The Next Valley Over: An Angler’s Progress by Charles Gaines
My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book is the reason I wrote the “Braggarts R Us” post.

Foreward by Terry McDonell:

“Charles Gaines is a handsome man…The perfect cast has been his forever and he is a confident man… [he is:] so deeply eccentric and graceful in his fishing life as to pass from time to time in to…‘the trance of instinct.’”

“The literature of fishing is flush these days with middle-aged white guys, most of whom are a little too quick to mention the time they enjoyed a drink with Charles Gaines… They’ve all been to a great lodge somewhere… but Gaines has been to all of them.”

“With all appropriate respect for Izaak Walton and the great Roderick Haig-Brown, this is the book Merriwether Lewis would have written about fishing if he were a better writer and as good a fisherman as Gaines, which he most certainly was not… [I]f you fish and read on a level of sophistication above dynamiting gar, Gaines is your man…”

“This is an outlaw book in so many ways.”

“He’s trying to teach you something: fishing’s inner game. Study hard.”

I’m not sure of McDonell’s goal in writing this foreword, but I should have gone with my first instincts and stopped right there. If Gaines had any say in the publishing of the foreword, and he allowed this brown-nosing, gushing effluent to be written about him, then my worst fears about the man are realized.

While reading this book, I couldn’t help but think this was the most self-centered, name-dropping, snobbish book I had ever read. Now, after letting the book sit so I could gather my thoughts and write a rational review, I reread the foreword and realize that I might have been influenced in my first reading by this foreword. This bragging by proxy just put a sour taste in my mouth I couldn’t rid myself of, no matter how much I spit.

Things started off with Gaines talking about fishing with his father at a lake his father owned in Alabama. Gaines was 15 and they were catching bluegill. He talks about that struggle a father and teenage son can have with each other. But then he starts naming lodges and countries he’s fished. It’s beyond me why he has to mention that he has visited 20+ lodges (he names ten of them) and 11 countries, all in one paragraph, and the next paragraph tells us he has developed a “lifetime appreciation” for guides.

This tells me that he has an affinity for the “privileged” aspects of fishing. I’m not sure why, but this living the highlife isn’t something I’m interested in reading about. I guess because those aren’t things I’m interested in doing. So I evaluated myself to see if maybe it was just jealousy, but that’s not it because I’ve never felt the need, or even the slightest inkling, to visit exotic locales, stay in lodges or have a guide. I could probably afford some of that, so it’s not because I lack the means, just the interest.

The book is written for a different audience than the one I represent.

Part of the reason for so many lodges and guides is Gaines had an early desire to fish “the next valley over” as the nomadic wanderer. What was he searching for in that next valley? “… it was really dreams I was after. My dreams then all had big fish in them. They had me solving difficult angling problems and beating odds on far-off waters, and living the life of Riley while I was at it.”

So, there it is in a nutshell-”living the life of Riley.” I’m not sure where Gaines’ money comes from, but apparently he is well-off enough to spend his time in pursuit of fish.

Sometimes this comes across as arrogance. With a guide in a drift boat on the Bighorn River he complains, “The river is covered upstream and down with drift boats… Among them, moreover, is a flotilla of ten to fifteen little single-man pontoon boats, horrible little sky-blue, high-tech cheapos that belong in a pond at Disneyland with kids in them fishing and hollering and drifting inexpertly all over AJ’s [the guide:] precious Bighorn.”

Apparently only expensive boats with “experts” in them should be on “AJ’s rivers.” The poor man who can’t have afford a drift boat can’t be on the river and enjoy the same fishing opportunities. And apparently only those on pontoon boats holler and are inexpert.

But he wants it both ways-he wants his affluent lifestyle, but he wants us to think he is the common man:

“On the bank we drink a tin cup or two of bourbon…” p 28

“We pour some whisky into tin cups…” p. 32

“… drink vino tinto out of tin cups…” p 42.

Sometimes I got the feeling that he was trying to out machismo Zane Grey and Ernest Hemingway.

Another thing from the quote is that he likes “big fish” and to “beat odds,” which means he likes to compete. He’s about numbers. Many fisherman are. I’m not interested in big fish. So this was a problem for me as well. He also fishes a lot of saltwater. Again, I’m not interested in saltwater species.

Gaines admits to being obsessed with fishing in his 30s to an unhealthy degree, sacrificing most things in pursuit of fish, including his marriage. He writes of his excesses in drink and drugs. By his 50s he begins to mellow, which is noted in the third section of the book, “Round Third.” He “comes home,” patches things up where necessary, and settles down. Probably the better part of the book for me.

Gaines writing style is fine, and delightful in some spots, such as when he says that “Fishing is casting a petition into the unknown, and the eternal wonder of it is that almost anything can be down there ready to bite: your heart’s desire; your worst fear; even something big enough to pull you overboard and catch you.”

I did like his title piece.

The foreword, then too many nods to that feeling of being privileged, and writing with a macho attitude and about topics I’m not interested in, just didn’t do it for me. The guy may be a great guy and fun to fish with, but this book just didn’t do it for me. I didn’t feel he made the case for his “progress” of the subtitle.

I recommend this book to those who like (or like to read about) fishing for big fish with “important” people at the best lodges with the best guides.

View all my reviews.

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