The New Fish
By Simen Sætre and Kjetil Østli
Patagonia
If you ever wanted an excuse to avoid farmed salmon, drop The New Fish on your table. The award-winning research of Simen Sætre and Kjetil Østli that exposed the dangers of salmon farming around the globe has been reprinted by Patagonia here in the United States. Frankenfish — the farmed salmon we eat are a fatty and fast-growing mix of 41 different Norwegian and Swedish strains — are now raised from Chile to Canada, and are reducing the quality and quantity of wild fish.
Starting at salmon farming ground zero in Norway, Sætre and Østli display time and time again the injurious impacts of this food-production system: the massive piles of waste from the pens that fill the fjords that wild salmon swim through to their natal streams; escapees and lice; and the furthest-reaching detriment, a net reduction of protein harvested from our oceans. Salmon farms are literally sucking the energy out of the sea.
The Meditative Fisherman
By Bryan Archer
Ensemble Publishing
Bryan Archer has written a text that tricks anglers into reading about the rigorous practice of meditation, decentering the ego and digressions on everything from tribalism and religion to the history of the pheasant tail nymph. Indeed, there were moments when I forgot I was reading a fishing book and then was suddenly transported to a grayling stream or a float tube fishing a New Zealand lake. But Archer made me believe in the form and its refreshing nature beyond the rampant cast-and-catch narratives.
While fly-fishing lends itself to catch-and-release practices, Archer owns this and uses the Western ideas of success to upend how many fly anglers see catching fish: “Our Western civilization focuses on goals, and cultivates and reinforces the idea that in undertaking something, one should be rewarded. Not one part of this mindset is valid when it comes to Vipassana [an ancient Indian meditative technique]. It is a paradox, but entering a Vipassana session with the view of gaining or achieving something will produce nothing but frustration.”
How might we approach a river in a different way?
My Wilderness Life
By John Fraley
Farcountry Press
Some people spend a lifetime trying to reach wilderness. Others, like John Fraley, spend a lifetime in wilderness. Fraley’s memoir chronicling 40 years of studying fish and mammals in Montana’s 1.5-million-acre Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex seeps intense intimacy with that country.
Fraley came of age in his career when instead of looking at a screen and plugging numbers into an algorithm for weeks on end, the biologist went out into the wild. Every summer, Fraley strapped necessities to his back and conducted fish surveys with a rod and reel in the upper tributaries of the Flathead River, catching pure-strain westslope cutthroat trout and bull trout. There are many times when My Wilderness Life feels like a log you might read from early explorers. Feats of physical endurance, humor at the predicaments one finds themselves in from that physical endurance — scrotal trauma, wink wink — and true wilderness where the possibility of adventure is always over the next ridge.
A Long Cast
By Mike Carotta
Torchflame Books
Not all anglers are fortunate enough to live near their favorite places to fish. For some, it’s a yearly pilgrimage to a special stream, beach or reef. While residents know the surf and current year-round, from the silent winter to busy summer, the visitors only have memories of a certain window — sometimes the best window — and their memories are layered by season-specific fish, tactics and temperatures.
For more than 50 years, Mike Corotta and family and friends have descended upon Martha’s Vineyard for the spring run from their home in New Jersey, then Nebraska and now North Carolina. A Long Cast distills those stories and fish over five decades into a book less than 200 pages by an author who grasps that the power of a place comes from the people it shapes.
