Books for the Angler in Your Life

San Diego has always attracted a rich diversity of immigrant groups. Between the 1880s and 1970s, many of these groups helped to create a strong and dynamic fishing industry that became a key component of the city's identity. Waves of varied immigrants continually refreshed the industry, adapting their traditional skills and technologies to San Diegan conditions. Innovations in boat design, nets, and baiting techniques reshaped the fleets that harvested tuna and sardines from the teeming waters. On shore, canning factories sprang up, seafood markets bustled with activity, and fish restaurants filled with hungry diners. The vivid stories and fascinating photographs in this volume recapture the energy and variety that were the hallmarks of San Diego's fishing industry--an industry that has left a deep multicultural imprint on today's city.

Journalist and historian Chuck McShane traces the triumphs and troubles of Lake Norman from the region's colonial beginnings to its modern incarnation.

On a muggy September day in 1959, North Carolina governor Luther Hodges set off the first charge of dynamite for the Cowan's Ford Dam project. The dam channeled Catawba River waters into the largest lake in North Carolina: Lake Norman. The project was the culmination of James Buchanan Duke's dream of an electrified South and the beginning of the region's future. Over the years, the area around Lake Norman transformed from a countryside of cornstalks and cattle fields to an elite suburb full of luxurious subdivisions and thirty-five-foot sailboats.

With remote waterways and unpressured trout, Wyoming's Wind River Range is the backcountry fly angler's mecca.

In the alpine lakes and streams, trout may approach a dry fly two or more at a time, and an angler can cast for days without seeing another person, let alone another angler. But more than just a place to catch lots of fish, the range is also a place to disconnect from noise and networks and reconnect with oneself. In a series of essays on misfortunate father-and-son backpacking trips, disaffected Boy Scouts, psychotropic deep-woods epiphanies and many other topics, author Chadd VanZanten offers not only a survey of the fishing and history of the Wind Rivers but a tour of personal landscapes as well.

Fly-fishing has its sacred waters the world over. Yellowstone National Park claims some of the craft’s most storied destinations. Casting in the Firehole River is like going back in time to when bison roamed nearly every meadow in the West. Restored to their natal streams after near extinction, native Arctic grayling can once again be plucked from icy water at the foot of breathtaking waterfalls. Meanwhile, a daylong hike into true wild country rewards an angler with a chance to catch trophy native cutthroat trout on a lonely mountain lake. Local journalist and experienced angler Chris Hunt crafts both a guide and homage to Yellowstone’s iconic and wild trout.

In 1892, US Fish Commission scientist Barton Warren Evermann was on assignment to South Dakota from Washington, DC. His charge: survey fisheries and locate a site for a federal hatchery. The foray took him to the Black Hills and springs of Ames Canyon that poured into Spearfish Creek. The site was ideal. By 1899, Spearfish National Fish Hatchery started raising trout for the Black Hills and points beyond, and its effects on fishing were profound. In time, the mission changed, and so did the hatchery's name. Today's D.C. Booth Historic National Fish Hatchery and Archives—named to honor the hatchery's first superintendent—is a treasure trove of information related to fisheries conservation. The facility's historic and commanding hatchery building is iconic in the community and a one-of-a-kind museum.

Netting shrimp in the icy waters off Cape Ann, hauling up lobster two hundred miles offshore, in the 1970s Gloucester's eastern-rig side trawlers were at the top of a dying and dangerous industry.

In the tough competition for the daily catch, Gloucester's dragger fleets were the best. They went out farther, stayed out longer, and risked all as the fishing grounds grew lean. Author Peter Prybot captures the glory days of the draggers through recollections and his own firsthand observations as a lifelong Gloucester fisherman. Terrible weather, good fishing, bad fishing, great days and greater danger-- these are true stories from the decks of the celebrated trawler fleet that is no more.