Wonderfully written and very thoughtfully done story of one man's history fly fishing the famous Au Sable River in Michigan. The author is the owner the Gates Au Sable Lodge, a fly fishing lodge on the river.
If, like me, you love fly fishing, then this will be a great book for you. Even if you don't fish, but enjoy nature, good camaraderie, and good stories, you will like this.
Greenberg manages to fill the book with some deep insights, touching memories, and the joy of watching his sons growing up. And he catches some really nice fish!
Enjoyable. Great reading for a cold winter night in front of a warm fire in the hearth.

3.5 rating

Josh Greenberg, the proprietor of Gates Au Sable Lodge in Michigan, loves fly fishing. The book is his fishing journal over the course of a year that opens with the loss of a close friend, a friend the author describes as “somewhat indistinguishable from the river.” “Over the course of a year, the journal transcends fishing notes to include some beautifully lyrical nature writing, entertaining stories of the bid one that got away, cheerful introspection about a love that’s hard to explain, and yes, a tip or two.”

Greenberg writes of fishing trips as a child and, in turn, delights in introducing his two sons to fishing. “One reason, perhaps the best reason, to start a kid in fishing is that fishing will remain a portal to their youth. I’m told that nostalgia is a form of self-harm, but to me nostalgia functions much the same as an oral tradition, a way to feel, as an adult, the joy one felt as a child.”

There is a lot of technical jargon that, if you’re not a fly fisher, you likely won’t understand. Here’s one of the more comprehensible (to a non-fisher): “The trick with the lake was the following: a small caddis pupa, without bead, fished thirty inches below a dry fly on 6x fluorocarbon, on a long cast.” While I understand the gist of it, the nuance escapes me. I did learn, however, what a “riser” is — not from the book, but from YouTube, to better understand what Greenberg was talking about. And, I never knew that different flies actually had names. Like I said, I am not a fisher. The fact that a fly fisher actually has a vocabulary to match images in their heads of the plethora of flies amazes me. I learned what a “hex” is -- again, from the internet after it had been referenced multiple times in the book. Basically, as far as I can tell, the hunting season for trout because they just love these Hexagenia Limbata bugs.

While I can appreciate fishing (I loved the movie A River Runs Through It), I found that the detail in this book lost me. I’m just not that interested in fishing. I can appreciate the mindfulness that fly fishing demands, as the author states: “When a difficult day of fishing requires my best state of being in order to catch a trout, then fishing becomes more than fishing.” I can appreciate the thrill of “the biggest trout I’ve ever seen in the Au Sable.”

I would rate the book 3 stars – primarily because I think it has a pretty niche market and that likely wouldn’t include all those who enjoy fly fishing. There’s nothing inherently bad with the book, it’s just not that great or memorable. That said, I’m sure there are devoted fly fishers, perhaps those who have visited the Gates Au Sable Lodge or who know Greenberg or fished Michigan waters, who will thoroughly enjoy the book.