This collection of six fly-fishing tales, from the best fly-fishing writer in the Pacific Northwest, includes:
The Bonefisherman’s Dilemma: Freddie Woodson planned to write a story about his trip to Sugar Cay Bonefish Resort, sell it to a fishing magazine and use the money to help pay trip expenses. But he didn’t count on drinking too much rum, falling asleep in a hot tub, meeting a cute native girl or losing the only bonefish he managed to hook, so there was no story and no money. Now he’s engaged in an increasing-ly acrimonious debate with his tax accountant. Freddie maintains the expenses for his trip should be tax-deductible even without income; his accountant disagrees. With the tax deadline rapidly approaching, Freddie hatches a legally questionable but highly innovative way of deriving some income from the trip. Don’t try this on your tax return. .
2. Welcome to the Stub Mountain Fly Shop: Vicki Brightman has inherited her father’s financially struggling fly shop, now her sole means of support. Searching desperately for a way to restore the shop’s financial health, she eventually decides that what works on fish—catching them on artificial flies—also might work on fishermen. With that in mind she concocts a longshot scheme that even she realizes has little chance of working, but with nothing else to do she goes ahead anyway—and the scheme succeeds beyond her wildest dreams. That is, as long as she doesn’t dream about ethics.
3. The Fishlexic: World-renowned geneticist Timothy Hardhorn dreams of having a son who will grow up to become his lifelong fly-fishing partner, so when his wife becomes pregnant he manipulates the genes in the embryo to assure just such an outcome. When his son, Rodney, is born he soon surpasses his father’s greatest expectations, but as the boy grows older Timothy notices some things about him that aren’t, well, quite normal. Eventually he concludes that because of his genetic tinkering, his son has a peculiar form of dyslexia that afflicts only male fly fishers: He believes all the fish he catches are much bigger than they really are.
4. Diary of an Unknown Angler: Andrew Royster, dealer in rare and classic angling books, discovers an old diary containing the answer to one of fly fishing’s greatest mysteries: the lost identity of the young woman fishing companion of Theodore Gordon, regarded by many as
the patron saint of American fly fishing. Was there something besides fishing going on between those two? Royster can’t wait to publish the answer, hoping that by doing so he might obtain his own small slice of angling immortality. Then he discovers that once history is made and literature is written, it’s very hard to change either.
5. The Man in Black Waders (novella): Clint Steele, the world’s most famous fly fisher, is about to go on trial. He’s being sued for plagiarism by Mickey Cutter, obscure author of a single angling book, who alleges Steele stole his words and used them in a book of his own. For Steele, the stakes couldn’t be higher; he could lose lots of money, his reputation, maybe even his livelihood. When the jury returns its verdict Steele does something highly unexpected, apparently uphold-ing the jury’s verdict.
6. The First Words Ever Written about Fly Fishing: “I have heard of a Macedonian way of catching fish and it is this.” Those words, attributed to the Roman scribe Claudius Aelianus, are believed the first ever written about fly fishing. But where did Aelianus hear about the Macedonian way of fishing? Where else but at a meeting of his local fishing club? OK, so it probably didn’t really happen that way, but who knows? Maybe it did.
