Small-stream fishing wisdom with the same insight and pungent humor that has become Gierach's trademark. Advice on tackle selecting, reading water, and scouting.

Originally published in 1994, this book was a fly-fishing phenomenon in the way Howell Raines' Fly Fishing Through the Mid-Life Crisis was. Taking his fishing hobby to near metaphysical levels, Ted Leeson tells about his passions: rivers, trout, and fly fishing. With wry humor and rare insight, he explores questions that engage most fishermen: What is it about rivers that draws us so irresistibly, and why does fly fishing seem such an aptly suited response?

In The Optimist, David Coggins makes a case for the skills and sensibility of an enduring sport and shares the secrets, frustrations, and triumphs of the great tradition of fly fishing, which has captivated anglers worldwide. Written in wry, wise, and keenly observed prose, each chapter focuses on a specific place, fish, and skill. Few individuals, for example, have the visual acuity required to catch the nearly invisible bonefish of the Bahamas flats.

Newbery Award-winner Gary Paulsen's best-known book comes to audio in this breathless, heart-gripping drama about a boy pitted against the wilderness with only a hatchet and a will to live. On his way to visit his recently divorced father in the Canadian mountains, thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is the only survivor when the single-engine plane crashes. His body battered, his clothes in shreds, Brian must now stay alive in the boundless Canadian wilderness.

In A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean claims that “in my family, there is no clear line between religion and fly-fishing.” Nor is there a clear line between family and fly-fishing. It is the one activity where brother can connect with brother and father with son, bridging troubled relationships at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana. In Maclean’s autobiographical novella, it is the river that makes them realize that life continues and all things are related.

Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads. William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map-if they get on at all-only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi." His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.

Dylan Tomine takes us to the far reaches of the planet in search of fish and adventure, with keen insight, a strong stomach, and plenty of laughs along the way. Closer to home, he wades deeper into his beloved steelhead rivers of the Pacific Northwest and the politics of saving them. Tomine celebrates the joy - and pain - of exploration, fatherhood, and the comforts of home waters from a vantage point well off the beaten path. Headwaters traces the evolution of a lifelong angler’s priorities from fishing to the survival of the fish themselves.

In these stories, popular Chicago Tribune outdoor columnist Bill Stokes gives himself over to his true passion, trout fishing. It is an activity, possibly a madness, that moves him, time and again, to stand knee-deep in cold and murky waters, offer himself up to clouds of hungry mosquitoes, and attempt to keep from snagging his line in overhanging limbs while trying to outwit a wily rainbow or brook trout. And then remembering where the car is parked.

Welcome to Travers Corners, a dusty Montana town, where nothing much has happened since Herbert Hoover stopped for gas. Travers Corners, like most small towns, has no newspaper, no radio station; but here, large trout - no better than large trout, fictitious trout - await the angler. And apart from spreading gossip outside the McCraken’s General Store, the residents of Travers Corners love nothing more than fly fishing. Scott Waldie’s delightful cast of characters breathes life into this tiny, out-of-the-way town.

Whether debating bamboo versus graphite rods, describing the pleasure of fishing in pocket waters or during a spring snow in the mountains, or recounting a trip in pursuit of the "fascinatingly ugly" longnose gar, Gierach understands that fly-fishing is more than a sport. It's a way of life in which patience is (mostly) rewarded, the rhythms of the natural world are appreciated, and the search for the perfect rod or ideal stream is never ending.

Paradise, Gierach shows us, is relative; it can be found in the guilty luxury of fishing private waters or when one is soaked to the skin, in a small canoe on a big lake in a storm a hundred miles from anywhere, exhilarated after a day's fishing. There are also pleasures to be found in unexpected places: solitary fishing trips, fishing for less-appreciated fish like carp, or meeting a guide who at first seems like an inarticulate ax murderer but who proves to be a "Zen master among fishing guides."

Bright Rivers chronicles the angling passions and frustrations of one of fly-fishing's greatest men of letters. A city dweller trapped in the complexities of modern life, Nick Lyons has always found solace in his pilgrimages to great rivers. It is there that he fishes for trout, and in Bright Rivers, Lyons recounts the sometimes moving, sometimes hilarious experiences of his expeditions to the Delaware, Beaverkill, Madison, Big Hole, and Yellowstone rivers, sharing reminiscences of trout taken, released, and sometimes lost.

Jim Harrison, Pam Houston, Ted Leeson, Nick Lyons, Thomas McGuane, and more, share stories of fly fishing and life on the river. This marvelous collection features stories from some of America’s finest and most respected writers about one of the world’s most solitary and satisfying sports: fly fishing. For the first time, the stories of thirty-one acclaimed writers including Kim Barnes, Walter Bennett, Russell Chatham, Guy de la Valdne, Robert DeMott, Chris Dombrowski, Ron Ellis, Jim Fergus, Kate Fox, Charles Gaines, Bruce Guernsey, Jim Harrison, Pam Houston, Michael Keaton, Greg Keeler, Sydney Lea, Ted Leeson, Nick Lyons, Craig Mathews, Thomas McGuane, Joseph Monninger, Howard Frank Mosher, Jake Mosher, Craig Nova, Margot Page, Datus Proper, Le Anne Schreiber, Paul Schullery, W. D. Wetherell, and Robert Wrigley come together in one collection. Fly fishers and non-fly fishers alike will recognize in these poignant tales the universal aspects of the appreciation of nature, the necessity of conservation, and the joy and knowledge that come from time spent on fresh and salt water. This is a delightful, handsome volume that captures the allure and spirit of fly fishing and those that love it.

Fly fishermen everywhere will enjoy these varied, witty, and engaging adventures by one of America’s finest outdoor writers. There is a long section on trout fishing called "Brookies, Browns, and Bows", and another on the challenges and excitement of saltwater fly fishing, and an exciting group of memoirs about fishing near home and in far-flung and often exotic places - like the Minipi, Bighorn, and Norfolk rivers, where the trout can beggar the imagination, and where frustration can be the occupational hazard.

For more than 20 years, Heavey has staked a claim as one of America's best sportsmen writers. In feature stories and his Field & Stream column A Sportsman's Life, he has taken audiences across the country and beyond to experience his triumphs and failures as a suburban dad who happens to love hunting and fishing. This new collection gathers together a wide range of his best work - tales that are odes to the notion that enthusiasm is more important than skill and testaments to the enduring power of the natural world.

Jim Harrison, Pam Houston, Ted Leeson, Nick Lyons, Thomas McGuane, and more, share stories of fly fishing and life on the river. This marvelous collection features stories from some of America’s finest and most respected writers about one of the world’s most solitary and satisfying sports: fly fishing. For the first time, the stories of thirty-one acclaimed writers including Kim Barnes, Walter Bennett, Russell Chatham, Guy de la Valdne, Robert DeMott, Chris Dombrowski, Ron Ellis, Jim Fergus, Kate Fox, Charles Gaines, Bruce Guernsey, Jim Harrison, Pam Houston, Michael Keaton, Greg Keeler, Sydney Lea, Ted Leeson, Nick Lyons, Craig Mathews, Thomas McGuane, Joseph Monninger, Howard Frank Mosher, Jake Mosher, Craig Nova, Margot Page, Datus Proper, Le Anne Schreiber, Paul Schullery, W. D. Wetherell, and Robert Wrigley come together in one collection. Fly fishers and non-fly fishers alike will recognize in these poignant tales the universal aspects of the appreciation of nature, the necessity of conservation, and the joy and knowledge that come from time spent on fresh and salt water. This is a delightful, handsome volume that captures the allure and spirit of fly fishing and those that love it.

Bright Rivers chronicles the angling passions and frustrations of one of fly-fishing's greatest men of letters. A city dweller trapped in the complexities of modern life, Nick Lyons has always found solace in his pilgrimages to great rivers. It is there that he fishes for trout, and in Bright Rivers, Lyons recounts the sometimes moving, sometimes hilarious experiences of his expeditions to the Delaware, Beaverkill, Madison, Big Hole, and Yellowstone rivers, sharing reminiscences of trout taken, released, and sometimes lost.

Fly fishermen everywhere will enjoy these varied, witty, and engaging adventures by one of America’s finest outdoor writers. There is a long section on trout fishing called "Brookies, Browns, and Bows", and another on the challenges and excitement of saltwater fly fishing, and an exciting group of memoirs about fishing near home and in far-flung and often exotic places - like the Minipi, Bighorn, and Norfolk rivers, where the trout can beggar the imagination, and where frustration can be the occupational hazard.

For more than 20 years, Heavey has staked a claim as one of America's best sportsmen writers. In feature stories and his Field & Stream column A Sportsman's Life, he has taken audiences across the country and beyond to experience his triumphs and failures as a suburban dad who happens to love hunting and fishing. This new collection gathers together a wide range of his best work - tales that are odes to the notion that enthusiasm is more important than skill and testaments to the enduring power of the natural world.

In All Fishermen Are Liars, Gierach travels around North America seeking out quintessential fishing experiences, whether it's at a busy stream or a secluded lake hidden amid snow-capped mountains. He talks about the art of fly-tying and the quest for the perfect steelhead fly ("The Nuclear Option"), about fishing in the Presidential Pools previously fished by the elder George Bush, and the importance of traveling with like-minded companions when caught in a soaking rain.

Whether he is accidentally cooking his brain with hand warmers or yanking his lure away from a trophy fish just before it takes the bait, Bill Heavey can do no right. For almost a decade, he has chronicled his incompetence on the back page of Field & Stream, where his hilarious dispatches about life as a hapless outdoorsman who lives in suburbia have earned him legions of fans.

These essays recount his adventures alone and with friends, taking listeners through the seasons. In Paulsen’s north country, every expedition is a major one, and often hilarious. Once again Gary Paulsen demonstrates why he is one of America’s most beloved writers, for he shows us fishing and hunting as pleasure, as art, as companionship, and as source of life’s deepest lessons.

In this classic from the Lone Star State, John Graves learns that the river he knew and loved as a youth, the Brazos in north-central Texas, is slated to be dammed at multiple points - and he understands that things will never be the same. Goodbye to a River is a poignant narrative of one man's journey by canoe down the river of his memories. Along the way, he describes the colorful Texas landscape and recounts its rich history.

The story moves back and forth in time from the arrival of Thea from her isolated village in arctic Norway in search of a new life in the near wilderness of a small town and logging camp on the shore of Lake Superior to the travails of her orphaned son, Odd, some twenty years later. When Thea’s aunt and uncle do not meet her boat as planned, she’s initially left abandoned with no money or prospects and without speaking the language.

The stories in Kerplunk! travel the byways and highways of the Pacific Northwest, bringing to life offbeat, down-home characters who hope their grandchildren can pick the lock on the gun safe because they've forgotten the combination, who know exactly why it costs $500 to make a fly lure that retails for $2, and who aren't afraid to confront the problems of bird-dog flatulence.

"Of the place where he had been a boy he had written well enough. As well as he could then." So thought a dying writer in an early version of The Snows of Kilimanjaro. The writer was, of course, Ernest Hemingway. The place was the Michigan of his boyhood, where he remembered himself as Nick Adams. The now-famous "Nick Adams" stories show a memorable character growing from child to adolescent to soldier, veteran, writer, and parent - a sequence closely paralleling the events of Hemingway's life.

Quenton Cassidy's first foot races are with nature itself: the summer storms that sweep through his subtropical neighborhood. Shirtless, barefoot, and brown as a berry, Cassidy is a skinny, mouthy kid with aspirations to be a great athlete. As he explores his primal surroundings along the Loxahatchee River and the nearby Atlantic Ocean, he is befriended by Trapper Nelson, "the Tarzan of the Loxahatchee", a well-known eccentric who lives off the land.

The touching story of a young, mortally ill priest who spends his last days working among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia.

A local fisherman lands more than he bargained for when he pulls a dead body out of Montana’s Madison River. Sheriff Martha Ettinger takes on the case and soon comes into the company of reclusive artist, Montana newcomer, and ex-PI Sean Stranahan. After teaming up to investigate, Martha and Sean soon uncover evidence that the murder has ties to one of the state’s biggest industries: fly fishing.

Often compared to Garrison Keillor and Mark Twain, Patrick F. McManus maintains just the right balance between baffled innocence and conspiratorial confidence. Since 1979, this humorist has been delighting readers with hilarious stories recounting his childhood in rural Idaho and relating his misadventures in the great outdoors. Whether you're a sportsman or a couch potato, he will have you laughing out loud at his escapades.