Sport Fishing

In these stories, popular Chicago Tribune outdoor columnist Bill Stokes gives himself over to his true passion, trout fishing. It is an activity, possibly a madness, that moves him, time and again, to stand knee-deep in cold and murky waters, offer himself up to clouds of hungry mosquitoes, and attempt to keep from snagging his line in overhanging limbs while trying to outwit a wily rainbow or brook trout. And then remembering where the car is parked.

An award-winning historian tells the story of hunting in America, showing how this sport has shaped our national identity. From Daniel Boone to Teddy Roosevelt, hunting is one of America's most sacred - but also most fraught - traditions. It was promoted in the 19th century as a way to reconnect "soft" urban Americans with nature and to the legacy of the country's pathfinding heroes. Fair chase, a hunting code of ethics emphasizing fairness, rugged independence, and restraint towards wildlife, emerged as a worldview and gave birth to the conservation movement.

Steelhead fishing is a pursuit that captivates anglers worldwide. Known for their acrobatic fights and challenging nature, steelhead trout are a prized catch in many freshwater rivers. This guide serves as a blueprint for crafting a 20-page book on steelhead fishing, offering insights on techniques, gear, locations, and conservation.

If you want to become the best you can be, find someone who's already become the best at what you want to do and follow his or her instructions. This is what I've done in my new book, Bass Pros' Season by Season Tactics. In this book, I've chosen some of the best bass fishermen to give you advice on how to find and catch bass during each period of a bass fish's life.

Brent Alan Henderson understands what makes men tick, how to capture and hold their attention, and how to move them to action. Bunk next to Brent as he’s stranded in the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness with hungry brown bears circling his tent. Ride along as storms and riptides thrash his rubber Zodiac, trying to dump you both into the icy depths of Alaska’s Cook Inlet. Sit at his campfire on the remote African plains, listening to roaring lions on the hunt.

You notice two things when you fish a river solo in a two-man canoe. The first is the lack of conversation. The second is the canoe's insistence on running the river backwards. When you sit on the rear slat, as you do when alone, the stern will swing around to the front, so that you progress downstream bass-ackward. You can fight the stern's inexorable desire to lead by paddling hard left and then hard right. What you can't do is fight the canoe and fish at the same time.

Though he made his name and fortune as an author of Western novels, Zane Grey's best writing has to do with fishing. There, he was free from the conventions of the Western genre and the market's expectations, and was able to blend his talent for narrative with his keen eye for detail and sense of humor (much of it self-deprecating) into his books and articles.

Zane Grey, America's master storyteller of the old West, was a passionate angler. He fished as many as three hundred days of the year. This collection, first published in 1925, describes his fishing adventures in exotic locales throughout the Pacific region. These stories capture the drama and excitement that Grey experienced in being the first person to fish many waters - from the Galapagos Islands to Cabo San Lucas - and in being the first to catch and document many new species of fish. No lover of Zane Grey storytelling will want to miss these real-life adventures.

Marcelo Gleiser has had a passion for science and fishing since he was a boy growing up on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. As a world-famous theoretical physicist with hundreds of scientific articles and several books of popular science to his credit, he felt it was time to once again connect with nature in less theoretical ways. After seeing a fly-fishing class on the Dartmouth College green, he decided to learn to fly-fish, a hobby, he says, that teaches humility.

The phrase "the buck stops here" was coined by President Harry Truman, and the "buck" in question refers to a marker passed from one person to the next in a poker game, indicating who would deal. But if you're as avid a hunter as author Steve Chapman, this may surprise you, because when you hear "buck", you're not thinking about poker. Instead, you're picturing white-tailed deer. You'll feel right at home listening to The Buck Stops Here, a timeless collection of tips, quips, and reflections about hunting, fishing, and the great outdoors.

From the decks of offshore scallop boats in the North Atlantic to the backwoods of the Maritime Provinces, Feather White chronicles a young man’s emergence from an alcoholic family and his search for his missing pieces. His quest leads to building a handmade log cabin in Nova Scotia in 1974 during what was still the height of the back to nature movement of the '60s. On his way to pick apples to finance a cabin winter during fall of 1977, the author instead finds himself aboard a fishing vessel in one of the East Coast’s most beautiful and quirky ports: Provincetown, MA.

On one elk hunt, I'd heard this bull bugle all morning. My guide had called him within 30 yards, and he was standing just inside black timber. I saw the smoke from his nose wafting out into the icy air less than 30-yards away. All the bull had to do was step out, and I could take the shot with my bow. But then, through no fault of my guide or me, the bull vanished. The only conclusion I could come up with to understand why the bull I wanted to take with my bow hadn't stepped out and given me a shot.

Understanding behavioral patterns is crucial for avid hunters seeking to improve their success rates while hunting whitetail dee. This book gets into these patterns along with various factors such as season, weather, habitat conditions, and social dynamics within deer populations.

William Wasserman, a retired Pennsylvania game warden who has trapped everything from weasels to black bears, writes about his favorite sets and methods in a series of twenty-five chapters encompassing a lifetime on the trapline.

Literate, honest, and deeply observant, Faithful Travelers is a beautiful meditation on the bond between parent and child and the nature of love and loss. Dodson proves that sometimes life isn't what happens while you're waiting to go fishing; sometimes it happens while you're there.

Warren Angus Ferris (1810-1873) was a trapper, cartographer and diarist in the Rocky Mountains from 1830 to 1835. In 1829, he joined the American Fur Company to explore the Rocky Mountains. He kept a journal of his travels which were published as the book Life in the Rocky Mountains (1940), which gives an account of the Platte River Valley, Cache Valley, the area around Salt Lake City, and Snake River Country. Ferris found Native American guides and made a detour into what is today Yellowstone National Park.

American Fisherman traces the impact fishing has had in shaping America's history, and reveals the influential role it has played in defining our lives. Willie Robertson persuasively argues that America became what it is today in no small part because of the anglers that call it home. From harvesting New England cod to fly fishing for Yellowstone trout to raising Pacific Northwest salmon, the fishing industry has long played an essential role in the establishment of many of the nation's earliest ports.

Listen to find out how to make a fun fishing game with your own colorful crafty fish. Not fishing season? No problem!

New beginning or new heartache? Nurse Lana Smith gives herself a gift for Christmas, a fresh start in a small town. After escaping a dead-end relationship with a celebrity, she avoids her patient's grandson, a pro football player. When Arturo gradually thaws her frozen heart, can her Christmas wish for family and affection come true? Football is Arturo De La Vega's life, but he returns to his hometown to help his ailing grandfather. Lana challenges Arturo to reach for stars of faith and love. Is Arturo's quest for glory worth crushing Lana's dreams and sacrificing his heart's true desire?

Peregrine Spring, Nancy Cowan’s memoir of her 30 years living intimately with raptors, gives us a new perspective on the relationship between humans and the natural world. Cowan shares her experiences running a world-famous falconry school, and the lessons she’s learned from her birds. From retrieving her falcon from the local police "lock up", to a heartbreaking race to save her young peregrine from attack by a wild hawk, Cowan’s life is a constant, ever-changing adventure.