Backwoods Brook Trout Short Stories
Robert Frost chose the road less travelled. I chose to not get on the road at all. It led me to backwoods brook trout.
A love of wild brook trout in wild places lays the background for the essays in this book. The majority of the stories are from the author’s experiences fishing the backwoods ponds and beaver ponds of New Hampshire and Maine.The seeds for my desires were planted in youth, in the dairy country of northeastern Pennsylvania, near the headwaters of the Lackawaxen River. If one is to have a passion, why not for wild brook trout? Of course, there are diversions—including encounters with bears, moose and other wildlife—as well as reflections on loons and life and climate changes following the last glacier retreat.
Click here to go to Amazon.com to buy this book on-line"Fly fishing is nothing without single-mindedness, passion, even obsession. Frederick Prince, a professor of Anatomy and Physiology, a scholar, and self confessed “avid” angler, tells the delightful story of his obsession with brook trout in a series of sprightly chapters that stretch from his youth in Pennsylvania to his adulthood in New Hampshire. Pursuing brilliantly colored native brookies, especially in small ponds and lakes, is a thread that binds his life together. Written in an accessible, plain personal style, Backwoods Brook Trout goes against the current trend of gonzo accounts of ripping lips and slaying hogs in favor of a quiet, considered appreciation of the sport scaled to recognizable human dimensions. As with so many angling memoirs, Backwoods Brook Trout is a record of what Prince “learned when alone on the water,” which is to say, it is about so much more than catching fish. He forays into geology, ecology, philosophy, and culture, all part of discovering the great “rhythm of the world.” This is an honest portrayal of what small trout fly fishing is all about."
—Robert DeMott, Editor of “Astream: American Writers on Fly Fishing”
$14.00 / paperback /129 pages / 6 in. (w) by 9 in. (h)
Beech River Books / 2018 / ISBN 978-1-930149-39-7.
Frederick Prince is an avid outdoorsman. His articles on fishing have appeared in "Gray’s Sporting Journal," "New Hampshire Wildlife Journal" and "Fur-Fish-Game."
