Get Bent: Fish Eye Video Issue 3

by Burl Productions
Edition: DVD

A Strong Finish to the Fish Eye Trilogy

Get Bent offers plenty of rod bending material - translation: lots of big, juicy trout. The jazz track accompanying this section almost keeps pace with the video action on screen. This opening moves with rhythm and energy. A video mosaic of rivers I recognized like the East Fork of the Carson, the Truckee (appears to be footage from Fish Eye #2) with some of the usual faces which Mikey has fished with - including an eight year who takes a rainbow on a dry fly. It wraps up with another youngster Loren Elliott hooking and landing a 20 inch rainbow on the East Fork of the Carson.
Read the entire review in Fly Fishing.

My Story as Told by Water

by David James Duncan
Edition: Hardcover

Duncan writes with heart.

My Story as Told by Water covers a varied terrain ranging from environmental activism to the virtues of fly-fishing without a hired guide. The book is really a collection of essays (many published in other books and periodicals) about rivers in the Northwestern United States. Duncan shares much of his early life growing up in neighborhoods just beyond the growing tentacles of Portland, Oregon. He writes openly about this family, including his bitter confrontation over the war in Vietnam with his dad, and the loss of his brother. Given such a backdrop, it's easy to understand how Duncan turned to the solitude of fishing local streams to deal with the pain of his youth.

Later in the book, Duncan finds his stride writing about the not-so-bright outlook facing wild salmon along the Columbia and Snake Rivers. You can almost feel the tears welling up in his eyes as he describes their near exit from his world. He sums up the disaster of the salmon run on the Snake River this way: "The babble of 'salmon management' rhetoric has taken a river of prayful human yearning, diverted it into a thousand word-filled ditches, and run it over alkali. When migratory creatures are prevented from migrating, they are no longer migratory creatures: they're kidnap victims. The name of the living vessel in which wild salmon evolved and still thrive is not 'fish bypass system,' 'smolt-deflecting diversionary strobe light,' or 'barge.' It is River."

Duncan opens his heart to the connections he has to rivers and wild fish. But more importantly, he gives us inspiration for making our own connections to those wild places.

Backcast: Fatherhood, Fly-Fishing, and a River Journey Through the Heart of Alaska

by Lou Ureneck
Edition: Hardcover

Father and Son Unfurled

The author invites you to come along on a rafting / fly fishing trip down Alaska's Kanektok River. There's excitement in the air in the opening chapter as the author and his teenage son hop planes from Philly to Anchorage then to Dillingham and finally dropped by bush-plane into the Alaskan wilderness - ON THEIR OWN. To dial up the adventure meter here, the East coast duo decides to cover the 100 plus mile float by themselves. Add to that a shoe-string budget for equipment and a first time ever trip to the wilds of Alaska, and well, I sensed it would be interesting.
Read the entire review in Destinations.

The Season of the Mayfly: Fish Eye Video Issue 2

by Burl Productions
Edition: DVD

California's Biggest and Brightest Rainbows and Browns Seen Here

The video magazine opens with a twisted tribute to the opening scene in the movie Jaws... instead of a young, female swimming substitue a mayfly. Watch the serenity of a mayfly floating carefree. Then witness the death from below reality when a trout goes on the feed.
Read the entire review in Fly Fishing.

The Trout and the Fly
by Brian Clarke
Edition: Paperback

Be the trout. See the bug., March 5, 2006

If you wish to get inside the small, primitive brain of a trout, then read The Trout and The Fly. Most theories passed around in angling circles for how these critters behave is commonly hearsay. The authors, Brian Clarke and John Goddard - both avid fly fishermen, reveal trained and measured observations. More than any sport, fishing lends itself to word-of-mouth and story telling. Clarke and Goddard take a more analytical tact - providing the angler fundamental knowledge of trout behavior.

The book covers a lot of ground - from how to locate fish to how the trout locates the angler. The material is broken into 4 parts: (1) Observation - Man and trout, (2) Vision - Trout and man, (3) Technique - Man versus trout, and (4) Imitation - Man, trout and fly. These authors excel at transporting the reader to the cold, clear underwater world of the trout. And it's in the second part of the book where I found myself absorbed by their words and photos.

Their presentations on how a trout sees (revealed in drawings and photos) I found to be unique and awarding. Fascinating details about their depth/range of vision, their ability to discern color, the visual depiction of dry flies, the appearance of fly lines and leaders are revealed in the book's pages. To support their work, Clarke and Goddard position a camera underwater and set it to model the visual capabilities of a trout (e.g., changing the aperture setting). In ten plus pages containing color photo plates, you are treated to images of what a trout is likely to see. Ranging from how obvious an angler can appear holding a fly rod vertical in the air near the bank of a stream to the importance of wing patterns in imitating aquatic insects... it's all shown in vivid detail. The color photos alone can justify the purchase of The Trout and the Fly!

Each page contains keen observations, useful tips and above all an implicit philosophy embodied by the authors. As I see it, the philosophy throughout is one of looking, patient waiting, looking some more, and finally learning how these animals interact with their surroundings. The fruit of this philosophy is ultimately the knowledge they share.

©2006 - 2008 The Ecological Angler
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