From Booklist
The theme in Babb's third book is "having fun while attempting to catch fish," preferably in congenial company. The 31 essays in the book explore saltwater and freshwater fly-fishing. Babb, editor of Gray's Sporting Journal, and his friends bring an Algonquin Round Table-like camaraderie to their fishing trips, and his essays capture the free-flowing conversation, whether about politics and the environmental impacts of fishing or about fly tying and fly design. Along the way, he also takes time to share some delectable recipes (including his grandmother's fried chicken). An Appalachian native, he also spices the text with evocative vignettes of Appalachian life. Fish-lit fans will especially enjoy comparing Babb's descriptions of angling trips with John Gierach to Gierach's versions of the same events in his Still Life with Brook Trout [BKL Mr 1 05]. Snappy, good-humored prose. John Rowen
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Review
"Fishermen often take themselves too seriously and the failing is even more common - not to mention annoying - among writers, but Jim Babb has somehow escaped all that. He has learned that if you tell the absolute truth about fishing, you'll become known as a humorist."--John Gierach - Fly Rod & Reel

"Snappy, good-humored prose."--Booklist


Book Description
The inimitable author of the hugely popular Crosscurrents and River Music, whom Kirkus called "one of the finest nature writers in print," comes back with a third hilarious and observant opus on the nature of knavery in the sport of fly fishing.


From the Back Cover
Critics have hailed James R. Babb as one of the best nature writers in print, and in Fly-Fishin' Fool, the third and arguably best of his highly successful books about his adventures and misadventures, fly fishing is yet again a subject for his hilarious musings, and also a departure. To better skewer the objects of his well-deserved scorn, Babb has donned the fool's cap "to acquire the freedom enjoyed by fools and jesters in medieval times, snickering behind a mask of assumed innocence so that he can speak his mind on matters of import unfettered by the social graces."
In "All in the Family" he considers the ultimate low-rent method of angling for eels, and the only thing in angling history to which his family name has ever managed to adhere, despite his best efforts. In "Sailfishing with Senor Ed," Costa Rican sailfish meets madman machismo, as told by a trout fisherman who'd rather be home. Babb fishes a small creek in a Montana grizzly bear sanctuary with a couple of old East Tennessee high school buddies and the protection of nothing but a collection of old Southern hymns in "The Wings of a Dove." And in "Crusher Hole," he examines a tough trout pool in the Smoky Mountains, where a fool and his dignity are soon parted.
Part Samuel Clemens, part Ambrose Bierce, part Norman Maclean, Jim Babb's piquant observations about the human condition, adroit similes, and consummate wordplay come together in the unique mastery of language and storytelling that avid Jim Babb readers have come to savor. Lovers of fine nature writing and students of American letters will surely savor Fly-Fishin' Fool.



About the Author
James R. Babb is the editor of Gray's Sporting Journal and author of River Music and Crosscurrents, which Library Journal hailed as "the best fly-fishing book" of 2001. He was born and grew up in East Tennessee, and has worked as a commercial lobster fisherman, a truck driver, a boatyard worker, a reporter, and a feature writer. He lives in Searsport, Maine.

FROM THE PUBLISHER