How do you like to spend your summers? Growing up, we spent hours fishing with family along the river. As an adult, I don’t spend as much time fishing as I would like, but luckily for me (and you), the library has many resources about fishing available for checkout. Below are some of the newer titles that I found while perusing the shelves.
As of this writing, all of these titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions are provided by the publishers.
Barr Flies: How to Tie and Fish the Copper John, the Barr Emerger, and Dozens of other Patterns, Variations, and Rigs by John S. Barr
In Barr Flies, John Barr shares his “confidence” patterns, the flies he has the most faith in to catch heavily pressured trout throughout the Rockies.
John Barr is the most successful designer of commercially distributed flies in the world. He has invented a number of indispensable flies such as the Barr Emerger, an unrivaled pattern for difficult trout across the country, and the Copper John, which has evolved into the most popular fly of the millenium.
In Barr Flies, John Barr shares his “confidence” patterns, the flies he has the most faith in to catch heavily pressured trout throughout the Rockies. Barr tells how he developed each fly, gives tips on when and how to fish them, and explains how he fishes multiple-fly rigs with the Copper John as the center of a three-fly system that consistently catches more fish. Most importantly, Barr reveals his methods for tying his favorite flies, with step-by-step instructions and clear color photos by Charlie Craven that enable even inexperienced tyers to create the Copper John, Barr Emerger, B/C Hopper, Tung Teaser, Slumpbuster, and many more patterns and variations. – Stackpole Books
The Blue Revolution: Hunting, Harvesting, and Farming Seafood in the Information Age by Nicholas P. Sullivan
Overfishing. For the world’s oceans, it’s long been a worrisome problem with few answers. Many of the global fish stocks are at a dangerous tipping point, some spiraling toward extinction. But as older fishing fleets retire and new technologies develop, a better, more sustainable way to farm this popular protein has emerged to profoundly shift the balance. The Blue Revolution tells the story of the recent transformation of commercial fishing: an encouraging change from maximizing volume through unrestrained wild hunting to maximizing value through controlled harvesting and farming. Entrepreneurs applying newer, smarter technologies are modernizing fisheries in unprecedented ways. In many parts of the world, the seafood on our plates is increasingly the product of smart decisions about ecosystems, waste, efficiency, transparency, and quality.
Nicholas P. Sullivan presents this new way of thinking about fish, food, and oceans by profiling the people and policies transforming an aging industry into one that is “post-industrial”—fueled by “sea-foodies” and locavores interested in sustainable, traceable, quality seafood. Catch quotas can work when local fishers feel they have a stake in the outcome; shellfish farming requires zero inputs and restores nearshore ecosystems; new markets are developing for kelp products, as well as unloved and “underutilized” fish species. Sullivan shows how the practices of thirty years ago that perpetuated an overfishing crisis are rapidly changing. In the book’s final chapters, Sullivan discusses the global challenges to preserving healthy oceans, including conservation mechanisms, the impact of climate change, and unregulated and criminal fishing in international waters.
In a fast-growing world where more people are eating more fish than ever before, The Blue Revolution brings encouraging news for conservationists and seafood lovers about the transformation of an industry historically averse to change, and it presents fresh inspiration for entrepreneurs and investors eager for new opportunities in a blue-green economy. – Island Press
Casting Onward: Fishing Adventures in Search of America’s Native Gamefish by Steve Ramirez
In writing this book, author, naturalist, and educator Steve Ramirez traveled thousands of miles by plane, motor vehicle, boat, and foot. In the course of this journey, Ramirez explores and fishes mountain streams, alpine lakes, National Wild and Scenic Rivers, desert canyons, brackish water estuaries, and the rolling ocean off the coast of Cape Cod. About half of this book was written while traveling through the COVID-19 pandemic and it touches on the lessons that COVID can teach us about nature and human nature. In Casting Onward, the author expands beyond the geographical scope of Casting Forward by fishing for native fish across American, within their original habitats and telling the story in part through the eyes of the people who have lived alongside, and come to love, these waters and fish. Woven throughout these adventures are the stories of the people he meets and befriends while pursuing a mutual love of nature as the first criterion for finding common ground. This is a hopeful story, in an all-too-often seemingly hopeless time. It is a story of fishing and friendship. It is a story of humanity’s impact on nature, and nature’s impact on humanity. – provided by the author
Illuminated by Water: Fly Fishing and the Allure of the Natural World by Malachy Tallack
In its blending of nature writing and memoir—also touching on the connection of time, beauty, and memory—Illuminated by Water is an elegiac tribute to fly fishing and the natural world.
Illuminated by Water is a book about the author’s own decades-long passion for fly fishing and how it has shaped the way he sees and thinks about the natural world. That passion is shared and made legible here, not just for other anglers, but for those who have never yet cast a line in the water. Why is it that catching fish—or even thinking about catching fish—can be so thrilling, so captivating? Why is it that time spent beside water can be imprinted so sharply in the memory? Why is it that what seems a simple act of casting a line and hoping can feel so rich in mystery?
Alternating between regional and thematic chapters, Tallack considers ‘wildness’, its pursuit, and its meanings; the compulsive appeal of tying flies; the ethics of catching and killing; the allure of big fish; and beauty—where it’s sought and where it’s found. He describes fly fishing trips to America, Canada, Shetland, and England. Throughout the book, certain themes recur—environmental harm and healing; the relationship between fishing and time; hope and its manifestations; and the ways in which angling can deepen engagement with the natural world. – Pegasus Books
Stillwater Fly Fishing: Competition-Inspired Strategies for Everyday Anglers by Devin Olsen
Stillwaters not only provide fishing opportunities for some of the largest trout in the United States, but they often provide the only dependable fishing (save some tailwaters in Colorado and New Mexico) in the early season (from ice-out to after runoff) for anglers in New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, California, Oregon, and Washington. Many anglers prefer to continue to fish lakes after the rivers drop to experience epic hatches of midges, Callibaetis mayflies, and damselflies, which all provide exceptional fly fishing for large trout. This is the definitive guide to fly fishing lakes and reservoirs fishing (written by the author of the best-selling book, Tactical Fly Fishing) and the only book on the market that covers competition and loch-style techniques used around the world. – Stackpole Books
The Unreasonable Virtue of Fly Fishing by Mark Kurlansky
From the award-winning, bestselling author of Cod-the irresistible story of the science, history, art, and culture of the least efficient way to catch a fish.
Fly fishing, historian Mark Kurlansky has found, is a battle of wits, fly fisher vs. fish–and the fly fisher does not always (or often) win. The targets–salmon, trout, and char; and for some, bass, tarpon, tuna, bonefish, and even marlin–are highly intelligent, wily, strong, and athletic animals. The allure, Kurlansky learns, is that fly fishing makes catching a fish as difficult as possible. There is an art, too, in the crafting of flies. Beautiful and intricate, some are made with more than two dozen pieces of feather and fur from a wide range of animals. The cast as well is a matter of grace and rhythm, with different casts and rods yielding varying results.
Kurlansky is known for his deep dives into the history of specific subjects, from cod to oysters to salt. But he spent his boyhood days on the shore of a shallow pond. Here, where tiny fish weaved under a rocky waterfall, he first tied string to a branch, dangled a worm into the water, and unleashed his passion for fishing. Since then, a lifelong love of the sport has led him around the world to many countries, coasts, and rivers-from the wilds of Alaska to Basque country, from the Catskills in New York to Oregon’s Columbia River, from Ireland and Norway to Russia and Japan. And, in true Kurlansky fashion, he absorbed every fact, detail, and anecdote along the way.
The Unreasonable Virtue of Fly Fishing marries Kurlansky’s signature wide-ranging reach with a subject that has captivated him for a lifetime–combining history, craft, and personal memoir to show readers, devotees of the sport or not, the necessity of experiencing nature’s balm first-hand. – Bloomsbury Publishing