Calling After Water: Dispatches from a Fishing Life

By Dave Karczynski

Dave Karczynski fishes--and writes--with both eyes wide open to the magic of water. With the trademark blend of adventure, humor, and insight that has made him one fly fishing's most widely published authors, this collection of nineteen essays charts Dave's journey as he casts his way from the quiet streams of the Upper Midwest to the far corners of the earth--and back again. Readers will tramp across Patagonia with a shamanic brook trout whisperer, raft through the Himalayas in search of golden mahseer, hunt native brown trout in the Bohemian highlands, and revel in the promise of a Northern Michigan spinner fall. With prose that alternately flashes like the sides of a leaping salmon and glitters like riffle water on a summer morning, Calling After Water is one of those rare books that delights its readers as much as it invites them to reflect on their own love of fly fishing.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1493086464
• ISBN13: 9781493086467
• Release Date: October 2024
• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Vastly overrated

I generally follow Thumper's advice: "If you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all" However, after reading positive reviews of Calling After Water" , I ordered and read it, and feel compelled to ignore the rabbit's dictum. This book is poorly written. Granted there are few great fishing writers, Hemingway, Melville, Maclean, Haig-Brown being notable exceptions. Still, much fishing writing is decent, or even good, as in Gierach, Lyons, Tapply, Baab, Zern. Such writers are clear, descriptive, and inclined to report fishing details in a straightforward manner. This author's writing is overstated, obtuse, and forced. Many sentences seem contrived, with several adjectives artificially added for apparent effect. Beans for shore lunch are "other-worldly", most streams and sky scapes are religious or cosmic, and fishing itself is almost always reported to be celestial. Sorry, pal. It's not really like that. I've been fishing, and reading about fishing, for over 65 years, and in my opinion, the stories in Calling After Water sound pretty phony.