The Habit of Rivers.
Written by Ted Leeson and published by Merlin Unwin this deserves a place in your library. Mr Leeson is a fine observer and writer. This collection of essays on rivers and fly fishing takes the reader from coastal runs to high country streams, a delighful journey.
From the introduction:-
“Over twenty years ago, I caught my first trout on a dry fly. Since then, I have been pleasantly haunted by the echoes of that event, now augmented and amplified in this place of unceasing seasons. This book is an attempt to make those echoes audible.”
On learning how to fish:-
“There are advantages to being self taught; the quality of instruction is not one of them.”
On studying rivers:-
“There’s a great satisfaction in studying a trout stream, reading its waters, and by your own foxiness discovering the secrets of its fish. But sometimes, serendipitous discoveries please the most. Finally, there are places in a river that must simply be stumbled upon. Their logic, if it is ever understood at all, comes only after the fact. Refusing to advertise themselves, they remain hidden and so remain yours, at least as far as you can tell, which is far enough.”
On the annual stonefly festival:-
“the accrued strangeness transforms the Deschutes from crowded trout stream to a bizarre species of theme parks: Six Thousand rods over Oregon……….anglers line up patiently to take three-for-a-quarter casts at stuffed trout………Parades of RV battlecruisers rumble into the campground……..Somewhere a band strikes up……When evening falls at last, the sounds of radios and boozy laughter rise above the collective white-noise hiss of countless Coleman lanterns. Picking my way carefully through the glare, I hike up to the cool lip of the rimrock canyon, and, with a 6 cell Maglite, vainly signal the mother ship to pick me up.”
On C and R:-
“Catch-and-release may be good conservation, but it is ethically ambiguous. Between a man who kills and eats a fish and the man who derives pleasure from a trout’s panicked struggles, it’s worth asking who occupies the moral high ground. Or if there is any.”
A thoroughly delighful read, full of insight and displaying his love of fishing.
I commend it to the forum.
Simon.
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and an art critic 
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