Books for the Angler in Your Life

Before airplanes, and with few roads, getting to Maine and the isolated fishing spots that made the state a world famous fisherman's paradise was no small task. Huge resorts and hotels peppered the fishing regions, accommodating hundreds, perhaps thousands of sportsmen at any one time. From these lodgings, sports with their guides branched out, taking expeditions and canoe journeys that lasted for days, even weeks, into Maine's wilderness. Only recently have vacationers been transient and as such, have changed the concepts of fishing in wilderness areas forever. Today, the hotels are mostly gone, and people now fish for a few hours to a day or more and then move on. Glimpses of Maine's Angling Past returns to the days when vacationers settled into their camps for whole summers, before the endless acres of timber were dissected by logging roads, and secret, little-known lakes and ponds took days or weeks to reach. This
long-anticipated volume includes countless images from the entire state, broken down into eight distinct areas: the Sebago Lakes, the Belgrade Lakes, the Rangeley Lakes, Down East, the Penobscot River Valley, the Kennebec River Valley, the Moosehead Lake Region, and northern Maine and "the County." Included are rare photographs from lodges no longer in existence and antique sports magazines such as In the Maine Woods and Field and Stream. All of this is complemented by the author's painstaking research and his intimate memories of Maine's sporting history.

J.H. Hall has been fishing most of his life and fly-fishing Maine rivers and ponds for over thirty years.

In his book, he has brought together some of his favorite fly-fishing experiences that go beyond morning excursions on a river's banks. He uses his fishing trips as the platform to introduce the reader to the people and the rivers that color his life and Maine, bringing all of us engaging life lessons and new experiences.

Every spring, the Nemasket River welcomes thousands of migratory river herring that thrash and leap as they fight their way upstream from Mount Hope Bay. Of all non-domesticated animals, the river herring--or alewife--has arguably had the greatest impact on the towns along the river in southeastern Massachusetts. The area was called Nemasket," or "place of fish," by Native Americans, and its earliest English colonists were dependent on river herring for their very survival. They provided a livelihood for generations of families in Middleborough and Lakeville, shaping their culture and the course of the region's development. Today, herring fishing is banned, and the community is working toward protecting and preserving the river so the herring have a place to return each year. Join historian Michael J. Maddigan as he explores the big story of the small fish that shaped life along the Nemasket River."

Netting shrimp in the icy waters off Cape Ann, hauling up lobster two hundred miles offshore, in the 1970s Gloucester's eastern-rig side trawlers were at the top of a dying and dangerous industry.

In the tough competition for the daily catch, Gloucester's dragger fleets were the best. They went out farther, stayed out longer, and risked all as the fishing grounds grew lean. Author Peter Prybot captures the glory days of the draggers through recollections and his own firsthand observations as a lifelong Gloucester fisherman. Terrible weather, good fishing, bad fishing, great days and greater danger-- these are true stories from the decks of the celebrated trawler fleet that is no more.