Jay Cassell - Incredible Fishing Stories: Classic Angling Tales from Around the World

Copyright 2017 by Jay Cassell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Individual stories reprinted here with permission:

The Evolution of a Fly Fisher Joan Salvato Wulff; Midstream Crisis Lamar Underwood. From Editors in the Stream (Halo Books, 1992); Brannigans Trout Nick Lyons. From Full Creel (Grove Atlantic, 2001); Romancing the Falls James R. Babb. From Fish Wont Let Me Sleep (Skyhorse, 2016); Sashimi Henry Hughes. From Back Seat with Fish (Skyhorse, 2016); Oblivious Richard Chiappone. From Liars Code (Skyhorse, 2016); Eastern Steelhead Jerry Hamza. From Outdoor Chronicles (Skyhorse, 2015); Zone of Habitability W. D. Wetherell.

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

Cover design by Tom Lau

Cover photo credit: iStockphoto

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-1380-2

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1385-7

Printed in China

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BY IZAAK WALTON AND CHARLES COTTON

BY NESSMUK [GEORGE WASHINGTON SEARS]

BY FRANK FORESTER [HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT]

BY JAMES A. HENSHALL

BY FRANK FORESTER [HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT]

BY W. N. HULL

BY JOHN JAMES AUDUBON

BY A. W. DIMOCK

BY ZANE GREY

BY JOAN SALVATO WULFF

BY GEORGE M. L. LABRANCHE

BY WASHINGTON IRVING

BY THADDEUS NORRIS

BY BILL BARICH

BY LAMAR UNDERWOOD

BY NICK LYONS

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT

BY JOHN TAINTOR FOOTE

BY G. E. M. SKUES

BY JAMES R. BABB

BY HENRY HUGHES

BY RICHARD CHIAPPONE

BY JERRY HAMZA

BY W. D. WETHERELL

BY JAY CASSELL

INTRODUCTION

T here is a rich and varied tradition of fine literature in the world of angling. Dating back to 1496, when Dame Juliana Berners wrote The Treatise of Fishing with an Angle , through Izaak Waltons The Compleat Angler in 1653, up to the likes of The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway), A River Runs Through It (Maclean), Trout Bum (Gierach), and The Longest Silence (McGuane); books about fishing run the gamut from entertainment to education, from escapism to guides on where to go fishing, for what and with what. There is no shortage of good books that address every anglers needs and desires. Just listing the titles of them all would take up a full book all by itself.

The esteemed author Roderick Haig-Brown did a wonderful job of summing up his love of fishing in the following passage from A River Never Sleeps :

I still dont know why I fish or why other men fish, except that we like it and it makes us think and feel. But I do know that if it were not for the strong, quick life of rivers, for their sparkle in the sunshine, for the cold grayness of them under rain and the feel of them about my legs as I set my feet hard down on rocks or sand or gravel, I should fish less often. A river is never quite silent, it can never, of its very nature, be quite still; it is never quite the same from one day to the next. It has its own life and its own beauty, and the creatures it nourishes are alive and beautiful also. Perhaps fishing is, for me, only an excuse to be near rivers. If so, Im glad I thought of it.

In My Secret Fishing Life , Nick Lyons extols writing about fly fishing, and how it seems to be improving as the years go by:

What interests me most about todays best writing about fly fishing is that it is realer and sharper, less idealized, less part of the specialized tradition of fishing writing and closer to just plain good writing. If this is a sign that fly fishing is being thought of more as a part of life than apart from it, Im delighted; for the best writing about fly fishingfrom Walton to Bergman to McGuanenot only says a few things that make us shrewder fly fishers but also a few that make us wiser human beings.

I would add that good writing about fly fishingany fishingalso transports us to waters we may never have the opportunity to fish in person and lets us live vicariously through the authors experience. It can help you see the world through a different set of eyes, to catch fish you may never fish for in your life, to experience rivers, lakes, or oceans that you may never see.

In putting together Incredible Fishing Stories , I tried to find stories that display the variety and depth of angling literaturenot only Walton (and Charles Cotton), but Zane Gray, James Henshall, and John James Audubon, but also writers from today: James Babb, W. D. Wetherill, Jerry Hamza, and Richard Chiappone, to name a few. As you read through them, live their experiences with them, see the world as they see it. In the end, you just may be a bit wiser for it.

Jay Cassell

Katonah, New York

Spring 2017

SECTION ONE

EARLY DAYSOF IT AND US

CHAPTER 1

THE COMPLEAT ANGLER (SELECTIONS)

BY IZAAK WALTON AND CHARLES COTTON

N ow for the art of catching fish, that is to say, how to make a man that was none to be an angler by a book, he that undertakes it shall under-take a harder task than Mr. Hales, a most valiant and excellent fencer, who, in a printed book called A Private School of Defence undertook by it to teach that art or science, and was laughed at for his labor. Not but many useful things might be learnt by that book, but he was laughed at because that art was not to be taught by words, but practice: and so must angling. And in this discourse I do not undertake to say all that is known or may be said of it, but I undertake to acquaint the reader with many things that are not usually known to every angler; and I shall leave gleanings and observations enough to be made out of the experience of all that love and practice this recreation, to which I shall encourage them. For angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt; at least not so fully, but that there will still be more new experiments left for the trial of other men that succeed us.

But I think all that love this game may here learn something that may be worth their money, if they be not poor and needy men: and in case they be, I then wish them to forbear to buy it; for I write not to get money, but for pleasure, and this discourse boasts of no more; for I hate to promise much, and deceive the reader.

And however it proves to him, yet I am sure I have found a high content in the search and conference of what is here offered to the readers view and censure. I wish him as much in the perusal of it. And so I might here take my leave, but will stay a little and tell him that whereas it is said by many that in fly-fishing for a trout, the angler must observe his twelve several flies for the twelve months of the year; I say he that follows that rule shall be sure to catch fish and be as wise as he that makes hay by the fair days in an almanac, and no surer; for those very flies that used to appear about and on the water in one month of the year may the following year come almost a month sooner or later, as the same year proves colder or hotter; and yet in the following discourse I have set down the twelve flies that are in reputation with many anglers, and they may serve to give him some light concerning them. And he may note that there are in Wales and other countries peculiar flies, proper to the particular place or country; and doubtless, unless a man makes a fly to counterfeit that very fly in that place, he is like to lose his labor, or much of it; but for the generality, three or four flies neat and rightly made, and not too big, serve for a trout in most rivers all the summer. And for winter fly-fishing it is as useful as an almanac out of date. And of these (because as no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler) I thought fit to give thee this notice.