My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Scott Waldie (who unfortunately passed away a few years ago) gave us a fine gift in his three Travers Corners books. The last, The Final Chapters,” continues the stories of the characters in fictional Travers Corners, Montana.

There is nothing new or startling about these stories, either in content or execution. One of the things I like about these stories is the lack of pretentiousness—what you see is what you get: good old fashioned storytelling. These stories aren’t about big issues. The author isn’t trying to make a point. These are stories about regular people doing regular things as they live their lives in a small corner of the world.

Fly fishing is an integral part of nearly every story. The main character, Jud, is a river boat builder. He also guides and fishes on the local waters, known for their large trout.

Waldie’s storytelling skills are just right, with a turn of phrase here and there to add just enough something extra to a story that makes a connection with a reader. He brings the reader into the story, making them wish they were a part of the story, or, rather, part of the town and lives of the characters in the story.

These stories are about friends and how people get along in a small (albeit idealized) town. Things usually work out well for the characters, but when they don’t you are there pulling for them.

These are “feel good” stories, but they aren’t sappy. They are easy reads, and each chapter is a self-contained story, although they are all about the same place and same people. You could easily open the book to a random chapter and read it without missing a thing.

When you’re tired of your heavy reading, and need a light pick-me-up read, make sure you have all three of the Travers Corners books on hand.

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My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Dry Fly Gospel
By Terry Coffey

Book Review

This is a quirky book filled with 12 short stories that catch one off guard. At least they caught me off guard. Granted, with the title it bears and a cover with a picture of a nun holding a fly rod and a wicker creel at her feet, it does lead one to believe that what comes under the cover won’t going to be your typical fishing yarns.

There are twelve stories, and they aren’t all about fly fishing (however, I think fly fishing makes an appearance in most of them). I believe each of these stories has been previously published, many of them in print form.

This slim volume of 92 pages is self-published. There are several errors that occur throughout the book, most of them are the things an editor would pick up. That’s one of the problems of self-publishing—it’s sometimes hard to catch your own errors, especially the larger the piece.

The title story, and first in the book, “Dry Fly Gospel,” starts like this:

“The following excerpts are taken from fragments of what many scholars believe is a fishing journal kept by John, who was the son of Zebedee and favorite disciple of Jesus of Nazareth.”

The story, at first glance, may strike a certain type of reader as a bit sacrilegious: Jesus as a fly fishing instructor and early practitioner of catch and release. However, I think Coffey maintains enough reverence for the sacred so that those who might instinctively shy away from such a story, will not take offense.

The second story, “The Jar of Worms,” features Cyrus, one of the 12 disciples, who tells the story in first person. He becomes enraged when Judas Iscariot, a bait fisherman (this made me crack up), interrupts a story being told by the Master, about dry fly fishing. Cyrus is upset because Jesus invites the bait fishing Judas to join them, Cyrus leaves Jesus, and Judas eventually fills his vacated spot, becoming one of the 12. Of course, Cyrus can’t help firing off a few parting comments about watching out for Iscariot since bait fishermen can’t be trusted.

The book contains a story about a medieval nun who believes she might have the opportunity to work on the Shroud of Turin, only to end up trying to decide if she wants to stay at the convent and remain a nun. One of the stories is about a Vietnam vet who meets Freud at a veterans’ hospital and ends up fishing with Freud, Shakespeare and Hemingway. Another story tells of a woman trying to come to terms with her cancer during a fly fishing excursion.

There is a story of a man in Peru who falls off his mountainside potato farm. One about a solo hike to a pond with a possible huge fish, or possibly a UFO incident. Another about a person who died and became a tree. And a couple of others.

I found most of the earlier stories to be more compelling reading and the last few were a bit, well, almost silly? There were enough interesting stories that I would recommend the book to anyone looking for something a bit eclectic.

The price, $12.95 plus shipping (about $16 total for me), seems a bit pricey for what you get. There is a Kindle edition for $4.95 that seems just about right. (Even if you don’t own a Kindle, you can get the Kindle reader for free so you can purchase books like this and read it on your computer.)

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My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Ted Leeson has been one of my favorite authors since his first book in 1994, The Habit of Rivers. That book contained essays concerning his trip throughout the western United States mostly fishing for native trout. Since then he has written a fair number of books on flies and fly tying. I rarely buy those types of books, preferring the literary over the practical (let’s not think what that might say about me), but it is his essays that I look forward to reading. Two years after his debut book he edited a volume of essays titled The Gift of Trout. That was a good book, but I was really looking forward to his next volume containing only his work. I had to wait eight years from The Habit of Rivers until publication of Jerusalem Creek, another exceptional book of essays, centered in the Driftless area.

In those first two books, I found Leeson to be a bit more weighty…maybe “academic” is the word I’m looking for. I loved those books, but from what I remember, they seemed to be filled with lots of thought-provoking, introspective pieces. Maybe the word “serious” is what I’m thinking. Seven years after Jerusalem Creek, Leeson published Inventing Montana. This book contains the classic Leeson writing consisting of “academic” language, such as this sentence from Chapter 7, The Most of It: “Given its encumbrance with conditions and qualifications, many people might dismiss the question as invalid or meaningless to begin with.” But, unlike (to my memory at least) his other two volumes of essays, Inventing Montana has a lot more personal feel. I believe one of the reasons it does so is because of the humor he injects into most of the pieces. This is a welcome element to Leeson’s writing that I think makes this book his most reader-friendly volume yet.

His chapter titled, Local Semiotics, contains a side-splitting discussion among his friends when they happened upon the only open campsite, but it hand an ice scraper in the middle of the picnic table. They tossed around their theories on the plausibility of an ice scraper being used to hold a tent site in a Yellowstone campground (for those of you who visit the Park with any regularity, you’ll understand the importance of finding, and then holding, a campsite). Two of the party

“took up the question from a more or less epistemological standpoint: What constitutes value? How do we know value, and wherein does it reside? And for whom? Is value intrinsic.”

And of course, others in the group

“considered the scraper from the perspective of intentionality. Had it been left deliberately or accidentally? Was it a sign of something other than forgetfulness?”

A park ranger happened upon them in the middle of their conundrum, but refused to weigh in one way or the other.

Leeson has spent the last 20 or so years visiting Montana for about a month with a handful of friends. The group is an eclectic bunch, which creates the backdrop for many of the essays. These essays take place in a relatively small area, the Madison Valley. Focusing on such a small area, with a group of close friends, helps bring an intimacy to the book, an almost folksy feel to it. Such as his essay about Ennis.

For those of you unfamiliar with Ennis, Montana, it is the quintessential cow town, with the added feature of being the quintessential fly fishing town as well (which is an odd dichotomy considering the occasional conflict between cattlemen and anglers). He points out that one thing among small towns is the inhabitants’ penchant for waving to passing automobiles. As a motorcyclist, I’ve grown accustomed to waving to other motorcyclists, but there is always a question of which motorcyclists do you wave to: only the ones riding the same type of bike? Ones with helmets? In town? At a stoplight? Leeson analyzes the problems associated with waving when your license plate clearly shows you are an outsider.

“Mindful of how visitors like myself invade the place each summer, I worry that initiating a wave might be perceived as the overeager ingratiations of a tourist on holiday. Such people presume to a familiarity that does not exist and may force a return wave in a kind of extorted intimacy that leaves the other driver feeling he’s been compelled to engage in a nonconsensual act.”

And of course, what would a Leeson book be without soaring paragraphs of magical prose?

“Some years bring as well, however, a season within this season, a smoldering, incandescent stretch of days when the mercury flirts with triple digits and a string of nights not much cooler—the depths of the dog days and the hottest part of the hottest part of the year….in the forge of each day, the sun hammers the landscape to the same hard and brittle sheet of earth.”

For those of you who might have tried Leeson before but didn’t quite get into it, give this one a try. For those who already enjoy Leeson, you’ll love the extra dimensions this book adds to his repertoire.

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Dean Bell, one of New Zealand’s premiere guides, is filmed fishing Fiordland of New Zealand’s South Island. If you aren’t familiar with this part of the world, it is truly beautiful: fjords with their lush landscape and plunging waterfalls; glaciers; the towering mountains of the Southern Alps; and lacing their way through it all are clear, pristine rivers bearing large trout.

If you are interested in a travel DVD, or in any way hope to see the natural wonders of New Zealand (with the exception of beautiful rivers), this is not the DVD for you. I was slightly disappointed because it has been over 20 years since I lived in New Zealand, and visited these places, and I really wanted to revisit them through the DVD—but that is not the purpose of this DVD. If you are planning a trip to NZ to fish, and you want that kind of DVD, there are lots of others out there for that purpose.

If you like watching large brown and rainbow trout caught on large dry flies in incredibly clear water, then pop this DVD in, turn off the volume, and watch 65 minutes of High Definition footage as Dean catches and releases over 20 of these big boys. It looked great on my 50” widescreen, putting me right into the action as if I were there, at Dean’s side.

If, however, you are interested in learning some (mostly) dry fly tactics suitable for not only New Zealand, but anywhere with clear water and picky trout, then turn up the volume and listen in as Dean instructs on not only the “dead drift,” but pre-casting analysis of the conditions of the lie, the cast, and playing the fish to bring it to hand.

He revolves each of these aspects around reading the structure of the water: the rocks and the hydrology of the water caused by those rocks. The lies created by the hydrology dictating where to cast to get the drift that is needed to 1) get the fly to the fish and 2) present the fly in the most natural way possible. And then how to best use the current to play the fish and bring it in.

Dean does an excellent job talking through his immediate thoughts right there on the water. There is the occasional voice-over done in post-processing where some additional analysis goes on as he talks through the different aspects of fishing for a particular fish he caught. (I’m not sure why, but this voice-over was done in Dean’s best “golf commentator” voice. I found this slightly bothersome because when he was on the water, he typically used his regular voice and the fish certainly would hear him better there than in post-processing. It’s not a huge issue, but a non-modulated voice would work a little better for me.)

Steve Couper’s Stealth Films Ltd. did a fine job in filming and editing the audio and video of the DVD. The only suggestions I have for future DVD’s is to change the voice-overs and to add a little extra content at the end. Dean does a nice job summarizing at the end of the DVD, but maybe another section of the DVD accessed through the menu with these points in text format (a bulleted list kind of thing), as well as some of the other salient points made throughout the DVD, would be nice.

This is an enjoyable DVD to just sit back and watch to get your fishing fix (especially during the off season). It also has excellent information to help you improve your sight-fishing skills. Dean is a delightful host who keeps things interesting and exciting without showboating his successes or haranguing his failures.

Purchase the DVD through Stealth Films http://www.stealthfilms.co.nz (go to this link to purchase directly) for $25 + shipping (I thought well worth the price). Check out the 1 minute 16 second trailer here. Steve Couper of Stealth Films was prompt in answering a couple of my questions (see previous post here). The DVD was shipped promptly and arrived quickly.

I do have to apologize to Steve: I wrote the review last August, but never typed it up (I do many of my first drafts on a yellow legal pad, and there it sat). So here it is, a bit belatedly.

music by Andy McKee

by Scott Sadil

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There have been a couple of blog posts by various people (myself included) over the past year or so decrying what has been called either the X-games or extreme fly fishing approach among some of the “new breed” of anglers. Some books and especially DVDs seem to gravitate in that direction. There is plenty of debate as to whether fly fishing can indeed be an extreme sport–how extreme can one get in fly fishing?

But the issue isn’t whether the sport is “extreme,” it’s about the attitude a small segment of anglers brings to the sport–an in-your-face, braggadocio, “Outta my way, we’re gonna stick some pigs today!” mentality they bring to the water. It seems more about domination, about asserting their will over the elements and the fish: it’s about their conquests. (So as not to improperly malign any extreme sport or x-game participant, maybe we should call those with this mentality The Dominators, The Braggadocios, or possibly The Conquistadors.)

Conquests versus relationships. As soon as a fish is caught, isn’t that a conquest? Well, as soon as you “get the girl,” is *that* a conquest? It depends on the attitude of the one doing the getting, and what they want out of the experience–do they want a relationship or a conquest?

Scott Sadil brings us 12 stories about relationships, not conquests. Relationships between people who are dating, married, families, parent and child, teacher and student, faithful and unfaithful, and humans and nature. He seems to know the human condition concerning relationships as one having lived the life he writes about. Yet the characters in the book don’t bring Sadil’s knowledge with them to the stories, rather, they are searching to understand what they know about the experiences they’ve had.

Like Dori Cromwell in “Slate Blue.” She is a poet married to a successful businessman. Her first volume of poetry was published seven years previously, her husband thought that would be an end to any further desires to publish. Unknown to him, she harbored a desire to produce more work to show she wasn’t a one-hit-wonder. This unfulfilled need causes her to feel in a

…state of near numbness, her only feeling of late a gnawing sense of starvation, as if she is living off old toast and dried fruit–enough, maybe, to keep her alive, but she can feel parts of herself grown weak from malnutrition, her mind and heart atrophied at the edges…

Unlike many other fishing books, most of the main characters in these stories are not in, what most of the world considers, “the prime” of their life. These characters are often in their 50s and beyond. Some of them are grandparents. Some of them have been divorced. Most of them lead professional lives. They have experienced life and the relationships, whether flourishing or struggling, that come with a life lived.

One thing refreshing about the book is that these are not your Conquistador’s characters with sleek, toned bodies wildly dashing from one conquest to the next, but rather include the sagging, wrinkled bodies of those making deliberate decisions about what they want in life, such as Elliot Merrick in “Lake Albion,” while trying to court a single, retired gal “who sets his heart racing.”

It feels like a damn cliché: can’t get a fish, can’t get a date. At his age, however, he understands the perils of pressing on either front. He’s a patient man. You have to be.

Sadil is a high school teacher, and teachers and students make frequent appearances in the book. “Modest Perversions” is, I believe, the only non-fishing related story and the main characters are two female teachers and their male principal and their love triangle. This was one of my least favorite stories for reasons I can’t account for–maybe it is a little too soap opera-esque for me.

There is also a story that deals with the relationship, or supposed relationship, that strikes fear in the heart of every male teacher: that between a male teacher and a female student. In “The River Beulah,” Mr. Fairchild takes a job teaching at a high school because of its proximity to a river where he could fly fish “until his dying days.” (In my book, certainly a worthy criterion in choosing the location of one’s employment.) A girl student wants to learn to fish and Mr. Fairchild brings along a boy from school, who fly fishes, to make sure there are no accusations of impropriety. But the accusations are there anyhow. The story deals with how relationships, socioeconomic status and positions of trust must be navigated by newcomers in a small, rural community.

Father and son relationships are often tenuous. In real life a fly fishing father desires that his son(s) will take up the fly rod and join him on his fishing trips. Sadil explores two such relationships in “Chernobyl, Idaho,” where the older son doesn’t go on any fishing trips and the younger son, Patch, does, but, after a few token casts, is more interested in reading while his father fishes. In “Family Matters,” the same father and son characters appear and the father wonders about how people often feel compelled to do things with those they care about more out of duty to the person than love for the activity. Not referring to his sons, he muses,

There’s a reason, I conclude, that these same partnered, go-along individuals will almost always end up putting away their rods at some juncture, leaving the fishing–and all it requires–to the person in the relationship who cared about the sport in the first place. They quit for lack of love.

He then wonders about the desire, or not, that his sons have to fish.

One of the funniest stories is “Twenty Minutes More,” in which the husband wants to fish while he and his wife canoe. The wife finally gives him permission to fish, but he can only fish for a total of 20 minutes, divided up however the husband wants. This struck home for me, as that sounds exactly like something my wife would say.

I related to many of the characters in the stories because I have much in common with many of them or their circumstances since I’m entering middle age, I’m married, I have children, and all except one story prominently features fly fishing. But fishing isn’t the main aspect of the stories, it is usually just part of the action so Sadil can explore themes about relationships. These are not perfect relationships, nor does the character always “get the girl.” These are examined relationships that men or women readers can enjoy.

Sadil writes a tight story, with a good setting, good plots, interesting problems, and great characters with their own quirks and personalities. The stories don’t all end with resolutions neatly wrapped in bows, but often leave the reader to puzzle out for themselves what might happen next, but this is done subtly and doesn’t make the reader feel cheated out of a “proper” ending.

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My rating: 5 of 5 stars

(Note to fly fishers: this is not a fly fishing book, but is set in Wyoming, near Yellowstone. Many of you fish this area, and I thought might be interested in a book about the area.)
This is a memoir that, while reading, I was hoping wasn’t one of those “adorned” memoirs, you know, fictionalized autobiographies. The book is now ten years old and I don’t think there has been any “revelations” about the improprieties of the author in the telling of his life.

Why was I concerned about this? It is such a heartachingly good read, that it just seemed too good to be true. Most of the essays in the book were written at least 30 years after they took place. Spragg does such an excellent job of looking into the thoughts and feelings of his eleven year old self, and those thoughts and feelings are so deep, lucid and emotion-laden, that it is easy to imagine they are fictionalized. But, keeping in mind that a memoir is an examination of one’s life after the fact, one can see that it is easy to project an adult’s interpretation on events from childhood.

This book is an excellent example of writing about the American West and how it so recently was, and in some places still is. Spragg’s family moved to Wyoming to run a dude ranch and eleven year old Mark was expected to be part of the business. In his words:

When I was a boy my father had horses, over a hundred of them. He believed that horses were to use and that boys were nothing if not used…. I went to work for him when I was eleven. I was paid thirty dollars a month, had my own bed in the bunkhouse, and three large, plain meals each day. (p 1)
…It was my daily job to remind our horses of the union of man and horse, to gather them, halter them, grain them, doctor them, handle them, ride them, to ride the younger ones again and again until they became convinced that I was part of them and other men a part of me. They were my father’s horses. I was my father’s son. (p5)

It was this belief about boys working put to practice that gives Spragg the stories he has to tell, the stories of being a boy among men and growing to manhood himself.

Horses became an integral part of his life and character:

I was a boy and I believed in the sightedness of horses. I believed that to have a horse between my legs, to extend my pulse and blood and energy to theirs, enhanced my vision. Made of me a seer. I believed them to be the dappled, sorrel, roan, bay, black pupils in the eyes of God. (p7)

I think that walking is different from riding. I am connected to the earth differently, more aware of the strike of my bones against the land, more aware of the surface. My breath comes sharp and strong. I think that when I am walking it is as though I am speaking each word of myself to the mountain’s ear. Aloud. I like the sensation. I also like being on a horse. When I am mounted it feels as though I must draw my breath through half a tone of animal to fill my lungs. My breath comes fuller, hotter; the breathing expanded, drowsy, and meditative. When I am older I will think of the difference between walking and riding to be the difference between prayer and the effect of prayer.(p36)

The book deals with the how raw and brutal nature can be and the men who live on the land. It shows that masculinity isn’t just about the way men behave, but that the reason they behave in certain ways is because there is no other way. When he was 13, wile out hunting elk with a ranch hand in his forties, John, Spragg has to be a man. As they are skinning the elk, John cuts his arm to the bone. They are on horses miles from home. They aren’t just hunting, but getting food for the winter. It is Spragg’s responsibility to bandage the man and continue skinning the elk. They spend the night and butcher the elk in the morning. During the night, as Spragg is awake, he takes the knife that skinned the elk and John, and hones the blade as he has seen John do it, reflecting on the sound it makes:

It is the sound John makes with the knife. It is the sound of flesh slippery against flesh. The sound of a man’s arms working against his sides in the sun. A shirtless man bent into his work, Loading hay. An old sound. The sound that n animal makes at the end of a day. A sigh. Again and again. Metronimic. I pause. There is always a pause. I bring the blade away from the stone, examine it, reverse the stone and spit again. (pp50-51)

He continues working the blade, then

I hold it to the light. I think of it in the sun: the small curved white reflection it casts; a thing become so polished that it mirrors the heat of the sun, and if held steadily to the dry, bent underfluff of the grasses it could ignite a fire simply by throwing the curve of that reflected heat. It feels hot and right in my hand. (p51)

Life in the American West is not always easy. The book is unapologetic in its rawness of life, death and work. Spragg’s father guides hunters. For grizzlies. They bait bears into an area so the hunters can shoot them. They use old, dying horses as bait. When the horse, Socks, 15 year old Spragg has ridden for two years gets cut with a wire and his leg is gangrenous, his father asks him to take the horse out to the grizzly blind and shoot him to use him as bait.

I stare at the reddish brown mound seventy-five yards in front of me. I have killed Socks in good place. Close to the timber that borders the meadow. A bear will safe in his approach. …And then I remember that I should have cut a window in his gut. Sawed through the hair and opened him to decay. A sore that coyotes and ravens can worry. A place that will help him rot. My father will be disappointed….I wonder suddenly why I am not crying. I think a boy would cry. I think maybe I have begun to be a man. I feel only quietly blunt, and desperate. (pp107-08)

Spragg’s early life was not without a woman’s influence. In speaking about a photograph of his mother standing next to Mark and, his brother who have a stringer of fish hanging between them, he says:

My mother has brought us to the river to further our instruction. It has never occurred to us to wonder why she knows how to fish. She is our mother. She teaches us how to manage in the world. We watch her smooth hands grip the rod’s cork above the reel. We watch the rhythm of her arms paying out the line in arcs over the river, working into the length of her cast. We follow the last presentation of line and breathe out as the fly settles on the river’s surface. If she were not our mother we would be struck by her beauty. We would argue to stand close to her. We would become nervous at the scent of her clean, sun-warmed skin. We would not have learned to fish. (pp240-41)

Spragg has a way of not finishing narratives, but rather focusing on the feeling and emotions of the piece to let each essay carry it to its conclusion. Because it isn’t necessarily the storyline that he is writing about, it is the inner experience. With all the masculinity of the book, there are plenty of times for tenderness as well. His mother had a hard time having children. She had a daughter a year before Mark was born. But the girl only lived a few months. He reflects on having an older sister:

I think about my sister when my mind is quiet; almost always when I am watching water. I see my sister as an encyclopedia of feminine advice. I see my sister as a doorway to the second half of the world. I wish I could call her name and have her turn her face to me and smile. (p27)

This book is a collection of essays, most of which, I believe, were previously published individually. The first three quarters or so of the essays are about his childhood, and for me are the most compelling and strongest of the book. The remaining several essays are about his adult life, and while excellently written, didn’t have the emotional impact on me as the others.

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My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read lots of stories where the characters lead lives far removed from my own experiences. They have problems I have never had and probably never will. Yet I empathized with them at some level. How does an author make me empathize with a character?

One way is by creating characters that have traits and behaviors that the reader admires or relates to. Even when a character has weaknesses or problems, if the reader admires some of their traits, they will cheer for them to succeed, forgive them when they make mistakes and cry for them when things turn sour.

Andy, the main character in the book Northwest of Normal, has few traits I found admirable. In fact, I can only think of one: he loves the place he lives, Ipsyniho, Oregon, a bohemian, backwoods town.

After a major setback with his girlfriend, who marries his best friend, Andy runs away from something he should have taken care of with these two, which sets the stage for his return after 14 months so that he can resolve this problem. But somehow the place and people he loves have dramatically changed. And more importantly, he doesn’t have the guts to face his problems in a reasonable manner.

The author makes the attempt to have Andy seem like he’s really struggling to do what’s right, but he just comes across to me as a whining, irresponsible juvenile (even though he’s in his 30’s, I think). I just never really got to the point that I cared much about Andy or whether he solved his problems or not.

By page 60 I’d come up with a list of potential themes I thought the book might explore over the remaining pages:

• relationships
• friendship
• betrayal
• family
• place
• growing up
• facing consequences

These are some pretty big themes, and for a book of only 234 pages, it would be hard to adequately cover all of them in sufficient depth to do each theme justice. More about that in a minute.

As Andy works through problems related to these themes, since he doesn’t really have any traits I found admirable, I just can’t “cheer,” “forgive” or “cry” over his choices. I just want to give him a dope slap and tell him to grow up. I understand that sometimes an author actually creates a character like this and that is an acceptable way to portray a character. But then there has to be something in the rest of the book where the character changes, or events are such that you understand why the author created such a character.

But the anticlimax just seemed too rushed to really resolve this problem with the main character. Sure he “changed,” but more in a manner that it seemed he changed because the author needed to wrap things up. I especially found the resolutions to the problems relating to the themes to be rushed. Once the climax was reached, the resolutions to Andy’s problems seemed to come in rapid succession based on a checklist the author had: “OK, Andy has this problem, let’s take care of it in these 6 pages. Done. Next problem in the following 8 pages. Check.” and so on until he covered them all. It was dissatisfying to me.

The best thing the book probably has going for it is its portrayal of the guide’s life, some aspects of steelheading and life in parts of Oregon. Since I have no experience with any of those three things, I can only assume that Larison does an adequate job of portraying these aspects since he has personal experience in all three areas. I especially thought he did a great job with the psyche and lingo of guides and their clients.

Another aspect of the writing that bothered me was that it seemed at times that the characters participated in events, as if this were an informational piece about what a place or people might be like. However, events alone don’t make a story. How those events affect the characters and how the characters react to them and how the reader reacts to the characters are all important considerations as well. And those connections just didn’t happen for me.

I also noticed in a few spots where it seemed the characters were a little unnatural, in fact a bit didactic, as if certain background information was needed by the reader so the author provided it in the form of one of the characters speaking about it.

Pot makes a frequent appearance in the book. By about page 100 I made this note: “I’m not sure of the purpose of all the pot. If it was left out of the story, would it change the story?” In other words, I was wondering what the point of all the pot smoking was for. Come to find out, it is an important part of the plot. As a side note, there is a group called NORML: The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. I’m wondering if there was a deliberate play on words with the title since Oregon does have rich history with marijuana.

I’m always a bit leery of writing negative reviews for fear of wondering if I know what the heck I’m talking about. And this book gave me extra pause for a couple of reasons. One is that Larison teaches writing at Oregon State University. One would certainly think that a university writing teacher would have the skills to pull off a novel. And another concern was that the back cover of the book contains praise from the following three people: David James Duncan (I’m a big fan), Tom Bie (editor of The Drake fly fishing mag) and Ted Leeson (I’m a huge fan of his writing) who says that this is a “…skillfully told story…” A bit of disclosure: Ted Leeson teaches English at Oregon State University.

Who in the world am I to disagree with these fly fishing and writing luminaries? That’s the thing about reviews, everybody’s experience is different. In the end, I can just give my impressions. Each person has to make their own choice as to whether they will read the book.

For those of you who are steelheaders, guides or anglers who frequent Oregon’s Willamette area, you will probably like this book more than those who don’t fit at least one of those categories. If your fiction tastes are simple—you like quick, easy reads with simple characters and plot—you might like this too.

A last note: Being Larison’s first novel, I’m hoping that he continues to write fly fishing fiction and continues to improve because I do think he has some potential to be a much better fiction author. I think removing some of the themes could have helped solve some of the main problems I had with the book (or making it longer to do each theme justice).

You’ll notice the question mark in the title of this post. That’s because I’m not actually reviewing the DVD, but rather the promotional efforts of the website that produced and markets the DVD.

Steve Couper’s Stealth Films is mainly a producer of hunting trips: your hunt will be recorded then can be turned into a documentary or promotional for clients or just enjoyed by an individual. They have two commercial DVDs, the first being a hunting DVD.

Stealth Films’ latest video, “The Dead Drift,” is now available (about $23 US). (The link also has a link to a trailer of the DVD.) The brief blurb on the site states the following:

Join Dean Bell – one of New Zealand’s best Fly Fishing Guides – as he fishes the wilderness waters of Fiordland and gives an in depth analysis to the fly fishing techniques he uses. Filmed in the the rugged Fiordland mountains we experience the best wilderness fishing waters that New Zealand has to offer.Stunning scenery, beautiful footage and spectacular fishing.

A little poking around on the site brought up this additional blurb:

Stunning scenery, beautiful footage and spectacular fishing with many ‘gems of wisdom’ from one of New Zealand’s top fishing guides. The result is a film that any fly fisherman – young or old, inexperienced or a veteran – will gain knowledge from.

That’s all I can find on the website concerning this DVD.

A blurb should entice the buyer to want to purchase the DVD for a particular reason. In this case, it sounds as if the DVD will have “in depth analysis,” “gems of wisdom” and something to “gain knowledge from”—in other words, an informational/instructional DVD.

A trailer should also entice the buyer to purchase for a particular reason. This brief (about 1 minute) trailer shows fishing in some crystal clear water (which could actually be about anywhere in the world that has clear water—for those of you who have been to the fiords of New Zealand, you’ll know this is some of the most beautiful scenery on the planet, and it would be nice to see a hint of some identifiable geography in the trailer). If it is just an eye candy DVD, then this trailer might be enough to convince those who like eye candy to purchase it.

But the promotional words used leads me to believe the DVD contains more than just eye candy, it also has some instruction. I believe there should be a match between a trailer and written promotional descriptions. So I want to know how the “analysis” is given: in voice-overs, sit down interviews, talking through the actual fishing, etc.? I’m sure putting together a trailer is not the easiest thing in the world, but this problem between words and trailer could be resolved if there was a ten second snippet within the trailer of these “analysis” portions to give the buyer an idea. I’m also curious what the ratio of  “stunning scenery, beautiful footage and spectacular fishing” to technical information is? In other words, when I read “in depth analysis,” I’m under the impression that there is quite a bit of technical information. Is that the case?

Other, smaller issues deal with the length of the DVD (I can’t find it listed anywhere)  and if the instruction is valuable only to fly fishing New Zealand, or is it general instruction that I could use in Montana as well? I’m not sure the DVD is even intended for an international audience in the first place. If so, what would someone from outside NZ get from it: Eye candy? Instruction? PR to get me to fish in NZ?

My major concern about the promotion of the DVD: the trailer and words should match and compliment each other.

As I said before, Fiordland is a beautiful place. From the trailer, the filming and post-production looks to be of great quality. I’m sure the DVD is top-notch. And although $23 US is not a lot of money, I’m hesitant to pay for something that I have questions about. I have left an email with Steve Couper of Stealth Films asking if he would like to reply to this review and/or provide any additional information concerning the DVD which I will pass on to you.

Steve Couper kindly replied to my email. Here is his reply:

This is not an instructional DVD but one for the more experienced angler that would like to enhance their skills – reading water, types of casts needed, obstacles in the river are some of the points mentioned. Methods are universal in their application.

Analysis is given throughout, as voice over where needed to get a point across, and during the fishing sequences as well.

Technical insight is given throughout the movies 1 hr and 10 min length. There are more than 25 fish landed – both Rainbows and Browns taken with dry fly and nymph.

The scenery is stunning and you will just have to purchase the film to see it all !!! Filmed with a High Definition camera it should be viewed on a 42 inch plasma TV to get the best from the footage. As mentioned this has to be one of the best fishing locations on the planet.

The DVD is intended for an international audience and I believe it will be enjoyed by all that view it. It has something in it for all fisherman.

Regards Steve