Angler's Eldorado: Zane Grey in New Zealand (G K Hall Large Print Book Series (Paper))

Rating:
Summary: The ultimate in Big-Game Fishing.
Review: This book is an amazing tale of fishing in the "good old days" when wealthy or titled sportsmen roamed the world seeking trophies for their castle walls. By today's standards , Zane Grey is a one man walking ecological disaster, but he balances this by the sheer love of nature of a true hunter that comes across in his writing. The fishing, the sea, the sunsets, the birds, the islands and the bush on them, are all described lyrically. Zane lives the dream of every fisherman, to have the wealth and the time to travel to exotic places and catch world record game fish. This book is about several trips to the virgin fishing grounds of New Zealand from 1925-1932, in which he pioneered big-game fishing there. Where dozens of swordfish, marlins and sharks are seen around the boat most days and acres of bait-fish seethe on the surface. Where sportsmanship was the measure of the day, and hooking a marlin that leapt fifty times up to twenty feet out of the water and got away, was a better days fun than landing ten that don't perform. A great read but sad also, as you realise that those days are gone forever, and that the sheer success and excess of fishing parties such as these, helped end them. This book is not particularly well written; too much happens for it to hang together as a story. But as a series of accounts of the grand old days of fishing, it is a must for any enthusiast's library.