What are your top five favourite fishing books

[Mario]

heres one, cant believe no one 's mentioned it yet.Fishers on the green roads. Barrie rickards

yes ive read this ages ago it was a good read and i think you can still pick up the first edition from medlar

[Mark]

heres one, cant believe no one 's mentioned it yet.Fishers on the green roads. Barrie rickards

yes ive read this ages ago it was a good read and i think you can still pick up the first edition from medlar

You sure can Mazza, I have just order myself a copy, thank you for the heads up gents. :thumb:

[Haydn Clarke]

Don't know if it's been mentioned - a young man's book, American, a novel, recently made into (I hear) a total turkey of a Hollywood movie, but an absolute howl in places and in parts learned, clever, human and wise - The River Why? by David James Duncan. I was sent a copy of the U.S. first edition in the early-mid 1980s by a young British couple my girl and I had met on the Greek island of Thera in the late 1970s (we needed a holiday after nine months' fishing and travelling in India and a few more working in order to become solvent again), who went to work for a couple of years in the States and who posted a copy of River Why? with a "To Paul - we thought of you after we read this!".

I've got it, enjoyed it. I like to think of it as a sort of Forest Gump Goes Fishing. Hadn't heard they'd made a film of it, I'll check it out..

I enjoyed The River Why? Too. The theme running through the book about the writer's parent's differing attitude (his father a staunch fly fisher, his mother a bait fisher) has a very Robert M. Persig Zen type analogy going on. Brilliant stuff.

Another that seems to have gone unmentioned (as far as I've noticed) is A river Runs Through It by Norman McClean. Though not strictly an angling book The writing is second to none. Enjoyed the film too, though, and as always, comes second to the book by a long margin.

[Alaudacorax]

I've been scratching my head over this, rather. It's terribly difficult to pick out just five favourites, but, here goes ...

I couldn't, just for the sake of being original, leave out Confessions of a Carp Fisher and Casting at the Sun - it just wouldn't be honest. It's difficult enough resisting the temptation to stick in more books by 'BB' or Mr Yates. Likewise, I'd have to have Maurice Wiggin's The Passionate Angler, which I think has been mentioned a couple of times.

John Gierach is a bit of a problem: he's a favourite fishing writer; but he's just so damned consistent that it's difficult to pick a book, and I've got nine or ten of them. I think I'll go for Trout Bum, simply because it was the first of his I read. I think I stumbled on it at a fishing show, probably looking for something quite different on the Coch-y-bonddu or Ian Kilgour stalls, and probably became a confirmed fan on the evening of the same day.

My one stab at originality would be A E Hobbs's Trout of the Thames. It was published, I think, in 1947, but I think Hobbs was an old man then and the book has a delightfully old-fashioned feel to it (sometimes I even feel I get the tiniest hint of Three Men in a Boat). It's basically just an angler writing up some of his fishing memories, it doesn't show any pretensions to being 'literary', yet there's something about his style that engages me every, single time. I should warn any fly-fishermen of a sensitive nature, though - Hobbs actually live-baited or span deadbaits for his trout

... and having written all that, there's a little voice in my skull shouting 'what about Sheringham, Venables, Ransome, Clive Gammon, etc., etc., etc.' – not to mention that it's suddenly occurred to me that I should, in honesty, have put in Drop Me a Line somewhere near the top of the list. Oh dear!

[Mike Wilson]

The books that interested me most each having some early history
Danger My Ally - F A Mitchell Hedges
Angling In The News - Ken Sutton
Angling Diversions - A Courtney Williams
To Catch a Fisherman - Jamie Maxtone Graham
and of course Thames Trout - A E Hobbs

Mike

[The VFC]

Jamie M-G - great shout: how can you not like a book with the phrase "piscatorial inventions" in its title?!

[Mike Wilson]

VFC

Spent many an hour just talking....... lots of knowledge, some however a bit suspect, but he was good to me way back,probably 'cos I sold a few 'bits' to him and he made a profit. Proper Scotsman!!

Mike

[Alaudacorax]

... and having written all that, there's a little voice in my skull shouting 'what about Sheringham, Venables, Ransome, Clive Gammon, etc., etc., etc.' ...

Sadly, I've just discovered that Clive Gammon died three weeks ago. As a youngster, I knew him as a telly personality and it wasn't until much later that I came to appreciate him as a writer. I have a couple of his books and either could probably have gone into my five. Sad to see him go.

[John Aston]

BB - The Fisherman's Bedside Book- it has to be.
Trout Bum- Gierach- no one writes better
Apart from ...Hemingway Old Man and The Sea
Casting at The Sun- Yates
Thy rod and thy Creel - Odell Shepherd.

Honourable mentions - Ransome, Sheringham, Plunket Green , Lord Grey of Falloden and Brian Clarke..

Great instructional writers - of course- Walker, Gibbinson , Stone et al but can date quickly and often do not stand re- reading too often.

Most over rated- lots of candidates but I never warmed to Falkus or Farson- I realise in some quarters it is heresy to state as such...

[Santiago]

Hemingway! A true great! Anyone out there who is yet to read Old man and the sea should go get a copy, you will not be disappointed!