Zane Grey on Fishing

This selection of fishing stories from the 1920s and 30s by Zane Grey will fire the imagination and fishing passion of any angler. Excerpts are from Greys major works on his fishing adventures in California, the Pacific Northwest, Floria, Nova Scotia, New Zealand (my own country), Australia, Mexico, Tahiti, and the Galapagos Islands. No-one, even these days, writes about fishing quite like Zane Grey - his colourful and wonderfully descriptive language brings alive his detailed and authoritative accounts of the exciting battles won and lost with the toughest fish the oceans and rivers of the world provide. It is interesting that many of his best stories relate to battles lost - many fishermen would have given up in disappointment, but not Grey - he continued on searching for the elusive and record fish all his life, and from any perspective was enormously successful. If any improvement could be made to this book, it could be the inclusion of dates of Grey's fishing expeditions, to give the reader a better sense of chronology. Of course what this book does is whet one's appetite for more, and although I have "The Angler's Eldorado", an account of his New Zealand expeditions, plus 'Tales of Fishing in Virgin Seas", about Mexico and the Galapagos Islands, I will not be satisfied until I have read the full acounts of all his fishing exploits. But Terry Mort's collection is a wonderful start.

Zane Grey made his name writing Western novels, but his very best writing revolves around fishing. Grey's first fishing article appeared in 1902, and he published continuously on the topic until his death in 1939. This holds some of his best literary pieces on fishing, and includes a foreword by Loren Grey, and is a lovely, smooth collection thanks to the superb editing of Terry Mort. Highly recommended.