Birds Of The Raincoast - Habits and Habitat.
By Harvey Thommasen, Kevin Hutchings, R. Wayne Campbell and Mark Hume. Harbour Publishing. www.harbourpublishing.com
Harvey Thommasen and Mark Hume are two of the founding writers of A River Never Sleeps.com and have teamed up before, notably on the book, River of The Angry Moon.
In Birds Of The Raincoast, the authors follow a salmon stream from the estuary to its headwaters, describing the bird life they encounter along the way. It’s a rich and detailed journey illustrated with hundreds of high quality color photos.
Anyone who has ever walked along or waded in a coastal river in the Pacific Northwest will know that one of the marvelous things about this area is the rich bird life that can be found along the water. Fish the Squamish or Harrison Rivers in the fall and you will be surrounded by flocks of eagles. Wade for sea-run cutthroat at the mouth of any coastal stream in the spring, and rafts of water birds will go chugging past.
Birds are a big part of the joy of fly fishing. And this lavishly illustrated book, which features the photography of Mr. Campbell and Michael Wigle, along with others, will help you identify and enjoy the birds that share the water with you.
Mr. Campbell, the former chief ornithologist for British Columbia and a renowned biologist who has authored 51 books, is not only a great bird photographer, but is also perhaps the world’s authority on birds of the Pacific Northwest. His detailed and insightful observations, are highlighted throughout the book in small boxes.
“Like the songs of many forest birds, the drumming of woodpeckers advertises for mates and defends territory,” he writes, for example. “Some drumming can be heard half a mile away. Each woodpecker has its unique drumming sound. The beats per second, or cadence, may be slow (14 for a Pileated Woodpecker) or fast (26 for a Hairy Woodpecker). . .With a lot of practice and patience you can differentiate the drumming patterns of the various species.”
The book is written in contained sections, so that you can flip it open anywhere and start reading. You can read a habitat section separately, such as the one titled, River Birds, or you can browse through the book until you see a picture of a specific bird that interests you, then locate the information about it on a nearby page.
Two of the four authors are hard core fly fishermen (Thommasen and Hume) and this book began with their trips afield. They went searching for trout, salmon and steelhead, but along the way they were kept company by birds. This book is their way of sharing that world with others.
Bob Sheedy’s Lake Fly Fishing Strategies.
By Bob Sheedy.
FFC Publications. $29.95
Bob Sheedy has had any number of jobs over the years, including working as a bush trapper and pilot, but he’s finally become what it seems he was destined to be. As Tony Dean so aptly puts it in the forward to this remarkably informative book: “He’s a trout bum.”
And lucky for us that he is. Otherwise he might not have had the time to write this book, and he certainly wouldn’t have had the time to learn all the secrets that he has about fishing for really, really big trout in the Canadian prairies.
The subtitle for Lake Fly Fishing Strategies is: A stillwater instructional derived from 50 years of on-water experience.
Mr. Sheedy has jammed those 50 years of lessons into some 250 odd pages, and it’s well worth the effort to wade through it. The author, who lives and fishes in Manitoba where they grow huge trout, is an original thinker. Over the years he has developed his own techniques to meet the requirements of the lakes and sloughs he fishes. The result is a must-read book for anyone who’s planning a trout fishing trip to Manitoba or Saskatchewan. And if you haven’t been planning on going there, you’ll want to before you finish this book.
Bob Sheedy’s Lake Fly Fishing Strategies is also a must-read for any fly fisherman who has an open mind, and wants to learn new approaches to old problems, because the author is such an original thinker. Most how-to fly fishing books are just the same old stuff, presented over and over again in slighlty different packages. Some are better illustrated, some are better written, but this one offers unique insights into almost every topic the author tackles. He explains, for example, why you catch more trout when fishing from a float tube than a boat. We all know that when you get into a tube, you lower your profile and move slower, both of which are advantages in lake fishing. ButMr. Sheedy goes beyond the obvious to point out how the movement of boats can scare big fish - and he advises that if you really want to catch trophy trout, you’ll visit a lake with your tube on an off day.
“It is said that trout become used to boat traffic, and this is true. To a point. On many lakes, weekend fishing might produce reasonable, even good catches of trout up to 20 inches. Visit that same lake on Tuesday, and you may find yourself wondering from whence came all the trophy-sized fish?”
Of course, only a true trout bum would know that Tuesday is the best day to go fishing.
He talks about the correct way to inflate your tube, how to use sonar, how to read weed beds, how to muckfester and the importance of foam lines, among many other things.
In a section on structures and strategies, he introduces the concept of “cupules.” A cupule is a cup like structure, according to Webster’s dictionary, and it is a term that I have never heard applied to fishing before, in my own 50 years of reading about and pursuing the sport. Mr. Sheedy’s cupules are “little hidey-holes in the weeds,” or in other structures, which he searches for while exploring lakes.
“Whichever the types of cupules or how they are formed, trout, either alone or in pods, will herd forage fish into these confinements prior to commencing their vicious, repeated attacks. . . Not only forage fish are likely to be present, for many other forms of aquatic life thrive in these minuscule environments,” he writes.
He explains where to look for cupules and warns that mapping them can become an addictive passion. It seems that once you have found out how productive these small formations can be, you become obsessed with them. When you see the pictures of the trophy trout that Mr. Sheedy routinely catches, you will understand why.
Bob Sheedy’s Lake Fly Fishing Strategies will add new words to your fly fishing vocabulary, and will give you a lot of new ideas on how to catch trout. The lay-out of the book, which seems influenced by web page design, leaves a bit to be desired. But the richness of the content more than compensates for any typographical shortcomings.
If you are a student of the great game of fly fishing, and if you want to learn new methods, this book is a tremendous resource. Be forewarned. Ever since reading it I’ve been dreaming of going fly fishing in Manitoba. Muck festering and cupule stalking sounds like a heck of a lot of fun.
NOTE: More information on Bob Sheedy’s book, which comes with a video and cd-rom option, can be found at: www.mwflyfishing.net
River of Salt.
By Van Gorman Egan.
Self published. Deluxe hardback, $75; regular hardback, $60; softback, $30.
Books can be ordered directly from the author by writing to: Van Egan, 2340 Campbell River Road, Campbell River, B.C., V9W 4N7. (Include postage: $5 in B.C., $6.50 elsewhere in Canada, or $7.50 to the U.S.)
Some 16 years after he wrote his first book, Tyee - The Story of the Tyee Club of British Columbia, Van Egan has returned to the waters he perhaps loves best. No, that’s not correct. Anyone who’s read Van Egan’s earlier works, like Rivers on My Mind, for example, will know that his true love is for waters that can be fished with a cast fly. A steelhead river, or an estuary with porpoising sea-run cutthroat, or a still lake on Vancouver Island surrounded by a dark, green old growth forest is where his fly fishing heart truly resides. But the tyee pools off the mouth of the Campbell River, where fishermen troll plugs and spoons behind row boats, keep calling him back.
In River of Salt it becomes clear why. In this book he evokes the feel of the tide rips, the sounds of the sea in the ghostly light before dawn and in the growing darkness after sunset. You can practically feel the tug of the salmon spoon, as it darts and dodges at the end of a long line. You can hear the creak of the oars as the guide pulls against the current, feel the slop of the boat, and sense the excitement building as you wait, along with Van Egan, for a monstrous salmon to strike.
With his first book Van Egan recorded the history of the Tyee Club. In this book, he explores its soul. He introduces some of the many colorful characters that make the tyee pools such an interesting place to fish and describes some of the great scenes when big fish tore up tackle and broke men’s hearts. And he takes you through his own 30 years quest for a giant salmon. This is one of those books where, at the end of it, you feel like you’ve just ended a fishing trip with a remarkable guide as your companion.
Fly Fishing Across Russia East Europe & Finland.
By Chris Hole.
Stackpole Books. $34.95 US.
With his evocative sketches and dairy-like entries, Mr. Hole tells an amusing and interesting story about his epic journey across a fishing landscape that is both imposing and intriguing. He seems to spend more time struggling with the logistics of travel and battling bureaucracy than he actually does fishing, but it’s certainly not dull. This is one of those trips that you enjoy hearing about, but are glad you missed yourself. Too much luggage, too many flights and too many travel frustrations to make any sane person want to follow in his footsteps. Still, if you are looking for real adventure in some really out of the way places, Mr. Hole’s experiences can teach you a lot about the places and things to avoid.
In the dust jacket notes it says the author had previously circumnavigated the globe three times to produce two earlier books on the world’s greatest fly fishing spots. In Fly Fishing Across Russia, he bit off a smaller piece of geography, restricting his travels to just (just!) crossing Russia from East to West, with side-trips through Eastern Europe and into Finland. But one is left with the clear impression that he still went too far, too fast.
It’s a great adventure story, but here’s a simple observation. When you travel that far, the chances that you will actually get to know anything substantial about any particular fishing location is pretty slim. He always seems to be showing up in the right places at the wrong times. And that’s one of the great drawbacks of this book. Having read it, you don’t really know where to go, when. But you do come away with a sense there is a lot of great fishing out there, in some remarkable places, and you get an appreciation for how difficult it is to access some of them.
(Do you know of a book or a video we should review. Please let us know the title and publisher of the book or video at: editor@ariverneversleeps.com
