Trout, Trout Bum, The Curtis Creek Manifesto… So now that you’ve read our pick of the 12 best trout and salmon fishing books of all time, what do you think? Agree? Disagree? Do you have book in mind that should have been on the list? Tell us about it.
By Chadd September 26, 2011 - 4:38 pm
It’s perplexing to me that The River Why was “chosen,” but not a single work of Roderick Haig-Brown was. I mean come on. Duncan: best-selling author. Haig-Brown: game changer.
By Robert Suplee September 28, 2011 - 10:25 am
Your article on “The 12″ was interesting and I have read most of those selections and agree with some of your choices. My #1 however is not on your list. “Trout Madness” by Robert Traver is one of the alltime best “stories” ever written. I would place it the top two or three on any list.
By Loren November 2, 2011 - 11:39 am
There’s a herd of elephants in the room, here. To be fair, there was bound to be in such a short list.
But Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler, even after 350 years, is still arguably the most charming fishing book around: perhaps it’s not strictly a “trout and salmon book”—okay, if you want to get picky. Don’t get me wrong: I love several of the books listed in the article, but do we really think that ALL of them are better than Roderick Haig-Brown’s A River Never Sleeps? (Right on, Chadd!) Omissions like that make you wonder.
And where are Foote and Traver? McGuane and Lyons? Where are Van Dyke, Lang, and Pertwee? McManus and Zern? Where’s Sparse Grey Hackle?
None of these are top-twelve material? Not even Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories?
I guess my real issue is that trying to list the “twelve best trout and salmon books of all time” is rather a losing proposition from the start. I sincerely hope that Trout will have another go at this, and this time we should get a list of, say, around two hundred great fishing works and/or writers. It might take more space and more work in compilation, but I’d be overjoyed to have it during the coming cold and snowy winter!