You will enjoy this book whether you like fishing or not, because the stories in it are so well written they belong more in the genre of true essays than simple angling tales. In fact, given the quality of the writing, the depth of interesting content and the frequent presence of humour, this book takes on something that could well have been written by the likes of Herman Charles Bosman, J D Salinger, Guy de Maupassant or John Updike.

The Fishing and Hunting Journal first appeared in 1998 under the editorship of one of South Africa’s finest outdoor writers, Bruce Truter. I was always a great fan of the Journal, so the arrival of this book was a precious gift that brought back stories I recalled fondly and could delight in again – with as much enjoyment I must add, as when I read them the first time.

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Edward Truter

I had my favourite contributors to the Journal, of course, and they are all here; people like Colin Levy whose chapter, Marzipan Mail Boat, matches Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea for its description of the tension in a titanic battle between man and fish. And Andy Krajewski, who out on patrol during the bush war in Rhodesia and desperately hungry, describes how he caught his first tigerfish by fashioning a fly  from two guinea fowl feathers tied to a bare hook with a piece of claymore wire stripped of its brown plastic coating and fished on a hand line. Let me quote:

After several tries I managed to splatter the fly onto the water some twenty or so feet away. It lay like a wounded bird, almost unmoving in the slow eddy, until I gave it a pull. The dry, dusty feathers held the hook suspended and a long string of silver bubbles gurgled in its wake…The water split open as the fly was snatched by clacking teeth and in a single fast run all the line was whipped away… Sizzling over a bed of mopane heartwood coals the fish looked and smelled delicious. We watched it, intently, as the night sky above our sheltering fig tree began to glitter with brilliant stars. Even the mosquitoes didn’t seem too bad.

But every chapter has in it somewhere a gem; either a quotable quote, or a tickling seam of humour, or a deeply profound truth, maybe a lovely piece of prose, or even, at times, some touching pathos. Many of the stories are based in South Africa, but the reach of the book is worldwide. Olaf Weyl, for example, writes on catching mpasa, sometimes known as Lake Malawi salmon and there’s an intriguing piece from Martin Rudman on fishing the remote Forty Mile Beach in Western Australia. Edward Truter writes about a goose chase through Burkino Faso trying to catch a colossal fish known as the capitaine that ends many months later in the Ivory Coast just weeks after that country’s coup d'état, where he eventually does land his giant.

Martin Rudman

And you can name just about any species of fish that interests you and you will likely find a piece on it in the book, if not a whole chapter. But these essays are more than just about fishing. That subject is covered well enough, but through the fishing, flow the stories of life and love, of landscapes, of the wilds, of the sea, of snakes, sharks, otters and birds and of human passion, all beautifully told.

But let me end with two quotes from the book that underscore my praise for the prose and the very eclectic span and scope of the subjects covered. Edward Truter is fishing the Amazon for peacock bass and piranhas among other fish when he writes of the striking scenes that appear around every corner:

Sometimes it was bright macaws – beautiful birds of yellow, or blue, or scarlet – passing over us in regal, rhythmic flight. Or butterflies – swarming around us in the boat in flitting citron and orange clouds; or the enormous solitary variety that would catch one’s eye at a distance, their bright wings flashing like electric blue strobe lights in the greenery.

And from David Butler, fishing a shoreline for grunter:

Steve did not see the snake until he was almost on it. It lay coiled on the soft white sand of the narrow path, patterned like a Persian carpet. He lowered the tip of his rod and made to prod at it and it drew back its spade head and hissed, the feminine pink of its mouth bright in the light of the track.

This book is a blessing, a delicious read, never mind whether you fish or not and it is quite lavishly illustrated with the art works of Craig Bertram Smith, to my view one of the leading fishing and wildlife artists of our time.

Craig Bertram Smith at work

Tom Sutcliffe