Hemingway on Fishing, by Nick Lyons

“To me heaven would be a bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in……”

-Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Burguete, Spain, July 1, 1925

This book was an excellent read.  Nick Lyons did an excellent job of putting together the only collection of Hemingway’s writings on fishing.  It was published in 2000 and has a forward by Ernest Hemingway’s oldest son Jack Hemingway. 

Throughout his novels and short stories Hemingway wove in stories about fishing. Hemingway on Fishing is a diverse collection of his writing on the subject.   Many of his first short stories are set in Northern Michigan where he grew up trout fishing.  One if his most famous short stories, “Big Two-hearted River” is centered on fishing.  His chapters on fishing the Irati River in the Sun Also Rises inspired me to go to Spain and fish for trout in the Spanish Pyrenees mountains.  This collection follows the evolution of his passion and the large range of his interests.  It includes articles he wrote for the Toronto Sar on fishing Canada and Europe and articles for Esquire about is passion for big-game fishing.  His last books, The Old Man and the Sea and Island in the Stream where about his passion for the sea and big-game fishing.

I believe anglers and any lover of great prose will enjoy this book.  Hemingway was the kind of author that came by his material honestly and had a great desire to learn to do things and do them correctly, then write about them.  Because of his first had experience in things he wrote about it gives great authenticity to his writing, and he took care with his craft to keep the prose clean and true.