A Flyfisher's World

by Nick Lyons, Mari Lyons (Illustrator)

Overview

This ample selection of articles and essays by one of America’s most popular writers about fly-fishing begins with a moment on Michigan’s Au Sable River—the exact moment when the author lost his heart to fly-fishing. This collection chronicles a fishing life punctuated by a revealing trip with one of his grown sons and mellow reflections from a hospital bed.

This is the broadest of Nick Lyons’s books, with sections on tarpon and pike fishing in the Marquesas and in France, bass bugging on a small Connecticut pond, and trout fishing on unnamed creeks and blue-ribbon western rivers, as well as reflections on such aspects of the sport as the flies that are the underpinning of it all, the pursuit of records, the odd characters he’s met along the way, and the increasing challenge of crowds who pursue this ever-popular sport.

By turns canny, hilarious, inquiring, and philosophic, A Flyfisher’s World is an impressive addition to Nick Lyons’s important body of writing about fly-fishing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620878040
Publisher:	Skyhorse
Publication date:	06/01/2013
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Nick Lyons is a former English professor and book publisher, as well as the author and editor of many books on various topics. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Foreword to the 2013 Edition xi

Introduction xiii

Part 1 Various Beginnings and Revelations

1 Au Sable Apocalypse 3

2 A Fisherman's Childhood in Brooklyn 8

3 Green Trout 15

4 Another Season Begins 21

Part 2 Some Fish I've Chased

5 The Generous Bluegill 29

6 Small Fish 37

7 Little Wolves of the Weeds 42

8 Largemouth Magic 48

9 Riverbass 56

10 First Blues on a Fly 62

11 Selective Blues-and Striped Bass 68

12 Civilization and the Blues at East Hampton 74

13 World of the Silver Kings 78

14 French Pike 84

15 Brookie 90

16 The Snobbish Brown Trout 96

Part 3 How We Do It-and with What and Whom and When…

17 How We Do It 103

18 Fly Fishing for Anything, Any Way 109

19 Gadgets and Gizmos 115

20 A Fine Madness 119

21 Space Age Stuff 125

22 In a Barrel 130

23 The Journals of Clyde Fish 135

24 Honey Holes 140

25 Sizing Up New Rivers 145

26 water watching 152

27 The Mystery Hatch 157

28 Local Genius 163

29 Country Hardware Store 169

30 When 175

31 In the Car 180

32 Records 186

33 Dog-Day Redemption 191

34 On a Small Creek 197

35 Enough 202

36 Day of Rest 207

37 Seasons End 212

Part 4 Fishing in the Head (Mostly)

38 Fishing Backward 219

39 The Collector's Hook 224

40 Crowds 230

41 Mean Streams 235

42 Midspring Afternoon Dreams 240

43 What I Did Last Summer 246

44 Rhythms 251

45 The Antic Angler 257

46 Humanity: A to Zern 263

47 A Fierce Pursuit but Not a Circus 268

48 A Parliament of Skills 273

49 The Things of Fly Fishing 278

50 Fly Fishing in Bed 283

What People are Saying About This

Thomas McGuane

"Nick Lyons is a remarkably unpretentious writer, given all he knows and how well he writes. The essays in A Flyfisher's World are the field studies of a cultivated man and a windfall to their delighted reader."

Editorial Reviews

"Nick Lyons is a remarkably unpretentious writer, given all he knows and how well he writes. The essays in A Flyfisher's World are the field studies of a cultivated man and a windfall to their delighted reader."

Thomas McGuane

On a gray afternoon 40 years ago, Lyons hooked, and quickly lost, a large brown trout on a dry fly on Michigan's Au Sable River. He subsequently ordered his life around that "remarkable moment" and today Lyons is one of America's best-known fly-fishing authors, as well as a leading publisher of fly-fishing literature. In this elegant collection of essays, Lyons reflects on a life spent fishing for everything from pike outside Paris to giant tarpon on the shimmering flats off the Florida Keys. He is at his best, however, writing about trout-a fish of cool, clear streams that is, like its habitat, wonderfully evocative of Lyons's own quiet and intimate prose. Ranging from humorous to philosophical, these short pieces explore a fascinating sport in its many dimensions. Whether discussing how fly-fishermen compulsively attempt to duplicate with their lures the hatch stage of the life cycle of the tiny Paraleptophlebia or sadly reminiscing on a rural trout stream overwhelmed by the inevitable crowds, Lyons looks back on his lifelong passion without becoming unduly sententious: fly-fishing is "merely a lovely, useless activity that, somehow, has become an axial in my life, an anchor." The writing is a pleasure for anyone who has similarly tried examining the world through the lens of moving water. Mari Lyons is a New York City- based fine artist. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This commendable compilation of angling essays and articles from Lyons, a writer and publisher, will inspire and enlighten anyone who cares about fish and their habitat. Lyons's musings and observations go far beyond strategies for catching as many fish as possible. On the contrary, he deplores anyone or anything that would deplete the cherished natural resources that are requisite to this popular pastime. His approach is more contemplative and frequently philosophical as he ponders a variety of topics ranging from artificial fly patterns to river currents to modern gadgetry. Simple truths emerge from these pithy considerations, and readers will benefit from having their hearts and minds enkindled. Highly recommended for public libraries.-Will Hepfer, SUNY at Buffalo Libs.

Library Journal

How Lyons (Fishing Widows, 1974, etc., and president of Lyons & Burford publishers) manages, year after year, to wrest fresh, hugely entertaining material from the world of fly-fishing is a mystery. But he does.

Lyons likes to fish. He likes to fish long and hard, short and delicate. He likes to fish for all manner of quarry (though the brown trout is his downfall), and he will happily fish a spinning rod when the wicked, slender fly rod won't do. And when he's not streamside, he likes to fish in his head, read about fishing, paw through his fly boxes, dream of the honey holes. Lyons just slipped past the 60 mark, recently emerged from a hospital stay, and this collection of his articles and essays is a bit more reflective than his earlier books; the humor is still there, the wit sharp, but now he's taking a bead on why fishing has given him such pleasure, enthralled him so, made him, in a word, happy. In the long run, that joy may be ineffable, yet two aspects of his avocation continue to rise to the surface: Fishing makes him think, puzzle out a stretch of water, get intimate with the currents, eddies, and backwaters; and he deeply loves the context—not just the history and literature and paraphernalia, but even more the riverine environment, "the things that led us here in the first place: simplicity, untrampled bogs and banks, sweet silences, and perfectly exquisite beauty." While Lyons would run screaming from the suggestion, there is more than just a touch of the graybeard's wisdom here; when he talks of Roderick Haig-Brown's books, their "high-level of quiet instruction, inconspicuouly offered," the same could be applied to this book, teachings that shape the soul of the fisherman.

For Lyons, fishing is a matter of the heart, and to fishing he has blissfully lost his.

Kirkus Reviews