Customer Reviews

Traver On Fishing

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Just enough taste of Traver's life and philosophy to make you want more. You get a picture of a self-effacing man who downplays his professional achievements as well as his fly-fishing mastery. Although he frequently laments that he wasted his life fishing in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, you discover he was a successful district attorney, defense attorney, and state supreme court justice as well as a best-selling fiction author (Anatomy of a Murder). While he downplays his abilities as a fisherman, you learn he gave public flycasting demonstrations that brought the audience to their feet.

Makes you yearn to be one of the boys who gather at Frenchman's pond for a warm summer day of brown trout on dry flies with long, thin leaders, followed by a night of cribbage and whisky sours from a tin cup.

Traver will teach you as much about life as about fishing, and make you appreciate both more.

The technical info on fly-fishing gear was current when Ike was in the White House; but this isn't a how-to fish book, it is a why-to fish book; and I'm glad I discovered it and Robert Traver.

If you are a Robert Traver fan or fly fisher, you will surely enjoy this book. While it recounts several of the stories you
may have read in Trout Magic or Trout Madness, it also offers some of the articles Traver wrote for magazines. In additon,there are a couple of articles which present an interesting background on a truly remarkable man.

It does recall the best of Traver on fishing and a wonderful
additon to a fisherman's library.

I've read Traver since I was a pre-teen. Having grown up in Northern Michigan his stories were close to home and familiar in context. The mannersims of his characters are true to life in describing the wide range of personalities one would encounter fishing and traveling throughout Northern Lower Michigan and the the Upper Penninsula. In this day and age we have John Gierach, but before Gierach there was Traver! The consumate story teller who can have your mind standing on the shore of the Escanaba River at dusk waiting for the Hexes to start hatching as the smell of a ciger fills the air in an attempt to fend off the black flies. I almost guarantee you'll laugh outloud at least once when reading Trout Madness or Trout Magic.

Heres the rough part; The narrative/reading of these great stories is TERRIABLE! It's so bad that I really had trouble listening to them...as matter of fact I only was able to tolerate 2 of disk before I gave up. The reader does his best to bring the stories to life in a one sided medium but alas I find that he fails. The tone of his voice combined with a rate of reading is what could best be described as a drone. He tries to spice things up with changes in vocalization to relfect different characaters but they make it worse and really overwhelm some truely great stories.

My recommendation: by Traver's books, (Trout Madness, Trout Magic etc..) and then sit back and read them for yourself on a day when the weather keeps you off the river.