Our fishing book recommendations - old and new
The Lightning Thread
Fishological Moments and The Pursuit of Paradise
The Lightning Thread takes the listener on a journey of unexpected delight, personal pleasure and profound discovery. From angling with his father on a spating burn at the height of the Profumo Affair to knocking back mojitos while hunting for Permit, ‘the Robocop of the sea’, off the coast of Cuba. Much more than just another book about fishing, The Lightning Thread is an exploration of joy and a celebration of simple pleasures in a too complicated world. The significance of angling, as David writes about it, far transcends the mere catching of fish. It is about the extraordinary places he has visited, the remarkable people he has met and the great happiness pursuing his life’s passion has brought him. Written with warmth, wit and lightly worn erudition, his references range from Ted Hughes to Wittgenstein, from W.C. Fields to Milton, and always hovering in the background is the spectre of Isaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler, the Ur-text of halieutic literature.
Written by David Profumo
The Feather Thief
The Natural History Heist of the Century
One summer evening in 2009, 20-year-old musical prodigy Edwin Rist broke into the Natural History Museum at Tring, home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world. Once inside, Rist grabbed as many rare bird specimens as he was able to carry before escaping into the darkness.
Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist-deep in a river in New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide first told him about the heist. But what would possess a person to steal dead birds? And had Rist paid for his crime? In search of answers, Johnson embarked upon a worldwide investigation, leading him into the fiercely secretive underground community obsessed with the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying.
Written by Kirk Wallace Johnson
Salmon Wars
The Dark Underbelly of Our Favourite Fish
A decade ago, farmed Atlantic salmon replaced tuna as the most popular fish on America’s dinner tables. We are told salmon is healthy and environmentally friendly. The reality is disturbingly different. In Salmon Wars, investigative journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins bring readers to massive ocean feedlots where millions of salmon are crammed into parasite-plagued cages and fed a chemical-laced diet. The authors reveal the conditions inside hatcheries, where young salmon are treated like garbage, and at the farms that threaten our fragile coasts. Frantz and Collins document how the industrialisation of Atlantic salmon threatens this keystone species, endangers our health and environment, and lines the pockets of our generation's version of Big Tobacco. And they show how it doesn't need to be this way. Salmon Wars will inspire you to make choices that protect our health and our planet.
Written by Douglas Frantz & Catherine Collins
Stronghold
One man's quest to save the world's wild salmon - before it's too late
Salmon, one of the most determined, single-minded creatures on earth, have for hundreds of thousands of years succeeded in returning from the sea to their birth rivers to spawn - no matter the conditions or obstacles. But in recent years increasingly fewer are returning due to steady incursions into their habitat from dams, industry, and climate change. The salmon of the Pacific Rim are set for near extinction, just like the salmon that once filled the Atlantic Ocean.
Stronghold is an enthralling account of an unlikely visionary, Guido Rahr, and his mission to protect the world s last bastion of wild salmon. The reader is taken on a wild and at times dangerous adventure, as we follow him from Oregon to Alaska to one of the world s last remaining wildernesses, in the Russian Far East.
Written by Tucker Malarkey
Salar the Salmon
Swimming in from cold currents in the Atlantic, drawn by a deep impulse to reach ancestral spawning grounds inland, Salar - the 'leaper' - is a five year-old salmon returning to the stream of its birth. Salar's migration through the riverways of Devon - surviving porpoises, seals, nets, fishermen, otters, poachers and weirs - is one of nature's great journeys. Intense, brilliantly imagines, the salmon's perilous return leaves us with a vivid, unsentimental picture of how both people and wildlife rely on a river and its estuary.
Originally published in 1935, Salar the Salmon combines Henry Williamson's great talent as a writer with his insight as a naturalist. This edition includes the black and white illustrations by C.F. Tunnicliffe that first appeared in 1936.
Written by Henry Williamson
Blood Knots
A Memoir of Fishing and Friendship
As a child in the 1960s, Luke Jennings was fascinated by the rivers and lakes around his Sussex home. Beneath their surfaces, it seemed to him, waited alien and mysterious worlds. With library books as his guide, he applied himself to the task of learning to fish. His progress was slow, and for years he caught nothing. But then a series of teachers presented themselves, including an inspirational young intelligence officer, from whom he learnt stealth, deception and the art of the dry fly. So began an enlightening but often dark-shadowed journey of discovery. It would lead to bright streams and wild country, but would end with his mentor's capture, torture and execution by the IRA. Blood Knots is about angling, about great fish caught and lost, but it is also about friendship, honour and coming of age.
Written by Luke Jennings
The Longest Silence
A Life in Fishing
Thomas McGuane's obsession with fish has taken him from the river in his backyard to the holiest waters of the fly-fisher's world. As he travels the fish take him to many and various subjects ripe for random speculation: rods and reels, the classification of anglers according to the flies they prefer, family and memory - right down to why fishermen lie.
The Longest Silence sets the heart pounding for a glimpse of moving water, and demonstrates what a life dedicated to sport reveals about life.
Written by Thomas McGuane
Salmon
A Fish, the Earth, and the History of a Common Fate
Over the centuries, salmon have been a vital resource, a dietary staple and an irresistible catch. But there is so much more to this extraordinary fish.
As international bestseller Mark Kurlansky reveals, salmon persist as a barometer for the health of our planet. Centuries of our greatest assaults on nature can be seen in their harrowing yet awe-inspiring life cycle.
Full of all Kurlansky’s characteristic curiosity and insight, Salmon is a magisterial history of a wondrous creature.
Written by Mark Kurlansky