Fly-Fishing for Sharks (eBook)

An American Journey

Richard Louv (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2002 | 1. Auflage
496 Seiten
Simon & Schuster (Verlag)
978-0-7432-2575-5 (ISBN)

Infos

For three years, journalist Richard Louv listened to America by going fishing with Americans. Doing what many of us dream of, he traveled from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from trout waters east and west to bass waters north and south. Fly-Fishing for Sharks is the result of his journey, a portrait of America on the water, fishing rod in hand.
To explore the cultures of fishing, Louv joined a bass tournament on Lake Erie and got a casting lesson from fly-fishing legend Joan Wulff He angled with corporate executives in Montana and fly-fished for sharks in California. He spent time with fishing-boat captains in Florida, the regulars who fish New York City's Hudson River, and a river witch in Colorado. He teamed secrets of fishing and living from steelheaders in the Northwest, Bass'n Gals in Texas, and an ice-fisher in the North Woods. Along the way, he heard from one of Hemingway's sons what it was like to fish with Papa and from Robert Kennedy, Jr., how fishing changed his fife.
As he describes the eccentricities, obsessions, and tribulations of dedicated anglers, he also uncovers the values that unite them. He reveals the healing qualities of fishing, how it binds the generations, how the angling business has grown, and how the future of fishing is threatened. But most of all, Fly-Fishing for Sharks is about the unforgettable characters Louv meets on the water and the stories they tell. From them, Louv learns about our changing relationship with nature, about a hidden America -- and about himself.

Textauszug

Introduction: Shop Talk One way or another, we're all anglers. On a Saturday afternoon before lighting out for the territories, I stopped at Stroud Tackle to see my friends Bill and Eileen Stroud and John Bowman. As usual, I needed the atmosphere more than the gear. My plan for the next couple of years was to take a new look at my country -- through the unique prism of fishing. Stopping at the tackle store seemed like a good place to start. Now in its twenty-eighth year, Stroud Tackle is located in a bland stucco building on San Diego's Morena Boulevard. The shop is bracketed by cut-rate furniture outlets, a massage-equipment-and-lotions store, and a building contractor's office. All of this is bathed in freeway noise and jet fumes from nearby Lindbergh Field, and Southern California sun. Walk in from the street, out of that harsh light and sun, let the door swing closed behind you, hear the little bell ring, and you enter another world. The shop is calming, a refuge from the chaos outside. Flecks of dust glow in thin rays of bright light that splay through the blinds. Your eyes take a moment to adjust. One wall is dedicated to freshwater fish. Across it you see mounted golden trout, rainbow, cutthroats, brown, lake trout, and a replicated 27.4-pound steelhead, sleek and shiny -- the state record steelhead caught on a fly, from the Smith River in Northern California. Everything's a little dusty, as if the fish have been freeze-dried in the arc of their jump, and then shellacked. Bill and Eileen look a little bit like that, too. The shop's back wall is given over to saltwater fish: halibut, bat ray, marlin, opah, amberjack, sheephead, yellowfin tuna, dolphin, roosterfish, jack mackerel, white sea bass, wahoo, dorado, yellowtail, bonefish, sharks (bonita, tiger, dusky, blue). Until recently, a baby hammerhead shark sat on the counter on a pedestal, but Eileen took him home. She was afraid someone would steal him. These days, many fishermen consider it more reasonable and correct to photograph their catch, release it, and send the photo off for replication in three-dimensional plastic and paint. But these fish, sixty of them, once moved through green and blue, through kelp and lily pad, through life. I look around. The mere stuff of the store is comforting, all this medicating paraphernalia: hand-tied flies (these days, 90 percent of them tied in Sri Lanka or Colombia or Kenya or some other developing country), Orvis, 3-M, Lamson, and Ross single-action, click and pawl and disk drag reels of Orvis, and Sage, Thomas & Thomas, Scott, Loomis rods, all graphite. Bamboo rods are back in vogue, not because they catch more fish, but because of how they make the angler feel. Special. Elite. Part of a tradition. Bill and Eileen do not carry bamboo rods, because, as Eileen explains, 'they're so expensive, one thousand to twenty-five hundred dollars, and the last one I had got stolen here, right out of the store.' Such a theft makes no sense. 'Think how you'd feel fishing with a stolen bamboo rod. Kind of defeats the purpose.' Or, she says, maybe the thief just sold it. 'The latest thing is guys come in here with Scotch tape wrapped around their hands, sticky side out. They run their hands through the fly box, and the flies stick to the tape underneath their hand.' 'Next time I see that happen,' says Bill, peering over his glasses, 'I'm going up to that guy, close his fingers into a fist, and shake his hand real hard.' 'I tell you,' Eileen says, 'fishing is changing.' The room, only 850 square feet, is packed like, well, a sardine can. Eileen and Bill, both in their seventies, stand behind the counter. Eileen learned...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 19.6.2002
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Freizeit / Hobby ► Angeln / Jagd
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Sport
• ISBN-10: 0-7432-2575-9 / 0743225759
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-2575-5 / 9780743225755