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.