Nick Lyons - Fishing Stories: A Lifetime of Adventures and Misadventures on Rivers, Lakes, and Seas

BOOKS BY NICK LYONS

The Seasonable Angler

Jones Very: Selected Poems (editor)

Fishermans Bounty (editor)

The Sony Vision

Locked Jaws

Fishing Widows

Two Fish Tales

Bright Rivers

Confessions of a Fly-Fishing Addict

Trout River (text for photographs by Larry Madison)

Spring Creek

A Flyfishers World

My Secret Fish-Book Life

Sphinx Mountain and Brown Trout

Full Creel

In Praise of Wild Trout (editor)

Hemingways Many-Hearted Fox River

The Quotable Fisherman (editor)

Classic Fishing Stories (editor)

Hemingway on Fishing (editor)

Traver on Fishing (editor)

Best Fishing Stories (editor)

Fishing Stories

Copyright 2014 by Nick Lyons

Illustrations copyright 2014 by Mari Lyons

Most of these stories and essays originally appeared, often in different form, in Fly Fisherman, Field & Stream, The New York Times, National Geographic, Grays Sporting Journal, Sports Afield, and in the books Astream, Spring Creek, Bright Rivers, Hemingway on Fishing, and Hemingways Many-Hearted Fox River .

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Owen Corrigan

Cover illustration by Mari Lyons

Print ISBN: 978-1-62914-594-5

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62914-951-6

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

Fishing Stories is a roundup of stuff Ive written over almost half a century. The first two stories I wrote one summer in the mid-1960sFirst Trout, First Lie and Meccaare here and I guess I like them about as well as any of the several hundred I wrote thereafter. They were what snared me away from the academic essays and articles I had been writing since my days as a graduate student, and Ive long been especially grateful to them for giving me a much earthier voice, one much closer to something my own, and a path that gave me a life far from the academy. The span of this collection after those stories follows irregularly the arc of my lifefull of stolen days astream, great adventure and travel, triumphs and disasters, and days that were chiefly just great fun. At the end, theres even a piece about the Indian summer of a fisherman.

Most of these stories and recollections have appeared somewhere before in a magazine, anthology, or bookand occasionally in different form. In some cases Ive tried to correct rotten phrasing or sentences that leave wrong impressions. But mostly they appear as written, some more than forty years ago. In a few cases, Ive included work not published in a trade book of my own before, like Hemingways Many-Hearted Fox River, which I wrote on assignment for National Geographic magazine, then revised for a limited edition published by Jane Timken. Ive always liked that article for giving me a chance to speak about an author (and a story of his) who had meant a great deal to me when I first began to write. The trip was memorable and revealing.

Because they were written at different times the stories vary greatlybut this is less for their occasional changes in style and point of view than because of the circumstances of my life at the time they were written. When I wrote the long opening section of Bright Rivers, part of which Ive included here, the contrast between my fishing life and the challenges of living in New York City, with a large family, could not have been greater. There is a manic, feverish quality to parts of the book, and sharp contrasts, and I rarely wrote like that again.

I think I always love to read and then to write what I call shaggy fish tales, somewhat true perhaps but hovering at the edges of truth, where truth bleeds comfortably into fun and even fantasy of an innocent sort. These I wrote with an unalloyed pleasure that Ive always hoped gave readers some of the same. Some of these stories are close to straight reminiscence, hewing rather close to what actually happenedwarts and pratfalls included, which I didnt need to tinker with. A few come purely from my imagination, like The Metamorphosis, of course. And at times some of my deep-rooted questions are at the heart of a storysome plea for conserving the clean environment without which no fishing is possible, some quarrels with matters that have crept into the world of fishing, like competition, commercialism, or other qualities I could not help getting my two cents in about. In most cases youll know which is true, which isnt, and always youll know where Ive come down on social and environmental matters. Ive tried to keep the fun of fishing in what I wrote and to avoid exaggerating the size or number of the fish I caught flagrantly, to avoid bragging, and hopefully to keep at the heart of the stories some of the joy fishing has given me.

I competed with full force when I played basketball, which I once loved, but Ive found little sense in competing with my neighbor or a fish, or watching it, or writing about it. I guess I feel fishing is a lot more intimate than all that, more personalat least thats the only way I can do it. Maybe I dont brag about big fish caught because I have been too slender in that department. Nor will you find much about how to do it here, something others do with great skill and which I admire, though I have three thumbs. As a book publisher I met dozens of experts with great skills to share, and many became friends; but I am not an expert.

What I love are the storiesreal or imagined; I love the delicious feel of them that lets us live in them and believe them. I love the structure that draws us into them and holds us, and the surprise and suspense and delight that they imp from the fishing itself. I love the stories that tell us as much about the fisherman as the fish or the fishing. I treasure the link we feel toward anyone who pursues gamefish with rod and line. What great fun it all is! How wrong-headed it can be to freight it down with all that is ponderous, pretentious, commercial, competitive, ultimately unworthy and silly.

I see there are a lot of family stories here, though in retrospect Id have loved to spend much more time on the water with my four children. Well, I have four grandchildren and more time now than I once had, and perhaps I wont be so anxious for these children of my children to fish that I scare them away.

Ive fished for more than seventy-five years and these stories are drawn from practically my earliest days prowling a Catskill creek until my Indian summer. Some are light, some serious. Some are clownish, dramatic, sad, quietly triumphant. Ive tried over the years to register the fullness of my fishing life, the excitement and breadth and variety of the pursuit. Ive had great pleasure writing these stories and hope you take pleasure reading them.