The Catch of a Lifetime: Moments of Flyfishing Glory

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

Every fly fisher has one: that moment—that ineffable, transcendent moment—they can point to and say, That’s it. That was when time seemed to stop and I felt fully alive. That’s why I fish.

Collected and framed by the award-winning writer Peter Kaminsky, The Catch of a Lifetime presents the moving first-person stories of more than seventy anglers recounting their catch of a lifetime. With its tales of brown trout in Montana and bluefish at Montauk Point, smallmouth in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters and unforgettable adventures with giant taimen on the steppes of central Asia, bonefish in New Caledonia, white marlin in the Baja, and golden dorado in the tribal lands along the Amazon’s headwaters, this gorgeously illustrated anthology is a transporting testament to the call that all anglers heed—to get out there and be one with the water. It distills perfectly the magic of the sport; you can’t read it and not want to go fishing.

The contributor list is a diverse who’s who of writers, artists, sportspeople, and others who’ve made flyfishing a singular passion, including Carl Hiaasen, Joan Wulff, Tom Colicchio, Charles Gaines, Rachel Maddow, Mark Kurlansky, Brittany Howard, John McPhee, Verlyn Klinkenborg, and Jared Zissu. Their encounters, their memories, the words they use to describe, say, a forty-pound salmon leaping into the air or the sight of a great blue heron soaring down the creek to steal a catch make this the book of a lifetime for any fly fisher.