My Secret Fishing Life [Hardcover]

Nick Lyons (Author), Mari Lyons (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1999

Beyond his life as an English professor, book publisher, and writer, Lyons has always had a "secret fishing life", explored in this collection of wise, gentle, and witty essays.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"There are many of us," writes Nick Lyons, six decades on the pond behind him, "for whom a day on the trout river is so pleasant an event, such an amiable and engaging pastime, that it feels, both going and coming back, as comfortable as an old shoe. We go for the sheer joy of it, not to put notches on our rods." Anglers keep returning to Lyons's finely honed prose for precisely the same reason. The collection of essays that comprises My Secret Fishing Life is a personal journey into the various "rivers" he's waded as a husband, father, teacher, writer, collector, publisher--and, of course, as a fisherman, the single noun that manages to tie all these lines together. The shorter pieces of the first half, many of which were originally published in Fly Fisherman magazine, explore subsets of the fishing life, drifting casually between philosophical rumination and memoir: the rituals of preparing for a new season, getting older, a lunchbreak spent fishing for stripers in the waters off Wall Street. In such sketches he presents his languid yet alluring phrases as delicately as if they were flies to a rising trout. Here he is on the inherent purity of the dry fly: "The only possible practical argument for using the dry fly more frequently is Lee Wulff's--that the dry fly fished on a floating line grants for the trout the sanctuary of its part of the river, allowing the connection to take place only at that place where air and water meet, and only at certain times." Two longer pieces comprising the book's second half are less successful--maybe too personal here and there (especially a windy defense of his wife's painting career), but overall it's honest, thoughtful work. Like fly-fishing as a sporting enterprise, the writing casts more toward the journey than the destination, allowing itself to hook into a share of verities along the way. --Jeff Silverman

From Publishers Weekly

Within the pond of those who write about fly-fishing, Lyons is one of the bigger fish. He has authored 16 titles (In Praise of Wild Trout, etc.) on the evidently inexhaustible subject and has published others' books on the art and mystique of fly-fishing. This is his most introspective book yet: "I have tried to find more of what my professional life has amounted to than ever before and more of my personal life." That he had a personal life at all is amazing given that, for 13 years, he was a full-time editor at Crown, taught five courses at Hunter College (where colleagues looked askance at his fishing articles and books, unable to see what such low-brow pursuits had to do with his professorship), ghostwrote four books and continued with his own writingAand had four children. He later started a book-packaging firm, Lyons & Burford, which became an independent house; now he heads Lyons Press. Even so, Lyons found time to go fishing, and there are plenty of fish tales here, spiced with references to Hesse, Twain, Melville, Max Planck, Byron and others. Lyons succeeds at what he sets out to do: show how the various loves and obsessions of a life interlock. Fly fishers and publishing folk alike will welcome the effort. In a marvelous passage, Lyons describes his discovery of the voice with which he first wrote about fishing, as opposed to the one he employed as an English professor: the new voice was "earthy, nimble, wry, full of wit and worms and celebration." He's still got it.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 187 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Pr; First Edition edition (April 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 087113750X
• ISBN-13: 978-0871137500
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,987,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nick, Mari, Tony & Sparse: highly personal matters, August 30, 2002

By 

Former Rater (Nowhere) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Secret Fishing Life (Paperback)

Mr. Lyons, whose books (both edited and written) fill a significant portion of my fly fishing library, has written a very personal book.

The title is accurate at many levels. I doubt that many of us
would share so much about our personal lives - or that we would be able to do so with such candor and joy.

Mr. Lyons description of the travels (and travails) of a special copy of Sparse Grey Hackle's Fishless Days, Angling Nights is worth the price of the book.

Fishing in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty between morning appointments is an incredible story (especially to this former New Yorker ... the Hudson off of NYC was dead in the 60's & 70's).

I never seem to find any time to fish. With this little book, I have a guide of how to find (or take) a little time here and there for fly fishing. Thank you, Mr. Lyons, for your guide to blending avocations with vocations.

Mr. Lyons sold his publishing company recently. May he and his family enjoy many years of post-publishing / editing repose and adventure. We may be lucky enough to have a second volume: perhaps a guide for the next twenty years?

4.0 out of 5 stars My Secret Fishing Life Nick Lyons, January 13, 2012

By 

deweyc - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: My Secret Fishing Life (Paperback)

Nick Lyons wrote excellent books and magazine articles on fly fishing. My Secret Fishing Life is a valued part of my fly fishing collection. Any fisherman can easily relate to the experiences that Nick Lyons chronicles in his writing. I have some of his other writings and would recommend them to both fishermen and non-fishermen alike.

5.0 out of 5 stars My Secret Fishing Life, October 11, 2010

By 

kenny - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: My Secret Fishing Life (Hardcover)

An interesting and personal view from the author of his perceptions, feelings and thoughts about his fishing life - from youth to elder fisherman. His observations are thought provoking and in many instances mirror many thoughts I have had on fishing and how change has occurred over our life of fishing many waters, meeting different folks and how we have changed. Very good book.