Confessions of a Fly Fishing Addict

Nick Lyons takes a hard and often whimsical look at how we all learn to fish, what we fish for, and where we cast our lines. Bluegills, bluefish, snook, chub, brown trout, bass, and salmon are all explored, along with the discretely different experiences of fishing in small ponds, major Western rivers, English chalk streams, and no-name brooks. Lyons can be hilarious when recording his misadventures as a fishing guide or inventor of new flies, contemplative when looking at the ethics or peculiarities of fishing, nostalgic and philosophical about a season past or an old fishing friend now dead. In the emotions it explores and records, Confessions of a Fly Fishing Addict is Lyons's broadest book.

"Bravo for the Confessions, from one addict to another! Nick Lyons is quite simply the tops, in stylish prose, gentle wit, and accumulated wisdom. Add his sense of humility and complete honesty-rare qualities among us fly fishermen-and you will begin to understand why Lyons' essays are essential to our sanity."-William W. Warner, author of Beautiful Swimmers

"Confessions of a Fly Fishing Addict captures the feelings, frailties, frustrations, and fun of fly fishing. This is Nick Lyons at his absolute best. Nick Lyons weaves a spell with words as he masterfully makes us see ourselves more clearly on streams, lakes, estuaries, and oceans through his fly-fishing journeys. You won't put it down!"-Mark J. Sosin

Nick Lyons was for twenty-six years an English professor at Hunter College and is now a book publisher. He has published more than four hundred articles and eighteen books, most of them on fishing. Mari Lyons's paintings and drawings have graced previous books by her husband. She shows regularly at the First Street Gallery in New York City.