Fishing in Second Hand Bookshops
This interesting blog, “Fishing in Second Hand Bookshops”, was forwarded to me by Tony Orman, a Kiwi fly fisherman. He is an avid fly fisherman, hunter, and proliferative writer. He has published some twenty books on fly fishing and hunting. A tireless advocate for the environment, he has served 25 years on New Zealand game & fish councils. You may find some of his publications at –https://www.renaissancebooks.co.nz/products/author/Orman,%20Tony
“I can’t resist second hand book shops and particularly angling for fishing books. I’ve landed some beauties too, like many years ago coming across Roderick Haig-Brown’s “A River Never Sleeps,” in a second hand bookshop at Paraparaumu. As one critic put it “A River Never Sleeps”, is one of the enduring classics of angling.
Roderick Haig-Brown writes of fishing not just as a sport, but also as an art. He writes lovingly of moving water, the moods of the river and its fish. Month by month, he takes the reader from river to river – such as in January, searching for steelhead, in May, fishing for bright, sea-run cutthroats and on chilly days of October fishing for salmon.
That day in Paraparaumu I was absolutely chuffed to find “A River Never Sleeps”. You see I once owned a copy and loaned it to a friend, a noted Kiwi fishing “guru” who long ago, passed away and shall remain nameless. After a few months of the book not having been returned, I enquired as to whether he had finished it and if so could I have it back please. His response dumb-founded me. He was adamant my copy of “A River Never Sleeps” was his and always had been. I guess the moral is, put your name inside the cover or just don’t lend your favourite fishing books.
This year I came across a couple of most unusual fishing books. One is quite incredible -“The Feather Thief” – about an obsession with tying trout and salmon flies. It’s so wacky it might be a tall fishing story – except it’s true. It concerns a 20 year-old talented flautist, Edwin Rist, who became obsessed with tying salmon flies, even though he didn’t fish. One June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London’s Royal Academy of Music, Edwin quietly made his way to the British Museum of Natural History, housing one of the largest ornithological collections in the world. He was about to carry out one of the most bizarre heists in history – not money or rare jewels, but feathers. He broke into the Museum and snatched hundreds of bird skins–some 150 years old.
It happened that a couple of years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was fishing a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide mentioned the heist and its unsolved status. As he listened to the tale, questions began to pop up. His guide showed him a Victorian salmon fly. “A fly like this calls for some of the rarest feathers in the world”, said the guide, who admitted he was a Victorian fly tier. “There’s a little community of us on-line that tie ‘em. Most of the guys have no idea how to fish. It’s more an art form.”
“The sheer weirdness of the story – I became obsessed,” says author Johnson in his book,“The Feather Thief”. It’s a fascinating read, as the author goes on the trail of a feather thief. As one reviewer wrote, “nothing compares to reading an adrenalin-fuelled heist story filled with weird twists, macabre motivations, and crazy courtroom antics”. Usually, those stories are complete fabrications, fiction designed to titillate the reader’s imagination. But in this case, truth really is stranger than fiction.
It took the Museum months to realize it had been robbed. Eventually a detective on the case chanced upon online fly-tying forums and linked the theft to a person selling some of the same feathers that came from the stolen birds. Police traced the vendor to Edwin who immediately confessed. In court it was advanced that Edwin was a victim of Asperger’s Disease. He was released and didn’t serve any jail time.
Then a month ago, I dropped into The Book Barn, south of Christchurch and to be more exact, 10 kms south of the Rakaia River on S.H 1. There’s a mind-boggling number of books. I didn’t find much in the fishing section and had just about decided to leave when I came across the auto-biographical section. I had forgotten about fishing books and was scanning the titles when I came across one called “An Outdoor Journal” by Jimmy Carter.
I found Jimmy Carter’s “An Outdoor Journal” an intriguing read. Here was the president of a major power who loved fly fishing. I was aware Jimmy Carter had been to New Zealand and I heard from Tony Hayes of Tongariro Lodge about fishing with the US president. There’s a chapter about his New Zealand visit. Some of the book is devoted to duck, turkey and quail shooting but most of it is about fishing for trout, bass, steelheads and saltwater bone fish plus fly fishing trips to Nepal and Europe. Fishing aside, Jimmy Carter comes throughout as a man of intelligence, positive outlook, honest yet modest, and with an urge to learn more about catching trout and other fish.
Jimmy Carter’s wife, the late Rosalyn, was also a keen fly fisher. There’s a saying attributed to the 31st US president (1929-1933) Herbert Hoover that “The good Lord does not deduct from the hours of a man, those spent fishing.” Well Jimmy’s fishing years have stood him in good stead. He’s now 100, as of October 1 this year.
President Carter was a conservationist who loved and cared about the outdoors. For example, as president he confronted a long raging battle in Alaska between mining exploitation and the need to preserve wilderness and rivers. “I pored over the detailed maps of the region, trying to decide how much of Alaska’s natural beauty could be preserved without interfering too much with the state’s economic development. Slowly we forged compromises that resulted in a landmark bill, which I signed into law on December 2, 1980.”
Twenty-five free-flowing Alaskan streams were designated as Wild and Scenic rivers, tripling the wilderness system. “It was one of my most gratifying achievements in public life,” wrote Carter. “I knew that for centuries to come, visitors to Alaska would be thrilled by some of the most beautiful scenery on earth, undisturbed by the ugly scars off an advancing industrial civilization.”
The book reveals Jimmy Carter as a man who from his childhood in rural Georgia to his days in the White House and beyond was able to escape to and find renewal of spirit in fly fishing or other outdoor pursuits. “An Outdoor Journal” is a marvelous book and I got it from The Book Barn for just $3. It is available on-line. And oh, for more politicians like Jimmy Carter!
Reprinted and edited with permission, by Al Simpson, 11/2024.
