Fishing
Cumberland Valley, Pennsylvania, where Whistlestop Bookshop is situated, is generously watered and drained by creeks renowned for their fishing. Conodoguinet Creek, which flows about 100 miles to the Susquehanna River and is nearest to Carlisle, is actually better known for the fishing in its two tributaries, Big Spring Creek out of the Newville area (only 5 miles) and Letort Spring Run, which arises south of Carlisle and flows north 9 miles to the Conodoguinet. The Yellow Breeches Creek, which flows along South Mountain for 56 miles to the Susquehanna, is internationally famous for its trout fishing.
Naturally, a trout-fishing and especially a fly-fishing culture has developed, sometimes thought to be mostly local, sometimes acknowledged to be of world interest — the world that loves the quiet and focus and solitary rewards of fly-fishing. Rarely, the local zen masters of fishing wrote books. Charlie Fox was once a customer of Whistlestop, and Joe Humphreys is still in print and in fact the subject of a documentary we carry. Fishing does inspire fine writing, after all — the names of Izaak Walton, Norman MacLean, Thomas McGuane, Patrick McManus, John Gierach suggest the range of approaches in writing about “standing in a river waving a stick,” to use Gierach’s famous descripton.
Dedicated to the memory of a great fisherman and an even better brother, Gordon Wood (1956-2020).
A Fisherman's Winter
A Fisherman's Winter
“One of the 20th century’s most talented angling writers.”—New York Times
"Haig-Brown is a talented flyfisherman who is also gifted with an uncommon sense and sensibility."—The New Yorker
Originally published in 1954, Fisherman’s Winter is fly fisherman Roderick Haig-Brown’s final installment in his well-known “seasons” cycle (Fisherman’s Spring, Fisherman’s Summer, Fisherman’s Fall).
Here he writes not about his home waters, but about the waters in Chile and Argentina he visited when his Canadian home was too cold to fish.
He writes about legendary waters that most will never fish—Trancura, Liucura, Fui, Enco, and San Pedro, Malleo. Chimehuin, and more. But the spirit of angling, the joy of casting a fly rod, and the level of writing is one that every fly fisherman will cherish.
As Nick Lyons writes in his introduction to this edition, “Like many flyfishers after him, and a few before, he found in his travels new challenges and new rewards. He found summer worlds and some remarkable fishing far from his Canadian winter—and new wildlife, a different landscape, and rivers beyond his expectations.”