The Habit of Rivers: Reflections on Trout Streams and Fly Fishing [Paperback]

Ted Leeson (Author), John Gierach (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2006

The story of a passion for rivers, trout, and fly fishing, and their sustaining power.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Of all sports, fishing has the richest literature and, in number of titles, seemingly the most of any hobby save chess. This volume outshines all recent entries. As an English professor at Oregon State University, Leeson is amply qualified to write a literate angling book, but his lambent, fluid prose, graced with wit and warmth, far transcends such concepts as qualification. "The craft of angling is the catching of fish. But the art of angling is a responsiveness . . . letting one thing lead to another until . . . you realize some small completeness." These essays are small, elegant completions opening windows to the rivers of the Pacific Northwest (mostly eastern Oregon's Columbia River Basin). In a flyfisher's dialect, Leeson tells an angler's story with the full-throated voice of a naturalist. Those who wonder what it is they're really after out there in the stream will find the answer here. Leeson's work belongs on the shelf next to that of Annie Dillard, John McPhee, Barry Lopez and others of their stripe (and speckle).
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

"The fishing here is invariably superb; always, it's the catching that's up for grabs." Such is the refreshing, sometimes humorous, always gracefully expressed philosophy of Leeson. He believes that fly fishing can take one outside oneself and help one develop new ways of seeing. Leeson fishes as much as 100 days a year; writes for Field & Stream , Fly Rod & Reel , and other magazines; teaches English; ties flies; and knows the literature of the field. Yet this is not a how-to, or what-with, but rather a passionate celebration of the attractions of rivers, trout, and fishing. As in Howell Raines's Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis ( LJ 9/15/93), the arts of angling, writing, and living are blended. Public and academic libraries should acquire this fine book.
- Roland Person, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Lyons Press; 1 edition (November 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592289541
• ISBN-13: 978-1592289547
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #168,923 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #81 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Miscellaneous > Essays

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must reading for all flyfishers and naturalists, December 26, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Habit of Rivers: Reflections on Trout Streams and Fly Fishing (Mass Market Paperback)

With the poetic delivery of Maclean, and the naturalist
vision of Thoreau, Ted Leeson paints a beautiful,and sometimes comical,
mosiac of fly fishing the Northwest. As I read this book I am
reminded that the most noble and rewarding aspect of my
sport is not the mere catching of fish, but it is the
beautiful & mystical arena in which we are privileged to
practice it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read slowly, it speaks to your soul., February 5, 2007

By 

Manxman (Lake Orion, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Habit of Rivers: Reflections on Trout Streams and Fly Fishing (Paperback)

I received this book from my son. He knows me as well as anyone. He knows I'm struggling with my "fishing experience" and looking for direction. I don't need to catch the biggest fish or experience the newest destinations. I need to fish. I need to fly fish. Ted Leeson helped tell me why. This book spoke to my soul. It corrected my direction. I have read many fishing books, some technical some just good stories. The first time, and I'll read it again, I read this book I realized early on that I needed to read it slowly, introspectively. I was in this book. Mr. Leeson spoke to me. He answered my direction question when he said, "In the end, to fish well is to cultivate an arrangement of time and place, of circumstance and perspective. We arrange ourselves into the arrangement, and if the collusion is careful and lucky, we reap a kind of enclosed moment of some sharply felt beauty and significance." The Habit of Rivers is a special book and I recommend it to any fly fisher looking for direction or confirmation.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Points of Fixity, August 15, 2010

By 

Lightman (New York) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Habit of Rivers: Reflections on Trout Streams and Fly Fishing (Paperback)

As Ted Leeson writes in the introduction, "...this book is an attempt to discover points of fixity and pattern in our involvement with rivers and landscapes, with trout and fly fishing, as a way of plumbing their peculiar sustaining power".

If this strikes you as so much hooey, you might as well stop right there on page 4 and cut your losses. There's a lot more of this kind of cerebral musing throughout The Habit of Rivers.

If on the other hand, cerebral musing is what overtakes you as you fish, or if you don't fish but you do tend to muse cerebrally just for the heck of it, then this book's for you, for sure.

Here's a sampler of what's in store...

* The river is a flux, the salmon a counterflux. To fish the run is to share this paradoxical trajectory, moving at once forward to a conclusion and backward toward sources.

* The universe may, as science tells us, be composed of subatomic building blocks, but I suspect that irony is the mortar that holds them together. For no apparent reason, fate springs a handstand, inverting circumstance, momentarily turning the world into its opposite. In nature, the reversal produces vaguely disturbing anomalies.

* The very boundedness of the meadow and the tangibility of its limits curls your awareness inward, creating a small enclosed world inside of which boundaries disappear.

If your awareness doesn't easily curl inward to recognize this as a book about fishing, pick up something by Lefty Kreh. As for me, I reveled in the vaguely disturbing anomalies, and highly recommend it to both fishermen and non fishermen alike.