Jim and Charlie Kinneson are getting on in years. But Charlie, now 80, can still lift and carry the Old Town canoe on his shoulders alone. Brother Jim, ten years his junior, admits to himself that he doesn’t think he could do the same as he follows Charlie down to the stream, lugging the packs, paddles and fly rods. Yes, of course, Jim and Charlie catch brook trout on the streams and bogs near their family camp. They always do in Howard Frank Mosher’s stories. In this scene i

I haven’t read all of Howard Frank Mosher’s novels yet, but so far the books I have read all include trout fishing. There isn’t much fishing in Walking to Gatlinburg (Crown Publishing 2010), but it comes at a crucial part of the story in the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains amidst the insanity of the Civil War. I suppose it wasn’t a coincidence that I picked up this particular Mosher tale during a tumultuous year of political polarization and conflicts over our racial histo

In his critically-acclaimed book, Vermont River, author and fly-fisherman W.D. Wetherell never tells us exactly which river he is writing about. He writes: “if I have left it nameless, it is not for protective secrecy, but because to me it stands for the dozen New England rivers I have come to know.” No matter. Wetherell does a fine job describing the personal journey that is a life of fly-fishing. His descriptions express what scores of fishermen wish they could express them