Fly-Fishing the 41st : Around the World on the 41st Parallel

Rating:
Summary: Hooked on a line
Review: James Prosek's gone fishin' in a big way. But that doesn't mean he's divorced himself from reality in favor of pastoral bliss the way fishermen so often do. In Fly-Fishing the 41st: Around the World on the 41st Parallel, the famed fishing writer loops the planet along one of its most interesting latitudinal lines, stopping in Mongolia and Japan, among other places, to find out what's biting.

Prosek's search for a native trout from the source of the Tigris River takes him into militarized Serbia and war-torn Yugoslavia. The 41st also takes the young writer directly through Paris, where he finds that the Seine River, once too polluted to support life forms of any kind, now lures a quirky subculture of inner-Paris anglers who-thanks to recent clean-ups on the river-routinely fish there for eel, bream and silure, a catfish-like creature that grows to enormous proportions.

In one of the liveliest passages of Fly-Fishing, the American author pulls up a 50-pound silure to the amusement and applause of a Paris audience, and his photo makes it into the French press along with a story that paints him as a "tourist" catching a "marine monster."

One of the many delights in Prosek's gem-laden narrative is a cast of characters from the international fraternity of the fishing-obsessed. Here you will meet Johannes Schoffmann, an Austrian baker who spends his spare hours researching the intricacies of trout. Though he is not a trained scientist himself, Schoffmann's studies are so meticulous and his travels so heroic, he has made himself indispensable to more than one university professor researching trout DNA.

Here you will also meet Francois Calmejane, a French tax inspector celebrated for busting big-time tax evaders. When he is not sleuthing tax fraud in his green ostrich leather vest and Holmes-style meerschaum pipe, Calmejane sculpts giant fish and flies out of iron and fishing-related found objects like hooks and spears. Prosek falls in love with Calmejane's dark, quirky work and buys a giant trout sculpture on his last day in Paris, because, as he tells the artist, he doesn't have any choice.

"I wished more things were so clear in life as a trout stream or good art," Prosek concludes in one of the verbal jewels that will make this book a hit not only with sport fishermen, but with anyone who likes to read well-written adventure.

Rating:
Summary: Trout galore and more
Review: James Prosek, "the young Audubon" of trout and fly fishing, has done it again with his latest book "Fly Fishing on the 41st." He seems to go from strength to strength. What at first seemed like a stunt, to fish around the globe on the 41st parallel, turns out to be a rich taste of ichthyology, sociology, geography, and biography, to say nothing of Prosek's appealing illustrative art.
This is far more than any one of these fields by itself. For in combining all of them, he takes the reader on an engrossing journey, serious in its aim, yet fascinating in its account of "schwarzfishers" and their adventures seeking trout, often in officially forbidden territory, but in fact acceptable to any true sportsman. For the main thrust is catch and release, keeping what he and his companions caught only for scientific purposes (except for the occasional campers' meal.)
Prosek's emphasis on limning the various couontries visited, the fishermen who were his companions and the wide variety of trout in the world all combine to make this a very readable book for a wide audience. I recommend it highly for anyone.

Rating:
Summary: A Vicarious Adventure
Review: The great open spaces of wanderlust and youthful adventure form the landscape of this book. Two themes thread their way like rivers through this landscape: the restless pursuit of trout (and other exotic fish); and a stream of colorful characters, drinking pals, and the occasional lovely lass. Prosek's prose is usually straightforward and Hemingway-esque, sometimes starkly and surprisingly poetic--like a haiku. Reading the book I was transported to wonderful youthful days gone by and was sorry when it was all over. If you're looking for a book that's first and foremost about fly-fishing, this isn't really it. If you're game for a vicarious adventure through far-flung exotic lands punctuated by a bit of fishing along the way, this tale is a joy.

Rating:
Summary: Ichtheology, Geography, Culture from a Very Human Angle(r)
Review: When I heard the author interviewed on NPR, I said to myself, "I have to read that book." My neighbor down the street is a passionate trout fisherman and I felt strongly that this book would help me understand his passion better. And so it does. As promised, we join the young author on a trip around the world on the 41st parallel, exploring countries, politics, and cultures and discovering similarities between all the passionate fishermen he encounters. The book has two weaknesses: the writing style is not as mature and strong as I might hope for, AND the publishers inserted water colors by the author (which I appreciated a great deal; they have a an immediacy of experience that somehow exceeds that of photographs) at intervals of x pages (no doubt a publishing thing) with no references to what part of the text the illustration was referring to -- ideally belonging in both the text and in the caption. They don't even correspond to the narrative sequence of the text. It might have been better to simply insert them as a discrete section in the middle of the book, as so many books do photo-illustrations. All that aside, this book was a very pleasant traveling companion with me for two weeks and I would count the author a very interesting friend and drinking buddy.

Rating:
Summary: Ichtheology, Geography, Culture from a Very Human Angle(r)
Review: When I heard the author interviewed on NPR, I said to myself, "I have to read that book." My neighbor down the street is a passionate trout fisherman and I felt strongly that this book would help me understand his passion better. And so it does. As promised, we join the young author on a trip around the world on the 41st parallel, exploring countries, politics, and cultures and discovering similarities between all the passionate fishermen he encounters. The book has two weaknesses: the writing style is not as mature and strong as I might hope for, AND the publishers inserted water colors by the author (which I appreciated a great deal; they have a an immediacy of experience that somehow exceeds that of photographs) at intervals of x pages (no doubt a publishing thing) with no references to what part of the text the illustration was referring to -- ideally belonging in both the text and in the caption. They don't even correspond to the narrative sequence of the text. It might have been better to simply insert them as a discrete section in the middle of the book, as so many books do photo-illustrations. All that aside, this book was a very pleasant traveling companion with me for two weeks and I would count the author a very interesting friend and drinking buddy.

Rating:
Summary: Ichtheology, Geography, Culture from a Very Human Angle(r)
Review: When I heard the author interviewed on NPR, I said to myself, "I have to read that book." My neighbor down the street is a passionate trout fisherman and I felt strongly that this book would help me understand his passion better. And so it does. As promised, we join the young author on a trip around the world on the 41st parallel, exploring countries, politics, and cultures and discovering similarities between all the passionate fishermen he encounters. The book has two weaknesses: the writing style is not as mature and strong as I might hope for, AND the publishers inserted water colors by the author (which I appreciated a great deal; they have a an immediacy of experience that somehow exceeds that of photographs) at intervals of x pages (no doubt a publishing thing) with no references to what part of the text the illustration was referring to -- ideally belonging in both the text and in the caption. They don't even correspond to the narrative sequence of the text. It might have been better to simply insert them as a discrete section in the middle of the book, as so many books do photo-illustrations. All that aside, this book was a very pleasant traveling companion with me for two weeks and I would count the author a very interesting friend and drinking buddy.