Customer Reviews

A River Never Sleeps

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I read this book in 1964. Shortly after, I mislaid it (gave it on loan) and never saw it again. However, it has stuck in my mind with startling clarity because of the mastery of the author both as a writer and as a fly angler. It is a collection of lucid essays about Roderick Haig-Brown as a boy and a young man learning the art of fly fishing from wonderfully drawn tutors . This is a book that a father would give to his son or an uncle to his nephew. One of the really great angling books of all time.

Haig-Brown is the master of writing about the sport of fly fishing. Through this work you experience the man, the sport and the land. Though written years ago, it is timeless. His love of the rivers, lakes and their surroundings is shared and felt by anyone who goes afield today with the long rod.

For the longest time, I held off reading any Haig-Brown because I didn't identify with the main advocates, those (seemingly) elitist fly fishermen on Internet message boards. About a decade ago I picked up a used copy of "Fisherman's Fall" (his second best book)and marveled at the man's ability to tell a story -- mostly about fish and fishing -- so clearly and lyrically. In short order I learned that RH-B moved to Canada post WWI as teen and earned a living any which way he could, including falling timber and trolling spoons on heavy spinning gear for VI springs. Nothing effete about this fellow! I was well and truly hooked and have read another half dozen of his books (including the four seasons books).

But the jewel in the crown is ARNS. Haig-Brown's personal story so worth reading that my non-fishing 70 year mother rated it one of the better non-fiction books she'd ever read. Rod Brown led such a fascinating life in a time and place that offered sport fishing opportunities few of us will ever see . . . and certainly none in native English speaking countries. His love of rivers, forests, and people shows itself not in some philosophical meanderings, but in a vital sense of shared excitement at discovery and participation. Here's a man who wanted to know where the fish lay in his home water, the Campbell River. Rod wriggled into a wetsuit, put on a mask, snorkel and flippers and swam the river, diving down to spy the chinooks holding in the deep all the other salmon and trout in between. To test whether or not waders would fill with water and pull the wrong-footed angler to the bottom of the river to tumble and inevitably drown in those lead (sic) boots, he put on his waders and walked out over his head to see what happened. (Not a whole lot other than getting wet and needing to point his feet downstream to prevent hitting his head on boulders.) Haig-Brown was also an innovative and expert fly fishermen, pioneering the dead drifted dry fly for summer run steelhead. His stories of long-gone fishing holes and extinct runs of salmonids heighten the pleasure fishing addicts like myself derive from reading and thinking, "What would it have been like to have stood on the banks on the Stamp watching the General fish his run?"

A well-lived life in and around fishing, in a beautifully told book.