An Angler’s Astoria, second edition
Published by Stackpole Books, 2013; $24.95 hardbound.
When I heard that Stackpole was going to publish a second edition of Dave Hughes’s An Angler’s Astoria, I immediately went to my fishing library to look for my copy of the original edition. It should have been there, somewhere on the shelf next to a handful of other Hughes’s titles. It wasn’t, and a search of the shelves failed to turn it up. I can only assume some scumbag friend borrowed it and forgot to return it. That was annoying, since I had a warm spot in my angling heart for the book since first reading it in 1981. I still think it one of the nicest pieces of writing on Northwest angling that I’ve ever encountered, and I dip into its stories every couple of years. The second edition, when my copy arrived, would have to do, and so it has.
Hughes is a prolific writer, having published something like 25 books, including Tactics for Trout, Reading the Water, Taking Trout, The Western Fly Fishing Guide, Trout From Small Streams, The American Fly Tying Manual, and Deschutes. While there’s some repetition in Hughes’s work, he always manages to say something new and useful, particularly for those of us who fish the West. He also does it both clearly and with an admirable degree of grace. The guy can fish, but he also can write.
If we discount Western Hatches, which he co-wrote with biologist friend Rick Hafele, An Angler’s Astoria was Hughes’s first book. It collected 35 or so mostly short, reflective pieces on angling and an angler’s life on the waters around Astoria, Oregon, which sits in the very northwest corner of the state, almost at the mouth of the Columbia River.
The pieces in the book are eclectic, offered in no apparent sequence. That structure lends itself to the kind of reading one does in brief moments, times when you’ve five minutes, or twenty, but not the kind of time you want to spend with a novel. There are reminiscences of boyhood days fishing with his father and brother, musings on the rewards of learning about streamside plants, observations on fly patterns, explanations of how best to approach steelhead rivers, stories about other anglers, some worth imitating, some to be avoided, and stories of the joys of tiny creeks and of fishing for sea-run cutthroats, large salmon, ling cod, and steelhead. Taken as a whole, the collection is a portrait of how one insightful angler measures his world.
The second edition combines all the pieces in the first with a new epilogue, a fine bit of writing that might just as well have been called an elegy. In taking a decades-after look at little Grassy Lake Creek, Hughes chronicles the life cycles shared by anglers and the waters they fish and voices his despair at seeing something once treasured and unique changed utterly. Repopulation of a stream by its native cutthroat trout after logging has removed the riparian cover that shades their water is a possibility — it has happened before. But survival of that one tiny genetic strain of fish, who have been there for millennia, won’t be possible after planting the stream with hatchery steelhead, who’ll outcompete and ultimately replace them. Hughes’s epilogue is sad and moving and wise, and it makes this second edition of An Angler’s Astoria well worth treasuring.
And if you’re the scumbag who borrowed and didn’t return my first edition, please bring it back.
Larry Kenney
What a Trout Sees: A Fly-Fishing Guide to Life Underwater
By Geoff Mueller. Published by Lyons Press, 2013; $24.95 softbound.
I respect anyone who takes the time to hang out underwater to watch fish. Snorkeling the Truckee on a lazy summer afternoon is one thing, but layering up, climbing into a dry suit, and willing yourself to spend time in cold, cold water is another. Hats off to Geoff Mueller (and photographer Tim Romano) for doing exactly that. In chapter 1, “Born to Swim,” the author suits up and slips into the Green River. He does an outstanding job describing the experience of submerging into a trout stream. I felt like I was there, only warmer.
Mueller paints this book with a broad stroke. Despite what the title might suggest, it is not a book dedicated to trout perception or what flies look and behave like underwater. It is also not an academic, Gary LaFontaine–style book in which the author spends years underwater trying to solve the world’s subaquatic mysteries. Of course, it does include observations from under the water’s surface, but it also delves into trout genetics, fishery conservation, stream restoration, road trips, rod-rigging advice, fly selection, and observations on casting and presentation. Mueller is the senior editor of The Drake magazine and past managing editor of Fly Fisherman. His engaging and informal prose style will be familiar to anyone who reads The Drake. In What a Trout Sees, Mueller lays out a lot of solid information in a clear, digestible fashion. To paraphrase Tom Bie, it is amazing that someone who speaks Canadian can grasp English so well. Each chapter is its own story, and the writing invites you to skip back and forth between the chapters. Tim Romano’s photographs are arresting, and it is easy to get sucked into a chapter just because the pictures are so cool.
I really dislike being interviewed, because the resulting story is invariably filled with misquotes and interpretations by the writer about what I might have been thinking, rather what I actually said. What a Trout Sees is brimming with interviews of various fisheries managers, anglers, ecologists, and fish biologists. Based on the author’s very accurate reporting of his interviews with me, I’m highly confident that the other interviews are fact-based, rather than wishful thinking on the writer’s part. Accurate reporting isn’t nearly as common as we might hope.
Normally, I throw a bit of negativity into a book review so that it reads like an honest review, rather than a press release. What a Trout Sees hits a high note with me, though, and perhaps it’s only because I am so elated by it that I can’t find anything derogatory to say.
Ralph Cutter
Subsurface Fly Fishing for Trophy Trout: A Guide’s Advice for Catching Larger Than Average Trout
By Zach Lazzari. Published by Nomad Fly Fishing, http://www.nomad-fly-fishing.com/subsurface-fly-fishing-for-trophytrout.html, $9.99 PDF download.
Zach Lazzari was born and raised on the banks of the Truckee River in Reno, Nevada. At the ripe old age of nine, Lazzari began to be mentored under the tutelage of well-known trophy-trout fly-fishing guide Doug Ouellette. I met Zach eleven years later, when he enrolled in a fly-fishing class of mine. He was already an extremely accomplished and inquisitive angler and obviously headed down the slippery slope of becoming a fishing guide, teacher, and writer. That he would take a fly-fishing class at this stage of his development spoke volumes about his dedication to turning every stone, no matter how small, that could help him get as good as he possibly could.
He should be justifiably proud of his first book, Subsurface Fly Fishing for Trophy Trout. The opening chapter, titled “Attitude Adjustment,” is just that. It is about the mental game and the doggedness required to target and successfully catch big trout. To paraphrase an ancient firefighter’s axiom, it is about planning your fishing and then fishing the plan. It is not so much about fun as it is about dedication, drive, and determination.
The second chapter, “Trout Food and Fly Selection,” covers all the bases about bugs and baitfish and is sprinkled with nuggets of information that will improve your game. (Add a touch of marabou to the tail of a scud pattern to give it life without having to move the bug too fast, for example.) In keeping with Truckee masters such as Ouellette, Joe Heuseveldt, and Cal Bird, he restricts fly selection to a few impressionistic patterns that will work anywhere.
The third chapter is kind of a grab bag of information, ranging from how to read water (accompanied by very good photographs), to how to approach various situations such as cut banks, boulders, and brush, to the effects of weather, temperature, and flows.
The next two chapters are about the specifics of nymph and streamer techniques. Lazzari does an excellent job getting to the kernel of each technique and the hows and whys of gear and fly selection. Here is also where a good editor would have come into play. The author assumes that the reader knows what the Brooks method is and refers to it several times. He also talks of fishing “up and down” and “top to bottom.”The first time I read the book, I didn’t catch these things, but the second time through, boning up for writing this review, it became apparent that a few explanatory sentences, especially for novices, might make a big difference in communication.
The final chapter is about actually playing, landing, handling, and releasing trophy fish. Throughout the book, Lazzari stresses the importance of staying off redds, avoiding spawning fish, and walking away from the river when the water temperatures get too high. In this final chapter, he repeats the advice and stresses proper handling and releasing of the fish. He’s not preachy, but writes with enough authority that you get the idea he is really invested in the health of the fish and not just mouthing greenspeak.
This is a very good, content-driven book. And it uses the Truckee for many of its examples, so if you fish that river, you are crazy not to read it. The book suffers seriously from the fact that it is available only as a PDF and must be read on a computer or tablet. The Courier font gets the job done, but it is not elegant. At 10 bucks, though, I can honestly say this is a steal. I hope it gets discovered and published in a hold-in-the-hand format.
Ralph Cutter
A Classic Revisited
Fly Tackle: A Guide to the Tools of the Trade
By Harmon Henkin. Published by J. B. Lippincott, 1976; available used, hardbound.
When I began fly fishing back in the 1970s, the standard trout rod was 8 feet in length and cast a 6-weight line. Much in fly fishing has changed since those days, but not the laws of physics, so I’m still using a 6-weight rod for my trout fishing. I don’t really see any reason to change. If the rod I pick up is graphite, then the length might have grown by a half a foot, but if it’s fiberglass or bamboo, then I stick to the all-purpose rod I know best. This outfit allows me to cast small streamers and bushy dries, but still lets me lay a size-22 dry fly on the water with a reasonable amount of delicacy. It’s all in the wrist, anyway.
Taking stock of the sport today, I can only marvel at how things have “progressed.” What are we to make, for example, of tackle manufacturers who design graphite rods so stiff and fleet that they overshoot the trout rising 20 feet in front of us? When Charles Cotton advised anglers to “fish fine and far off,” he was talking about rolling a line that was only the length of the hardwood pole to which it was attached. He didn’t mean you should cast the fly all the way to France.
I wonder what Harmon Henkin would have made of the fly-fishing scene today, had he lived. When Henkin published Fly Tackle: A Guide to the Tools of the Trade, back in 1976, there was, believe it or not, some doubt that graphite would be the wave of the future. Those early rods were brittle, prone to shattering, and hard to control. Henkin questioned the extra distance that adherents claimed for them. They were so stiff that they snapped off flies tied on 7X and 8X tippets. Henkin wrote: “From the perspective of only a couple of years, it is hard to evaluate the true importance of graphites . . . they may become superb tools, but so far there is still a large element of fad in them.” More damningly, he claimed they lack grace. As for the state of the marketplace back then and the available choice of tackle: “If you have to shell out $100 or more and make a mistake because of some clerk or writer’s prejudices, the waste can sour you on the sport quickly.”
Henkin said that the purpose of his book was to develop a “systematic approach to tackle” that would help anglers avoid making costly mistakes. But mainly, he said, he wanted it to be “a tribute to the beauty and quality of fine tackle, two attributes sadly lacking in most areas of modern life.” Henkin believed that fishing is “holistic” — not just an escape, but a means of fully participating in a well-rounded life. He saw tackle as a part of that process, and the care and tradition that goes into it express values that he particularly prized, especially a connection to other people and places. He knew that fishing can’t be separated from what goes on in the larger society, so he focused on the economic and sociological aspects of the sport — even on its class warfare — as much as he did on catching trout. And he wrote about it as if he were George Bernard Shaw:
In America . . . where we are all created semi-equal, angling’s class struggle has been fought less around tactics and more through what we know best, our commodities.
From the first hints of sport fishing in Aelian’s works, De animalium natura (“Nature’s Water Animals”), to the mid-nineteenth century, evidently few exciting things happened in either tackle or methods. The Greek poetess, Sappho, an angler, would have felt at home angling with mid-Victorians even if their moral strictures would have bored her.
The tackle fetish is natural for Americans. To be brand-name conscious is part of our national heritage Meaningless differences in rods, magnified by $100 in price, are taken to mean we are persons of unquestionable taste.
…I went for only the cream of the tackle world — not stopping with rods, for instance, till I had a Payne, Garrison, Leonard and a couple of other luminaries. That their actions were either too soft or too tippy bothered me only occasionally — when I fished, for example!
. . . [A]s we watch our waters destroyed by greed and indifference, we choose finer and finer tackle to fish less and less.
Wit and irreverence came naturally to Harmon Henkin, a true child of the 1960s. The radical son of an alcoholic Jewish cab driver from Baltimore, Henkin rolled into Montana right around the time when the Rocky Mountains were starting to fill up with hippies, trout bums, and other free spirits. With his counterculture tendencies, he fit right in with the Missoula crowd and with a coterie of creative types who had settled around Livingston, including Thomas McGuane, Richard Brautigan, and Russell Chatham. Money was tight in those days, and everyone was into bartering.
Henkin must have been the champ trader among them, because an amazing amount of valuable tackle passed through his hands. It seems as if he had owned, or at least cast, nearly every fly rod ever made. He had certainly read everything ever written about the sport, going back five hundred years. And he had strong opinions about each and every fishing gadget and gizmo on the market, all based on his having handled them. This despite the fact that he had no money.
When he wasn’t fishing, Henkin hustled a living as a freelance author. His article “Swapping” appeared in Outside, (and shows what a ruthless hand he could be at bartering.) His chatty story about Tom McGuane’s relationship with Margot Kidder (and the whole Livingston scene) appeared in People and can be retrieved on the Internet. Henkin wrote about environmental politics for the Nation and even found time to knock out a potboiler called Crisscross, a gonzo thriller about a pot-smoking hippie entangled in a CIA plot. This novel came out the same year as Fly Tackle, and The Complete Fisherman’s Catalog followed a year later.
As for his politics, Henkin was a proud and outspoken Communist. But despite his rather hard-core Bolshevism, he seems to have gotten along with just about everyone, except maybe his employers in the world of what he called “trout and elk journalism.” (Don Zahner, the former publisher of Fly Fisherman, remembered Henkin as “a charming con man” and “angling’s first groupie.”) Henkin counted among his friends Ed Zern, the humor columnist for Field and Stream, on whose lawn in Scarsdale Henkin once pitched a tent for a few weeks, and Charlie Brooks, a retired major in the U.S. Air Force Reserve who had served in counterintelligence and who was perhaps Montana’s best trophy-trout headhunter. Whatever political differences they had, it didn’t stop Brooks and Henkin from fishing together and having a grand time. Henkin even took up the Brooks method of fishing for trout with oversized fly rods and heavy ordnance more suited for steelhead. That is, until his friend Russell Chatham, a real steelhead fisherman, pointed out to Henkin a simple truth: “A trout is a twelve-inch fish.” It was a real come-to-Jesus moment for Henkin, and he never again fished for trout with heavy rods.
Henkin’s Philosophy in Fly Tackle could be summed up as form follows function. Rods should be neither stiff nor willowy. Reels should have usable drags. Things shouldn’t break easily or come apart if you sneeze. Common sense ruled. He liked tradition, but wasn’t married to it. He was a romantic, but not a sentimentalist. Above all, he had something to say and wasn’t afraid to say it—regardless of whether he was right or wrong. It’s hard to imagine this much candor and pungency coming from anyone covering the industry today — or even back in Henkin’s time. He was opinionated, funny, and awesomely informative.
And Henkin liked to rock the boat. Here’s what he said about one of the more famous fly-fishing writers of his era, Ernest Schwiebert: “he has written as if he were eighty ever since he was twenty.” He thought Granger fly rods (cult items today) were largely to be avoided. He read advertising copy with the same critical care that George Orwell put into dissecting political speech. He lined up sacred cows in his crosshairs and brought them down like elk.
Reading Fly Tackle, I found myself nodding in agreement at much of what Henkin had to say, especially on environmental issues. Although the rods and tackle in the book can now be found only on the second-hand market, the book seems remarkably applicable to the present day. True, Charlie Brooks’s heavy trout rods have gone out of fashion. (Instead, fly fishers are using wands that seem inappropriately lightweight.) But those high-speed graphite sticks are still breaking our fine tippets — a real problem now that flies are selling for around three bucks apiece. But Fly Tackle is more than just a handy consumer guide to our recreation. It is a book that captures the sheer exhilaration of a special time and place — not just in fly-fishing’s history, but in the shifting American scene. When the book came out, Livingston and Missoula were just starting to take on aspects of the counterculture. (In Montana, as they say, everything happens five years after it does on the coasts.) All over the Rocky Mountain West, young people were trying to reconnect to the land and nature and find themselves a place outside of the mainstream culture. They felt that if you are authentic in an inauthentic world, then maybe you are a rebel. There was a sense of excitement and optimism in the air. And it was a time when fly fishing was changing, too, beginning to shake off its patrician air of tweediness and snobbery. It was becoming more popular all around, but still something of a private eccentricity. Perhaps it was even a path to enlightenment — although Henkin wasn’t about to go overboard with that idea.
“Their supposition,” he wrote, “is that [fly-fishing] is an admixture of aesthetics, philosophy, and science, and that by standing in cold water for a couple of hours you can communicate with your God (obviously not a bait fisherman). Certainly all these elements are present in the recreation, but they are important elements of all the better parts of life, not just fly-fishing.”
Whatever it was that was going on back then, it’s over now. And sad to say, Henkin isn’t around anymore to give us what-for. Henkin’s financial situation improved after he sold a screenplay to Hollywood, but in the winter of 1980, on his way to pick up a brass bed, his truck hit a slick patch on the Interstate sixty miles outside of Missoula, and he rolled his pickup. Henkin died instantly from a broken neck. His young son was with him in the truck, but was unharmed.
Like the tackle described in its pages — like the poor author himself — this book is “out of print.” It would take someone even more colorful, off kilter, and financially irresponsible than Henkin — in short, a madman — to return to print a tackle guide from the year 1976. Too bad. Fly Tackle, as the kids used to say, tells it like it is. Even better, it tells it like it was.
Michael Checchio
