Anyone looking for something special in fishing books
as a Christmas present is spoilt for choice this year. The
autumn has delivered three excellent books that are more
than mere decoration for the coffee table.
A couple of years ago I bid successfully at a charity for
an artwork commission from David Miller, who specialises
in painting fish, often drawn from studies and photographs
he has taken while diving in rivers.
He gave me regular updates on his book, Beneath The Surface*,
as we chatted on the progress of the painting. Like many
artists, Miller likes to get the details right and that’s
clear enough in this stunning collection of paintings, sketches
and photographs of fish, faithfully depicted in their habitat.
Miller writes that every dive he makes is like a journey
back in to his childhood imagination that has never deserted
him when fishing. I think many of us could relate to that.
How often, when casting a line, do you picture the underwater
scene? Diving with fish, he says “the reality is much
as I expected only infinitely better.”
The real difference in swimming among fish, he says, is
experiencing the play of light in the water and it is this
that makes his paintings so outstanding. The one I have
on my wall at home has beams of light permeating a chalk
stream, illuminating a trout holding station by the side
of a clump of rununculous.
The book is arranged in three sections covering coarse,
game and sea fish. Much as I love all of his work, it is
the paintings of pike that stand out for me and I am not
surprised to read him confessing that “left to indulge
myself I could probably paint pike for ever.”
The pike held a similar fascination for Fred Buller, who
some years ago wrote what must be the definitive work on
big pike. Now he has done the same for the Atlantic Salmon.
His new book, The Domesday Book of Giant Salmon**, was
forty years in the making as the author painstakingly documented
every record he could find of big Atlantic salmon. Where
no pictures existed, Buller went out of his way to find
and photograph casts of big fish.
A few weeks ago, around the publication date of the book,
there were reports of a giant fish on the River Ness in
Scotland. The first accounts suggested something of record
breaking size although these were later toned down. The
fish could not be weighed before it was released but subsequent
reports and photographs publish in Trout and Salmon Magazine
suggest it could have been something between 40 and 50lb.
A remarkable fish, for sure, but it wouldn’t have
made the list in this book which includes stories of fish
around the 100 lb mark although no fish approaching this
size has been verified on rod and line.
Buller has included net caught salmon but his “number
one list” comprises fly caught fish. “I believe
that to catch a salmon weighing over 50 lb on fly is the
highest distinction that a salmon fisherman can hope to
achieve in his or her lifetime,” he writes.
At the top of his fly-caught list is a fish, reputed to
have weighed 72 lb, caught on the river Tay in Scotland
during the early 1800s by someone known only as “a
member of the Athole family,” almost certainly an
ancestor of the existing Duke of Atholl. The fish was said
to have been hooked in the Fernyhaugh pool about three miles
above Dunkeld. Buller believes that someone somewhere may
have a detailed account that could lend provenance to the
claim.
My third choice for your library is an excellent collection
of salmon river photographs with accompanying descriptions
in A Celebration of Salmon Rivers***, produced to raise
money for the North Atlantic Salmon Fund. I met the photographer,
Randy Ashton, while he was on assignment in Iceland last
year, so knew to expect some great images after viewing
his work at the time.
What an assignment, to spend the summers of 2005 and 2006
travelling across the whole range of the Atlantic salmon,
helped and accommodated along the way by friends and supporters
of the fund, founded in 1989 by Icelandic businessman and
fisherman, Orri Vigfusson.
What struck me most about the book was the variety of Atlantic
Salmon rivers, from relatively modest streams such as the
Dart and the Exe to the broad waters of the Yokanga and
Ponoi on the Kola Peninsula.
These are three exceptional books and I’m loath to
recommend any over the rest. If I had to pick one it would
be the Buller book, a must for any salmon fisher. But you
could say the same for the collection of salmon rivers and
in buying that you would know that the profits would be
helping salmon conservation.
David Miller’s book is special for me since it compliments
the painting I have on my wall. There’s only one way
to overcome the problem and that would be to ask Father
Christmas for all three of them. It’s greedy I know,
but you need something to feed the anticipation for the
season ahead.
*Beneath The Surface, by David Miller is published
by the Langford Press, price £38.
**The Domesday Book of Giant Salmon, A Record of the
Largest Atlantic Salmon Ever Caught, by Fred Buller, is
published by Constable, price £50.
***A celebration of Salmon Rivers, is published by
Merlin Unwin Books, price £35.
