The Catch of a Lifetime: Moments of Fly Fishing Glory

A gorgeously illustrated collection of first-person stories on the sublime joy of flyfishing

For every flyfisher, there is a moment, etched into deepest memory, when the stars aligned around an encounter with a great fish. Though years or decades may pass, anglers can still recall those fleeting minutes: the direction of the wind, the length of the cast, the course of the fly, the instant of the take, the leaps and surges of the fish. In The Catch of a Lifetime, prize-winning author Peter Kaminsky has collected thrilling, beautiful, and evocative stories on the joys of flyfishing and the one flyfishing memory that stands out above all others. In Kaminsky’s case, it wasn’t the 200-pound tuna he fought—and lost—against the shore in Montauk. It was a plump brown trout, dappled with fire-engine-red spots in a yellow halo, barely fourteen inches and caught early  one summer morning as mist rose off a Catskills creek.

The contributors are artists, authors, guides, and poets who have a singular passion for flyfishing, including Carl Hiaasen, Joan Wulff, Nick Lyons, Rachel Finn, Tom Colicchio, Rachel Maddow, Mark Kurlansky, Brittany Howard, Hilary Hutcheson, and John McPhee.