Brian Clarke is a big name in UK angling, and deservedly so. His journalistic output (see here) is an important voice of reason in an increasingly commercialised fly fishing scene. His expertise as an angler is unquestionable. He co-wrote a book which helped take trout fishing in the UK to another level ("The Trout and the Fly", written with John Goddard in 1980). This book has been described as "an absolute milestone". I agree, despite the fact that Vince Marinaro's book, "A Modern Dry Fly Code", predated it by 30 years and covered much the same ground.

"On fishing" is a delightful collection of 71 wide-ranging essays. Perhaps my favourites are where Clarke describes the characters of other anglers upon whose shoulders we stand: Fred Buller, John Goddard, Alex Behrendt, and others. For fly fishing is as much about our social history and how we choose to  define meaning for ourselves as it is simply a past-time. "Images of fish and fisherman in English Medieval Church Wall Paintings" - how wonderful and how so very English!

Essays on fishing in the Falklands, Norway ("The Boatman"), and the Hudson Bay transport the reader to exotic fishing trips in much the same way as other angling travelogues - a well-worn route, but Clarke is able to personalise these in a way which tells us much about himself.

And through the book we find pieces of Brian Clarke himself, finding himself:

My entire fly fishing career could be plotted through this transition, through my choice of flies as an out and out beginner to those tied in the middle years, to the sparse collection in which I place all hope now...I began to look for simplicity.

And so we come to it. A wide range of essays and observations from a man who writes very simply and well and from a lifetime's experience of angling. But within it, a clear view of the man himself, his values, and I think a melancholy of what fly fishing is becoming.

I really warm to this book.

There are few good books around on the subject of Sea Trout angling in the UK. This one, however,  is a cracker!

Hitherto, perhaps the two best books on sea trout angling have been "Successful Sea Trout Angling" (SSTA) by Graeme Harris and Moc Morgan, and, of course, "Sea Trout Fishing" (STF) by Hugh Falkus, both classics. However whereas SSTA and STF are hefty "all you need to know" books about the subject, The Sea Trout Diaries is more of a collection of notes and photographs of Mountjoy's voyage of discovery in which he shares with us his hard gotten secrets of sea trout angling on the rivers of Devon.

Three things that make this book good:

• The explanation of tactics and how this is linked to his theory of sea trout behaviour - As an experienced brown trout angler, I had always thought that I would have little trouble in picking up sea trout angling. However, apart from the the useful skills of casting, the knowledge acquired of brown trout angling actually reduces your chances of success and have to be put aside. Mountjoy does a very good job of explaining this.
• Mountjoy's ability to "keep it simple" - Mountjoy's simplicity is refreshing. There are no flights of fancy or grand theories such as you find in today's angling press. He is happiest with simple words and simple gear. "I tend to buy second hand or "sale" rods. I have no concern for make or label".  - "There are clearly many for whom owning exclusive tackle is important and if it makes them happy I should be happy, but in fact, I am a little sad. My tackle is for fishing - not for status.."
• The honesty of his accounts, as he stumbles through  the darkness that is sea trout angling. It's the modesty of the account that is the most engaging feature of the book. On having read the book you feel like you have been let into a few secrets by a favourite uncle.

"Brown trout give themselves up to those with skill and salmon to those with money but the sea trout is a very different fish. To catch sea trout you need soul".

 Reading Wetherell's last book in his fly-fishing trilogy first, "One River More", is to have the side of history in your favour. One can see the path Wetherell trod and also appreciate why he has decided to call it quits with this particular genre. Although I enjoyed "One River More" immensely, compared to "Upland Stream", it was self-indulgent,  like soft sticky toffee.

Upland Stream has a more direct and immediate style with fewer excursions into existential thoughts and doubts. It is a tighter read and better for it.

Three real gems light up this book: Wetherell's wonderful thoughts on New England small stream brook trout fishing in "Copper Run", where "hemlock-dwelling trout mock you with their inaccessibility". His trip to the mecca of fly-fishing, Yellowstone, in "Big (Smoky) Sky" at a time when the rivers are closed down to forest fires; and Two Places Well, where Wetherell re-discovers the joys of wet fly fishing in Scotland and visits the place of my own ancestors, Galloway. And it's obvious to this reader which waters Wetherell likes to fish. The quiet unassuming shaded stream where small wild trout glide beneath undercut banks and the heavy scent of wild garlic fills the air.

 We "see" through our fly. It's the thrill of being hunted that gives fishing its charm. And, like the trout he catches, I am one reader who will return to take a look at the the lure which is his first book - "Vermont River".

Born in 1882, Dr Luce became Professor of Moral Philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin, where he retired in 1949. He was Berkeley Professor of Metaphysics, being an expert on the philosophy of Bergson and of George Berkeley and in particular on the influence of the monk Malebranche. He was member of the Royal Irish Academy. He died in 1977.

Here is a book that made me re-consider the why of fly-fishing. When I first read it I had an overwhelming feeling that the book had been written for me.

Firstly and oddly, Dr Luce's sequence of topics mapped out very closely my own history in fly-fishing: the mountain tarn (evoking my own beginnings on a mountain tarn in Galloway); the Gillie (the influence of  a great gillie in my early quest for knowledge); the Western Lakes (the hours I have spent on Corrib); Dapping and Trolling ( my initial arrogance to these methods) ; Spate rivers and finally the Ethics of fly-fishing (a subject over which I have pondered much in recent years).

Secondly, after reading each chapter, I came away with the impression that all of the questions that I had asked myself countless times, Dr Luce had already asked. Why does the north wind put the fish down? Should one like trolling? Is dapping a "lower form" of fishing? Why and when  does a trout come short? And so on! Finding answers to these gave me the encouragement that I was on the "right road" at a time when fly-fishing was shrouded in mystery and secretiveness.

Lastly and most importantly, as the preface to the book emphasises, the book is about Fishing and Thinking, and the Thinking ranges from angling problems to the wider concerns of Living. "Fish and find out"! is Dr Luce's mantra, not only with regards to angling but as an attitude to life, reflecting his interest in empiricism.

It is the final chapter of the book - the Ethics of Fly-fishing - that brings out Dr Luce's best qualities: an honesty and commitment to ask difficult questions. "We need not be sentimental about animal suffering, but we dare not be callous or cruel....Angling need not be cruel". This is not the place to enter this debate, but Dr Luce will be remembered for his courage not to duck the issues.

Haragei is every activity made perfect through Hara and is the basis of all Japanese arts whether Martial, Tea, Cultural, Flower-arranging or plain Sitting (Seiza). At the root of Hara is not only the physical  - centredness (symbolised by the Tanden area of the belly), correct breath and posture -  but also a particular relationship between the practitioner and the world around. Right practice develops "... a ground of being so rarely experienced by the modern man ... allowing his unique personal form to unfold".

Durckheim's book on the Hara, a concept so often misinterpreted in Western commentary, is one of the most erudite explorations of this topic in print. Starting with a description of the cultural aspects of Hara in Japanese life and language and Buddhist thought, Durckheim goes onto explore the prerequisites to all practice - posture, breath and relaxation. Fellow Aikido students and martial artists will recognise in these pages much that becomes uncovered through the years of diligent training. It describes well in words, what the body comes to know.

The final chapters are taken over to recent exponents of Haragei, the Zen Buddhist Okado Torajiro, the philosopher Sato Tsuji and the healer Kaneko Shoseki.

This book is profound. Although opaque in some sections (the chapter called "the order of life in the symbolism of the body" reminded me of reading Heidegger in my younger days), there is much to ponder over in this work. It leaves you with a sense of a new beginning and possibility.

Thomas Dunne Books  ISBN 0-312-18594-4

Thoughtful, contemplative and always observant, Jerry Dennis does a wonderful job depicting what's important to true flyfishermen, what binds them together.

His essays range from asking "Why Fish?" (can we ever really answer this?) to discussing what makes good fishing buddies to tying your own flies. Fishing travelogue takes you to the Chilean Andes for giant trout and to Iceland for Atlantic Salmon.

But it is in those essays where he combines a wisdom acquired from nature with a sense of the inevitableness of ageing where Dennis excels. The "River Home" and the "Music Out There" explore what it means to be human, finite and transient. "I passed the decade of my twenties in motion, living no place for long...Now beginning my forties I find it strange and heartening to feel at home on this earth at last".

Nostalgia sells, particularly to the kind of person who finds solace on a quiet river and is starting to reflect on his life. Although Dennis plays this card it does not detract from his theme of renewal through returning to a home. In any case what's wrong with a little bit of nostalgia?

 A warm and optimistic read.

W.D. Wetherell.

The Lyons Press 1998, 259pp, ISBN 1-55821-698-7

The classification for this book reads “Fly fishing – Anecdotes”, but this does little justice to this fine book. The third of a trilogy on fly fishing, this book is “impelled by a reformer’s zeal…the feeling that the tremendous surge in popularity that fly fishing has undergone in the last ten years has seen much lost in terms of quietude and contentment, modesty and simplicity, solidarity and fellowship”.

This is the book’s strength – a point of view, strongly held. Behind that disarming folksy style that defines a whole genre of fly fishing travelogue, Mr Wetherell asks an uncomfortable question: “How does a sport for loners and traditionalists and the few suddenly become yet another fad in the massive, exaggerated way of American fads?” With the commercialisation as evidenced by fly fishing schools, personality cults, technology and advertising, the fly fishing media, the de rigueur $1000 fly rod, the demise of stream etiquette, Wetherell urges “what we need constantly - is to remember why fly fishing is worth doing in the first place”. And cutting to the chase, we get to it: “whosoever would be a fly fisher must be a non-conformist, a paraphrase of Emerson”.

Is this a retreat into nostalgia for a time and place that never actually existed other than in Mr Wetherell’s mind? Is it a symptom of some loony backwoodsman survivalist tradition? Is it just the natural outcome of the doubts of a man in the rearguard of his life at the end of a turbulent century? I think not. There is too much in this book that encourages optimism despite the problems that he describes. “I’m going to find what I have always found – the miraculous current that connects simple pleasure to great joy – and try ten times harder to put delight back into the river from whence it all springs”. Rather than dwell on the macro-economic and the global, Wetherell advises local involvement on local issues.

Elsewhere Wetherell provides good travelogue (Yellowstone), chatty fishing logs in the time-honoured tradition of the genre, and miscellania, as in his musings of what occupies a fisherman’s mind in the closed season, but his best is reserved for his essays on his home waters.

The Upper Connecticut, the streams of Vermont and New Hampshire, the small towns where “like the river, the money has always flowed south here and probably always will”, the river logging industry; these seem to be the areas closest to his heart, and it shows. In his writing we get a glimpse of the man. A sense of much time spent alone; fishing as a solitary pursuit (of what and whom?); of talking to oneself and rehearsing conversations; of cleansing and renewal. The solitude of the fisherman and the solitude of the writer merging. Wetherell closes “this is my third book on fly fishing – I don’t think there will be a fourth”. A pity, but I can understand the sentiment.