The Power of Positive Fishing
By Michael J. Tougias & Adam Gamble
Lyons Press, 2023
244 pages
No truer words were ever written about fishing than Izaak Walton’s assertion that the ‘art of angling’ is equal parts contemplation and action. The contemplative element of fishing accounts for the rich tradition of literature that flourished after publication of The Compleat Angler in 1653. Moreover, fishing has proven itself unique among a wide field of sports writing by lending itself to the examination of the complexities, complications and contradictions of the human predicament.
One of the most recent additions in this long, varied narrative tradition is The Power of Positive Fishing. Subtitled A Story of Friendship and the Quest for Happiness, it is co-written by Michael J. Tougias and Adam Gamble, both of whom are successful authors based in New England. Tougias has written a couple of previous books—There’s a Porcupine in My Outhouse and The Waters Between Us—of special interest to readers of angling literature.
The memoir begins more than twenty-five years earlier when Tougias, an author of maritime, travel and adventure books, was looking for a distributor after his publisher closed its doors. Gamble, a writer of children’s stories who also operated a small regional publishing company on Cape Cod came, to the rescue. Many writers since Walton have acknowledged the sympathetic connection between the art of angling and the art of writing, but few have explored the topic as comprehensively as Tougias and Gamble. Anglers who write about fishing when not engaged in the practice will find the observations fascinating.
Their friendship didn’t develop, however, until they discovered their shared love of fishing. In fact, it is sight fishing for striped bass and bluefish in the shallows off Cape Cod, first in kayaks and then in Gamble’s 18-foot Scout fishing boat, that provides the glue that not only holds their friendship together but strengthens and deepens it over time. ‘Without the mutual passion for fishing two people as different as Adam and I might not have become friends at all,’ Tougias notes. ‘For Adam and me, fishing was the activity and the ocean was the setting which afforded us the opportunity to exchange ideas, to brainstorm, and get to know the true measure of the other person.’
The memoir is built on an epistolary structure of alternating chapters. Readers are placed in the privileged position of eavesdropping on close friends sharing an open, candid conversation ranging over professional and personal matters. When they first met, each enjoyed secure jobs with stable incomes and happy suburban families with two children. Life was good; but it did not last. Eventually their worlds were ravaged by the tempestuous seas of divorce, financial insolvency and addiction. Tougias and Gamble demonstrate admirable courage tackling their problems head-on while exposing their painful wounds. It becomes evident that both writers not only view fishing as a metaphor for life, but view life as a metaphor for fishing.
Thanks in no small part to the friendship they sustained through ‘the power of positive fishing’ they eventually find safe harbour in terms of professional success and personal contentment. Most anglers would agree that success on the water—as in life—increase with confidence and optimism. After all, angling is all about hope, which can be extended to life experiences generally.
Nonetheless, life’s challenges and hardships have taught this old angling curmudgeon that there isn’t a golden key that magically opens the door to a happy, fulfilling life. Consequently, I’ll leave it to readers to discover for themselves what the power of positive fishing is all about. Although I was engaged in the life struggles Tougias and Gamble surmounted with humour and grace, I found their prescriptive inspirational ideas about ‘manifesting’ success through optimism less than persuasive. (I must add that Tourgias lost me completely when he offered banal dating advice for middle-aged lonely hearts.)
My skepticism, however, did not erode my pleasure in reading the memoir. Tougias and Gamble are both accomplished authors who write evocatively about fishing, whether in a boat in the ‘thin water’ off Cape Cod, or while on angling adventures in the Bahamas or Florida in pursuit of a wide range of game fish.
Gamble’s chapters about burial at sea, ‘Sleeping with the Fishes,’ and his epilogue, ‘Seeing the Light,’ are alone worth the price of the book. Whether the form of fishing he practices with Tougia is compulsive, obsessive or addictive, I agree with him when he reflects: ‘I like to think of a day of fishing as a spiritual retreat of sorts. Removed from the regular rhythms of family and work, immersed in the overwhelming beauty of outer nature, connecting with friends or family, and involved in an activity where the regular flow of time often seems to cease, my spirit always feels refreshed and renewed.’
This book review was written originally for Classic Angling, Great Britain’s premium fishing journal.