On Fishing by Brian Clarke

Brian Clarke is a big name in UK angling, and deservedly so. His journalistic output (see here) is an important voice of reason in an increasingly commercialised fly fishing scene. His expertise as an angler is unquestionable. He co-wrote a book which helped take trout fishing in the UK to another level ("The Trout and the Fly", written with John Goddard in 1980). This book has been described as "an absolute milestone". I agree, despite the fact that Vince Marinaro's book, "A Modern Dry Fly Code", predated it by 30 years and covered much the same ground.

"On fishing" is a delightful collection of 71 wide-ranging essays. Perhaps my favourites are where Clarke describes the characters of other anglers upon whose shoulders we stand: Fred Buller, John Goddard, Alex Behrendt, and others. For fly fishing is as much about our social history and how we choose to  define meaning for ourselves as it is simply a past-time. "Images of fish and fisherman in English Medieval Church Wall Paintings" - how wonderful and how so very English!

Essays on fishing in the Falklands, Norway ("The Boatman"), and the Hudson Bay transport the reader to exotic fishing trips in much the same way as other angling travelogues - a well-worn route, but Clarke is able to personalise these in a way which tells us much about himself.

And through the book we find pieces of Brian Clarke himself, finding himself:

My entire fly fishing career could be plotted through this transition, through my choice of flies as an out and out beginner to those tied in the middle years, to the sparse collection in which I place all hope now...I began to look for simplicity.

And so we come to it. A wide range of essays and observations from a man who writes very simply and well and from a lifetime's experience of angling. But within it, a clear view of the man himself, his values, and I think a melancholy of what fly fishing is becoming.

I really warm to this book.