Anyone got a list of books that are 'must reads' for the fisherman? I've built up quite a library now of fishing books, and some are, IMO, absolute must reads. The ones that hold strongest in my memory are:

Negley Farson: Going Fishing
Clarke: The Pursuit of Stillwater Trout
Mitchell Hedges: Battles with giant fish.
Ashley Cooper: The Great Salmon Rivers of Scotland
Buller: The Domesday book of giant pike/salmon
Chaytor: Letters to a salmon fishers sons
Oglesby: Salmon.

Anyone read the above? what other books have you enjoyed?

I am a bookaholic I am afraid. I posses over 400 angling books.

My favourites are any of those written on fishing by BB, Dick Walker, Fred J Taylor, and Peter Stone. I also like Goddard & Clarke's book - "The Trout & The Fly, Arthur Cove's - "My way with Trout", and Clarke's "The Persuit of Stillwater Trout" is also pretty good.

The best fishing book ever written?

That is difficult to say. "The Fisherman's Bedside Book" ", an anthology by BB was very good. "Where The Bright Water's Meet" by Harry Plunkett Green was a work of genius as was "An Angler's Hours" by Hugh Tempest Sheringham.

There are so many great fishing books that have been written. There are also a few that some people rave about which I find quite odious.

I don't know about you but I cannot stand the written work of BV.

For pleasure or for instruction, BB ?

For pleasure;

A River Never Sleeps - Roderick Haig-Brown - best fishing book I have ever read...
The Longest Silence - Tom McGuane
A Dream of Jewelled Fishes - our very own John Aston

For instruction;

Anything by Peter Lapsley or Charles Jardine is sound stuff for Southern or Midlands UK fly fishers
The Loch Fishers Bible - Stan Headley

For pleasure AND instruction

Nymph Fishing in Practice - Oliver Kite
Dick Walker's Trout Fishing - collected articles - still good stuff
ps - and I forgot Bob Wyatt's Trout Hunting. 21st century classic

Ref Ron Clay's comment about BV - Crabtree is a classic, but a lot of BV's other stuff is just so much purple prose. I was shocked by BV's bitterness towards Dick Walker in books he wrote towards the end of his life, specially the autobiography which I found very disappointing.

My particular heresy ? I don't rate "The Pursuit of Stillwater Trout" by Brian Clarke all that highly.

__________________
"In wine there is wisdom. In beer there is strength. In water there is bacteria." - German proverb
JH based near Southampton

If you want a good read about general fishing, go on Amazon and buy the old Angling Times books One to Four from the late 50s to the early 60s. All the old greats wrote for the Angling Times then Fred J, Walker, Buller, Venables the list goes on and on. My old dad bought them for me one by one as they came out, He was no fisher so he thought I would learn from them and I did! Im in my mid fiftys now and I remember having line twist on a fixed spool reel explaind by Fred J Taylor who would believe adults had to be taught about fixed spool reels.

Who's BV?

If i had to pick a couple of favourites, it'd be easy. Farson's 'Going fishing' is sublime, and Mitchell Hedges 'Battles with Giant Fish' is wonderfully colonial.

Thanks John, Tonight i am going to go and dig out my old Roderick Haig-Brown 'A river never sleeps' which i haven't read for years.

[QUOTE=BrownieBasher;330641]Who's BV?

Bernard Venables, Mr Crabtree
Andy.

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The trout in yonder wimpling burn
That glides, a silver dart,
And, safe beneath the shady thorn,
Defies the anglers art

R.Burns

[QUOTE=andrew;330644]Thanks

I've read Mr Crabtree in parts but none of Vanables other writings. didn't he pass away recently?

The book that I am most likely to pick off the shelf and read without a specific reason is "A Fisherman's Diary" by Oliver Kite which is an anthology of the pieces that he wrote for Shooting Times over several years in the 1960s and contains the quote that I use as a signature.

A close second would be "I Know a Good Place" by Clive Gammon.

Other favourite books are:

Wye Salmon and Other Fish by J.A. Hutton
The Doomsday Books (Pike and Salmon) by Fred Buller
Sea Trout Flies by James Waltham
Anything by Dick Walker

Best instructional book is "Trout Hunting" by Bob Wyatt

I also have a soft spot for "Fishing for Big Chub" by Peter Stone because he mentions me in it and "Chub" compiled by Graham Cornish on behalf of the Chub Study Group because I wrote a couple of chapters for it.

Clarke certainly changed my attitude to trout fishing but I find quite a lot about the writing style of Clarke and Goddard that I don't like.

__________________
“There is no more lovely country than Monmouthshire in early spring. Nowhere do the larks sing quite so passionately, as if somehow inspired by the Welsh themselves. There is a blackbird on every thorn and a cock chaffinch, a twink as they call him there, on every bush...... It moved me profoundly. I had been spared to see another spring, and I thank God for it.”

Oliver Kite
“A Spring Day on the Usk”
A Fisherman’s Diary

Agree with you that Clarke is a must read (in my opinion, not to everyones taste though).

For reference and instruction on flies/imitations/insect guides I'm a huge fan of anything by John Goddard. A more recent book that I do rate is Pat O'Reilly's "Matching the Hatch".

They're not technically 'books' but I purchased recently the Rutland Water guides they sell in the fishing lodge, written by Henry Lowe I think? There's several in the series, I think he covers Bewl, Grafham and general reservoir fishing tactics. Certainly not sit and read by the fire material but as a factual guide to a specific water FANTASTIC!!

Wilkox