Scott & Nix did an excellent interview with fishing artist, book illustrator and fly fisher Flick Ford this week. Flick fly fishes “99 percent of the time,” with most of his days spent in the Delaware River system, Berkshires and northeast coast.

“On average I would say [I fish] about 90-100 days a year, down a bit from when I used to fish 100-150 days a year. Gas, time, money is in shorter supply these days, but no complaints.”

Ford was most recently illustrator of the popular book FISH: 77 Great Fish of North America.

Swedish fly fishing author (Fly in The Wilderness) and illustrator Carsten Lorange disappeared in the far northern reaches of Finland in 1961.

Steve Casimiro of The Adventure Life retraces some of the intriguing story: “[I]n the summer of 1961, Lorange set off under the midnight sun in northern Finland, a green tent and Hasselblad camera in his pack. His fishing stoke was supplanted by–or at least made room for–a fixation on the search for gold. He filled plastic bags with pyrite–what translates to ‘cat gold’ and we know as fool’s gold–and stashed them in his camp. He drew maps of mythical cities. And then he ran out of food, got sick, wrote a plea for help, and died.”

In Forbes magazine, Monte Burke assembles a panel of expert and extracts seven suggestions for immediately improving your spring fishing, among them: fish dries in slower water in spring, look for seams where clear and dirty water meet during run-off, and fish every fish individually.

“Sometimes you reach a pool and it can seem that every fish in there is rising at the same time. The natural instinct for a fisherman is to try to cast to all the fish at once. In the sport of quail hunting it’s known as ‘covey shooting.’ In a tip called ‘One at a Time,’ [Kirk] Deeter and [Charlie] Myers say you should deny that impulse.’

By the way, many of Burke’s tips are from a brilliant new book from Kirk Deeter and the late Charlie Meyers titled The Little Red Book of Fly Fishing. Just out from Skyhorse Publishing, the book contains 250 of the most helpful tips I’ve seen collected in one place. And this isn’t a book just for rookies. In the first dozen pages or so I found a few things that I had discounted or entirely forgotten as proven methods for improving my fishing. So while the book is jammed with thoughtful advice for novices, most experts will find the mindfulness and clear thinking refreshing. Do yourself a favor and buy a copy on Amazon for less than 12 bucks.

Image via Wikipedia

It looked like a fine stream. I put my hand in the water; it was cold and felt good. – Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

In Paste Magazine, Josh Jackson offers an appreciation for Richard Brautigan’s most famous book, citing Sixties Envy, assaults on convention, and the Man-Bad/Nature-Good vision: “When Brautigan is in the zone, when he surges up from the deep and strikes at the fly of your imagination like those big rainbow trout he loved, his poetry and talent are undeniable. He writes that when old trout die, ‘their white beards flow to the sea.’”

Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America, the Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster: And in Watermelon Sugar on Amazon.

In an interview with Reuters, writer, angler, and scientist Anders Halverson talks about his new book An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World, continuing to find time to fish, and the unintended consequences of non-native species introduction:

“I’m sure there are many effects that we have no idea about right now … there are effects even on the finches and bats nearby because the rainbow vacuum up all the larvae. Then there’s no hatch of flies for the bats or the finches. So it ripples out to the terrestrial system as well.”

Described as “sharp-edged” and “fetishistically detailed,” the biking world’s most “acerbic” blogger–the Bike Snob–is finally revealed as 36-year-old New Yorker Eben Weiss–a former bike messenger and veteran of the publishing industry. His new book, Bike Snob: Systematically and Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling, will be published by Chronicle Books in May.

“Over his nearly three years of obsessing over, satirizing and deftly puncturing the sport of cycling, the anonymous blogger Bike Snob has made his worldview clear. He loves to ride his bike. He wants you to ride, too. Just maybe not on those florescent wheel rims. Or pedal against traffic. Or with your helmet on the handlebars. And even if it’s not fashionable, he’d like you to consider using brakes,” writes Jason Gay of The Wall Street Journal.

Royal Robbins, the 75-year-old rock-climbing pioneer from Modesto, California and founder of the outdoor apparel company of the same name, recently released the first in a series of autobiographies entitled To Be Brave, My Life: Volume One (Pink Moment Press; $19.95).

Sam Whiting of The San Francisco Chronicle interviews Royal about supporting his climbing habit, a biographical movie? and the craft of writing: “Writing is as hard as climbing. I like things that are hard.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, American essayist, and longtime New Yorker contributer John McPhee delves into the outdoors–among other subjects–with a welcome splash of personal personal history in his new book of collected essays: Silk Parachute (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 228 pp., $25). For readers familiar with McPhee’s exhaustive work on subjects ranging from oranges to shad to geology, this foray into private observations will register as a nice change of pace.

“In a recent, beautiful piece for the New Yorker, he combined an essay on pickerel with memories of his father’s death and a lasting image of his father’s bamboo fishing rod. The piece took many readers by surprise — not the style, which was the same seamless combination of carefully chosen details and information, but the presence of the author, blinking in full glare,” writes Susan Salter Reynolds of The Los Angeles Times.

“It’s a fit metaphor for the author’s evocation of family, friends and places. They waft in from the blue to illumine these essays. As a result, Silk Parachute reveals a good bit more of the writer and his personal engagement with his always-fascinating subjects,” writes Tim McNulty of  The Seattle Times.

“The title essay is a small piece of memoir in which McPhee fondly remembers growing up with his mother. We have McPhee’s mother to thank for encouraging his love of observation, indulging his childhood wish to stand at La Guardia Field in freezing weather and watch the planes,” writes Danny Heitman of The Christian Science Monitor.

At 72, writer Jim Harrison doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon. The Farmer’s Daughter (308 pp. Grove Press. $24)–a collection of three novellas (The Farmer’s Daughter, Brown Dog Redux, and The Games of Night) by the acclaimed essayist, novelist, and poet–is identified as a compelling read.

Ray Robertson of The Globe and Mail notes that the collection is “full of all of the things that his deservedly devoted readership has come to expect of his work over four-plus decades: stylistic distinctiveness, a nose for what’s most important and a genuine poet’s touch.”

Liesl Schillinger of The New York Times is interested in the hubris and unique appeal of Harrison’s sprawling cast of unlikely male leads: “Whether a whippersnapper of 12 or a ‘geezer rancher’ in his 70s, the Harrison hero unfailingly sparks the ardor of any girl or woman he encounters, even when he’s sick, drunk and drugged, having his teeth pulled, passing kidney stones or dying.”