Book - The Pursuit of Wild Trout by Mike Weaver

I read this book over a weekend when, among other happening, the dollar sank like a stone and Australia thrashed England at rugby football. Perhaps those happenings contributed in some way to my initial feeling of disappointment with Mike Weaver s first book. I think I expected more from a man who has contributed to Trout and Salmon magazine since the early seventies.

It is a beautifully produced book (designed by Colin Lewis, who is one of the best) with lovely clear type and far-above-average photographs and it is largely about places I have fished or very much still want to. So I read it again.

Much better. It might have been my more leisurely approach to it, or it could have been that England were not playing, but this time it seemed more coherent and the flow seemed to be more logical.

The subjects are what you would expect from a book about wild trout in Britain  well, largely in Britain because there are side excursions to USA and Eire  catch-and-release, barbless hooks, delayed harvest, for and against wading, new fly patterns versus traditional, to stock or not and so on. Many rather old hat these days (the book was first published in 1991) but Mike Weaver's views are well developed. They agree with mine on most issues, too.

So the least you can say about this book is that it achieves what it set out to do in the title, which seems rather niggly because it is a much better book than that. It is a welcome bonus that the author writes so well and is therefore able to pass on so much knowledge. You don' t have to be an anglophile to want to add it to your shelf.

Published by Merlin Unwin Books, London. 192pp hardback. ISBN 1 873674 00 7.