|
|
Books > Sport & Leisure > Sports & outdoor recreation > Field sports: fishing, hunting, shooting > Fishing, angling
An award-winning journalist, aquatic ecologist, and lifelong
fisherman tells for the first time the surprising story of the
rainbow trout, a revered icon for some and an all-too-common
vexation for others Anders Halverson provides an exhaustively
researched and grippingly rendered account of the rainbow trout and
why it has become the most commonly stocked and controversial
freshwater fish in the United States. Discovered in the remote
waters of northern California, rainbow trout have been artificially
propagated and distributed for more than 130 years by government
officials eager to present Americans with an opportunity to get
back to nature by going fishing. Proudly dubbed "an entirely
synthetic fish" by fisheries managers, the rainbow trout has been
introduced into every state and province in the United States and
Canada and to every continent except Antarctica, often with
devastating effects on the native fauna. Halverson examines the
paradoxes and reveals a range of characters, from
nineteenth-century boosters who believed rainbows could be the
saviors of democracy to twenty-first-century biologists who now
seek to eradicate them from waters around the globe. Ultimately,
the story of the rainbow trout is the story of our relationship
with the natural world-how it has changed and how it startlingly
has not.
Travel the globe with Lefty Kreh as he shares his most memorable
fishing trips - his best cast ever for tarpon, twin Atlantic salmon
on two successive casts that both weighted an amazing 37 pounds,
Niugini black bass so strong you have to pull them from the brush
with a boat, 'machine-gun' bass-bugging for machaca on the Rio
Colorado, and, of course, the one that got away. Though not all
these tales are about great catches, there is plenty of adventure
as Kreh tell about the time he and his boatmates thwarted bandits
in Costa Rica on a sailfish trip or the time he was chased from a
prime bluegill pond by dogs. But whether about the best trips or
the worst ones, reeling in a trophy fish or fly fishing for the
bait, these stories show a man with a deep passion for fishing, and
perhaps more important, the friendships and discovery that often
accompany it.
|
|