Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Leeson is certainly a master at his craft of writing. But you need to like his style if you're to enjoy this book. You might love it, I just didn't. It's a bit choppy in it's delivery, a bit too many metaphors for my tastes, too many adjectives that seem to me to be just a bit too much. Read Middleton, or read some Steve Raymond, then read this, and if you like Leeson's style better that's great and more power to you. When I look for fishing books I want the author to just tell me what the heck they like and why without making it complicated, convoluted and metaphorical. You can get "deep" if you like, but too much of that and the motivation for writing the book is in question. "Deep" isn't a writing style, it's a feeling from the heart. I just don't think it comes through as much as other folks say it does. It is NOT a bad book, but if there are folks looking for Thoreau, this isn't Thoreau.

Mr. Leeson's book is about flyfishing, but it is not your typical flyfishing book. It is much more well-written and insightful than anything else written on the subject. Read it; you will not be disppointed.

If you love fly fishing, and like me, don't get on stream enough, settling for a good book on the subject is the next best thing. This was very enjoyable reading. This and Trout Eyes by Bill Tapply are the two recent books I've really enjoyed. I just wish fine books like this on the subject were published more often.

Well writtne and thoughtful, Leeson's book, along with his splendid "Jerusalem Creek", are just what the brotherhood of angling literature looks foward to - On teh same Shelf with Thomas McGuane, Bill Barich, Harry Middleton, Chris Camuto, R. Haig Brown, Russell Chatham - well, you get the idea. Highly recommended

Ted is the best writer on fishing living today and the incredibly well rounded book is a delight to read. The book is not a sports commentary giving play by play on fish caught but rather an investigation of why we are captivated by our pursuit. those who dam this book would be better off reading a fishing report from a trawler.

Still part way through reading this book, but have not been disappointed. Erudite and perceptive discussions on being out on rivers.

Leeson writes so well and describes his responses to rivers and fishing so clearly that you almost experience the rivers with him. I don't fish but I read it happily and then shared it with my brothers (who do fish).. If you fish, read it; if you don't fish but like Oregon rivers, read it anyway.