Robert Reid, a career newspaper man, has shifted his writing beat to the rivers and streams of the North in this memoir entwined with a life full of fish, literature and good whiskey.
Throughout his native waters in Ontario, to the rivers of the Adirondacks and North Carolina this side of the Niagara, Reid’s encyclopedic recall of fishing literature from poetry to prose argues the interconnection of all fisher-folk. The adage of all poems speaking to all other poems rings true, and Reid is here to extend the community of anglers probing for what we cannot see: ‘I confess I wrote this book for the poets among fly anglers and non-anglers alike, whether or not they have written a line of verse.’
I would be remiss not to acknowledge the beauty of Wesley W. Bates’s engravings texturing the book. They are the kind of art every angler enthralled with fish, birds and moving water would want close by to sate their longing when the rivers are far away.
Review written by award-winning poet & fly angler Noah Davis, published in the fall issue of Anglers Journal, one of America’s premiere fly fishing publications