McCLANE'S ANGLING WORLD: Great Fishing Adventures With Al McClane All Across America

by A.J. McClane ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 9, 1986

Piscatorial manna from one of sport fishing's contemporary deities, but its appeal is limited by its frequently shop-talky approach to the art of the angle. Long-time fishing editor of Field & Stream and prolific compiler of fishing guides, McClane has caught trophy-sized gamefish in those waters that bring faraway looks to anglers' eyes--The Beaverkill and Neversink, the Miramachi and Allagash, and some of the finest salmon rivers in Norway, Iceland and Scotland. This latest collection of 26 fishing adventures (one is in Norway so the subtitle is misleading) ranges over some of these legendary waters and back over McClane's angling past on humbler streams like the Delaware. Workaday gamefish species like the smallmouth bass and chain pickerel get their fond due fin to fin with Atlantic salmon, barracuda and, of course, trout. McClane clearly prefers fly-fishing and always has seemed more partial to its arcane delicacies than to more proletarian techniques. The result skews his prose toward talk of ""6-X tippets,"" ""delicate presentations,"" dragged wet flies and the like, but it sparkles on occasion like sunlight off a riffle and he does hatch a decent mot now and again: "". . .barracuda, like good politicians, know when to open their mouths."" He's not even above telling a fish story (unintentionally), like the one about his 45 lb. 6 oz. Atlantic salmon from Norway's Laerdal River. McClane tells first of a rousing battle that he won by racing down the river bank on foot to keep pace with the giant fish. But a few pages later, in another section, he tells of a 45 lb. 6 oz. salmon in Norway which ""ran stubbornly downriver for more than an hour."" He was fortunate, he says, to be fishing from a boat. How big, did you say? In sum, sure bait for McClane fans, less appeal for the cane-pole crowd.

Pub Date: July 9, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION