for some time

[Chris Plumb]

If you could read just one fishing book whilst spending time on a desert island (as you do!), which would it be?

 

This thread is not about the book that snares the local piscene inhabitants but really is about which book you love most. Though dispensation is made for those that are influenced by books that are as much as about how to fish as opposed to why we fish.

 

I love the classics including authors such as Ransom and BB, but also more modern books such as ''Dreams of Jewelled Fishes' by John Aston.

I have to have a fave though:'How to fish' by Chris Yates is my choice. Even though it really should be titled, 'Why we Fish'.

 

Ooooo tough call. If I was limited to one Yates it would be The Deepening Pool - my fav CY book. (Much better than How to Fish IMO!)...or I could go for an anthology like Fish, Fishing and the Meaning of Life - ed by Jeremy Paxman - great variety of writing..... or the sublime prose of HT Sheringham in An Angler for All Seasons.... However I'd have to go for the book in my collection I've re-read the most times - namely Red Letter Days - and anthology put together in the early 1990's by Peter Rogers as a tribute to Bernard Venables - and to raise a bit of cash for him. 48 stories from the great and the good of UK specimen angling. A book that sustains me through the close season - so I'm sure it could do the same on a desert island!

 

 

C.

[DavyR]

Dick Walker's "No Need to Lie" - a slim volume, but one I never tire of re-reading.

[navybloke]

'Death, Taxes and Leaky Waders', an anthology of John Gierach stories. His writing was single-handedly responsible for starting me down the path of fluff chucking. I'm surprised how under the radar he seems to be in the UK, because the quality of his writing is second to none.

 

 

...and it's a real doorstop of a book, too!

[Vagabond]

'Death, Taxes and Leaky Waders', an anthology of John Gierach stories. His writing was single-handedly responsible for starting me down the path of fluff chucking. I'm surprised how under the radar he seems to be in the UK, because the quality of his writing is second to none.

 

Hear hear. I have every book (save one) that he has had published in the UK.

 

Trout Bum

Dances with Trout

Sex, Death and Fly Fishing

The View from Rat Lake

Where the Trout are All as Long as your Leg

Even Brook Trout get the Blues

Another Lousy Day in Paradise

Standing in the River Waving a Stick

 

Fly Fishing the High Country

Fly Fishing Small Streams

Fishing Bamboo

Good Flies and How They Got That Way

 

Plus the anthology you mention.

 

The missing book is "Signs of Life" - I'm still looking for it.

 

Having spent my formative years on tiny streams "Commando trouting" I can tell y'all that Geirach understands small stream trout and how to fish for them like no-one else I have ever read.

 

I have visited Colorado, and made a point of fishing the St Vrain streams - even went into Lyons and bought some flies tied by A K Best, and caught rainbows, brookies and browns on them. That gave me an even better insight into Geirach's world.

Edited November 23, 2008 by Vagabond