March 15, 2021
Have rod, will travel: the education of a devoted fly fisherman. "Angling is about anticipation and planning trips far in the future, but it also has a storied history," writes Coggins. "This sport has been practiced since Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler was published in 1653, in ways that are, to the naked eye, fairly unchanged today, like a Shakespeare play performed on a thrust stage." Coggins, who writes about fishing for the Robb Report, adds to the canon with this reflective, leisurely travelogue about some of his favorite fishing spots. Because anglers, like gamblers, are addicted to the "chance of winning," they must be optimists: The "angler is master of a kingdom that always threatens to crumble." Coggins reminiscences about when he went fly-fishing for smallmouth bass in Wisconsin with his grandfather's friends and learned the fine arts of casting and maneuvering a canoe and the vernacular of bobbers, leaders, and flies. Then the author takes us to see the cutthroat trout in the "mecca of American angling," Montana, a state that "calls the faithful like the Louvre calls painters." Of course, there were plenty of mistakes--e.g., a broken rod and the humiliation of losing a trout that "broke me off"--before he caught "a perfect fish." Coggins also recounts his trip to the "wonderfully isolated and remote" flats of the Bahamas to experience saltwater fishing and to catch a fish he's never seen before, the "silver phantom" bonefish. In Patagonia, the author sought rainbow trout, the "golden retriever of fish," whose luminous color "mirrors the joy of catching one." Among the author's many other adventures: chasing striped bass in New York's Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, running with Atlantic salmon in New Brunswick, Canada ("many shattered dreams lay at the altar of this revered fish"), and pond fishing for brook trout in the Maine North Woods, "a 3.5-million-acre wilderness that extends all the way to Canada." A wise, affectionate chronicle of a passion pursued.
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May 7, 2021
Adherents of fly fishing will find much to like in this latest book by Coggins (Men and Style). He describes coming to the sport through two grandfatherly types who took him under their wings when he was a young man. Coggins's ardor for the sport has found him fishing for brown trout in England, Atlantic salmon in New Brunswick, and bonefish in the Bahamas, among others. Along the way, he shares the quiet triumphs and discoveries that he arrived at through fly fishing. This work transmits the message that success in the difficult sport of fly fishing--like in any other pursuit--requires a combination of steadfastness and a willingness to alter your techniques. In chapters that offer a meditation on both fly fishing and nature, Coggins considers the way they overlap and inform each other. In each fishing spot he visits, he contemplates the natural history of the area and how it has changed over time. VERDICT A lovely, ruminative book about a venerable sport; it bears comparison to Adrian Smith's Monsters of Rivers and Rock. Coggins's enthusiasm for fly fishing is so infectious that the book will readily hook non-fishers as well.--Brian Renvall, New Mexico State Univ. Carlsbad
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