Book Reviewed: The Catch of a Lifetime: Moments of Flyfishing by Peter Kaminsky

The passion for flyfishing Fly fishers have a deep connection with nature that allows them to relax more in natural surroundings away from civilization to make fly fishing not only a great a sport but an intimate meditative activity. In this edited book, there are twelve chapters that include fly fishing of trout, Atlantic salmon, steelhead, Pacific salmon, blue marlin, blue fin, bone fish, pike, and others. This is a collection of about seventy-six essays, twelve by women, and three by the editor Peter Kaminsky. This is remarkable because there was a time when fishing was dominantly a man’s sport, but it is brightening find so many women getting involved, and they enjoy the sport as much as the men do. Many of the personal stories narrated by the authors are brilliant expressions of themselves enjoying the fishing life to the fullest. These encounters bring to life recollections, as Paige Wallace describes the sight of a rising trout to the primal shiver of romantic attraction on the dance floor. Hilary Hutcheson describes a trout rising above the surface as a little more than the gentlest kiss with the spinner, but the fisher’s presentation must land as delicately as a falling leaf. Then there is the heart–warming story of a father – daughter’s month-long transcontinental fly-rodding adventure that ends at the Blackfoot river in Missoula, Montana. George Semler and his daughter Hannah Semler describes the natural setting of the river which fascinated years earlier by Norman Maclean in his book “A river runs through it.” Semler recalls that he was bewitched and enchanted by the river. In many ways streams, creeks, brooks, lagoons, and rivers are like living creatures. They exist, grow, and move. They have their mood swings, being angry and being peaceful. A fly fisher who spends time in such an environment comes to an understanding that these waterways have a soul, and one must respect them. You will get a sense of that in the story of Norman Maclane’s fishing in the Montana landscape that engages a reader with profound metaphysical questions. These moments are a physical rapture in the presence of unsullied primitive America that are as beautiful as in the works of Henry David Thoreau and Ernest Hemingway. One of the things that is missing in this book are the photographs that summarize the excitement and joy of the fisher, the moment he/she caught. Many authors recall some of their biggest catches on water, but the reader would like to connect with that moment and imagine how that instant flew for the author. Most essays run from one page to three or four pages.