Customer Reviews

McClane's Standard Fishing Encyclopedia and International Angling Guide

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This is a great book with so much information that I don't know if I will ever need another informational fishing manual.

Published in 1965, McClane's Standard Fishing Encyclopedia and International Angling Guide was the standard reference for over a generation of anglers. In 2000, Ken Schultz's Fishing Encyclopedia essential replaced McClane's, and if you're seeking up-to-date information on angling and arts related to angling in North America and beyond, Shultz's book is the one you want.

But McClane's Standard is still a useful volume to have in one's angling library, primarily because it provides a fairly exhaustive compendium on the state of the sport 50 years ago. Much has changed over the ensuing five decades. Human populations have swelled (to the detriment of fish and their habitats), roads take anglers to waters that were virtually untapped in McClane's time, fiberglass, steel and bamboo have been largely replaced in rod construction by newer materials, and more anglers than ever can afford "once-in-a-lifetime" destination trips. At the same time a "catch-and-release" ethic has... sort of... rehabilitated some waters closer to home. (Trout Unlimited, the organization that first pioneered catch-and-release fishing, was founded in 1959. Catch-and-release bass tournaments came a decade later, in 1969.)

In the early 1960's most anglers still measured success by "killing a limit." On the other hand, the use of electronic devices (sonar, fish finders) aboard sport fishing boats was fairly rare and somewhat controversial. The fishing in Baja had barely been explored and few fishermen knew anything of the sea trout (sea-run brown trout) in Argentina. Alaska had only been a state for a few years (1959), and although the better waters in the 49th state were documented, accessing them was beyond the budget of most anglers. The majority of California's larger rivers had already been dammed and their hillsides stripped of timber; in the reservoirs that replaced free-flowing water bass were replacing salmon as California's glamor species. These snapshots of the past make McClane's a valuable reference, but it should also be noted that much of the information is still relevant. See for example the instructions and diagrams for constructing a smokehouse. The artwork depicting the various species of fish is beautiful, and by itself makes this book worth owning.

In an era before instructional videos, I learned to haul a fly line by studying the illustrations in this book, and there are still bits of feather and fur indelibly imbedded in the stitching of the section of beautifully photographed color plates titled "Popular Fly Patters." At the age of 12 and for many years thereafter, McClane's was my fly tying manual. I recently had my copy of McClane's rebound. For countless anglers, McClane's Standard was the fuel of dreams and an important stone in the foundation of a lifetime of exploring and falling in love with rivers, lakes and oceans.