Calling After Water: Dispatches from a Fishing Life
By Dave Karczynski
Lyon’s Press, 2024
208 pages
Over the last century English literature faculties at American universities have played a major role in shaping angling writing. A long, fine line connects Henry van Dyke, Bliss Perry and Odell Shepard, through Norman Maclean and Ted Leeson, to Henry Hughes, Christopher Camuto and Chris Dombrowski. And then there’s Nick Lyons. An English prof born in Brooklyn who taught at Hunter College in Manhattan, he did more to advance the cause of fly angling literature as a writer, editor, publisher and advocate since the seventeenth century when a young John Cotton accepted an invitation from his venerable mentor Izaak Walton to complete The Compleat Angler.
Dave Karczynski joins this esteemed company of piscatorial scholars on the merits of his third book, Calling After Water. A member of the English department at the University of Michigan, he began writing essays for angling magazines before publishing a couple of instructional books: From Lure to Fly, which introduces bait-cast and spin anglers to fly fishing,and Smallmouth: Modern Fly-Fishing Methods, Tactics and Techniques. Subtitled Dispatches from a Fishing Life, hislatest offering is his first memoir. And it’s a dandy.
The collection reads like autobiographical stories rather than informative essays and are arranged in a loose chronological order.Karczynski’s literary intent is self-evident. He has been fishing for as long as he’s been writing–and it shows. His chapter headings are often inspired by music and literary titles (ie. Into the Mystic, In Patagonia, Mad Men, Kings of the Road, Now I Lay Me). He sometimes uses nouns as verbs such as ‘hexed’ (known as anthimeria in academic discourse). He routinely acknowledges literary figures as companions on the water. He invents his own phrases such as ‘hatch hands’ which refers to anxiously fumbling and bumbling with rod and reel during an insect hatch (known as neologisms). Finally, he reveals a keen sense of humour, often at his own vulnerable expense.
Karczynski’s stories trace narrative trajectories that impart more than practical information about how, when and where to fish. Rather, his focus is on why we fish. Philosophy and metaphysics usurp methods and techniques. Answering Izaak Walton’s observation, he balances action with contemplation, recreational practice with reflection. Consequently, readers respond to his stories as both fly anglers and readers of literature.
The literary quality Karczynski imparts to his writing sets it apart from conventional ‘hook and bullet’ outdoor sports journalism. His heightened language seeks out fresh and vibrant expression because how he says something is as important as what he says. The commonplace becomes uncommon, the ordinary becomes extraordinary.
I could quote innumerable passages to illustrate my point, but I’ll limit myself to selections from three paragraphs from ‘Cloud, Castle Creek’ where he describes the river’s colour as ‘melted sugar just before it starts to burn.’ His senses are acute as he observes, ‘I can tell this is going to be one of those days when you remember not just the fishing but the in-between spaces, too, the shadows of clouds rippling over spruce, the nods of wildflowers as bees launch off, the sharp whiffs of juniper in the breeze. He casts to a riffle, ‘where the river . . . makes a sound like a melting piano.’ He catches a trout of ‘pale gold trending to silver, with tiny red spots, like drops of wet blood.’ Finally, he is ‘reminded of how strange and magical fly fishing can appear, to pull perfect glittering confections of life from a few inches of crystal-clear water.’
Karczynski’s piscatorial tastes are enthusiastically catholic, encompassing multiple species of trout and salmon, in addition to steelhead, pike, muskie, black bass, walley, char, grayling, carp and mahseer. The nineteen stories spanning fifteen years are bookended between two of the most intimate pieces. The opening is an Origin chronicle that casts backward to how he came to fly fishing from spin fishing in his mid-twenties. The conclusion casts forward to how his fishing life will change as he crosses the threshold of forty, marries and faces the daunting prospect of fatherhood. He contemplates the many ‘firsts’ awaiting his daughter: ‘The ones she won’t see coming and can’t expect, wonders beyond what her mother and father could ever imagine, bright shapes in bright sun, swimming round and round, waiting for her reach.’
A trio of Patagonia stories begins with a luxury, all-inclusive junket facilitated through corporate connections. On the evidence of angling books published over the past few years, it seems as if American writers are obligated to include paeans that end up sounding like variations on the theme of piscine splendor. I, for one, would like to see a moratorium placed on quid-pro-quo reportage about this Last Good Place. Am I going too far by suggesting that this obsession is approaching a form of piscatorial colonialism?
Conversely, I much prefer Karczynski’s no-frills, backcountry, ‘tent and tarp’ dispatch and the final Patagonia tale which acts as a springboard as he channels his Nick Adams by purchasing a modest streamside property in Northern Michigan. When, unable to sleep one night on the east slope of the Andes, a ‘few yards from what might be the best brook trout river in the world,’ he realizes that intimate knowledge of familiar, resident waters is is better for the soul than casting a line on far-flung, exotic waters as a tourist.
As a Canadian, I especially enjoyed a pair of stories–one with his brother, one with friends–about fishing in Northern Ontario. Although this part of Canada has remained a popular destination for both American and Canadian anglers for more than a century, few contemporary American writers find this unchartered country a worthy subject these days. A pity, this.
Karczynski ventures to Alaska a couple of times and, not surprisingly, is rewarded with ‘Stupid Good fishing.’ Then there’s the road trip he takes with a friend from Michigan to Labrador to fish for ‘big humpback brook trout.’ Think of Jack Kerouac meeting Lee Wulff. He also travels to the Himalayas in search of the mystical Mahseer.
The stories that resonate deepest with me feature the places in which Karczynski is most passionately invested emotionally, psychologically, even spiritually. His two trips to Poland, his ancestral homeland and the ‘forging’ ground of native brown trout, are lovely. Similarly, I’m moved by his three stories about fishing for various species in Michigan, rich in both fly angling and literary angling traditions. Equally touching his is return to Wisconsin for his beloved smallmouth bass, which leads him to conclude, ‘When it comes to bassin’, there’s more joy than a philosopher can count.’
Michigan has produced its share of celebrated angling writers, from Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane to Robert Traver and Jerry Dennis. It also inspired much of Hemingway’s best writing about rivers and fishing. Karczynski honours the legacy of ‘the sweet, unpredictable, virtuosic music of fishing’ with singular craft, elegance and grace. Which is to say, I await his next book with keen anticipation. Meanwhile, I’m recommending Calling After Water to all my closest fly angling buddies, all of whom are avid readers.
This book review was written originally for Classic Angling, Great Britain’s premium fishing journal.