However, it’s not all bad. The opening chapters are evocative, the language flowing and calm (yup, like a river). It’s good reading. But it’s like watching a fishing show. The woods and the rivers and the fish look great, but after watching someone catch 4 or 5 fish, you kind of get the picture. He talks about other things — meeting a bear in the woods, fishing with his dog, building fishing camps along the river — but overall it doesn’t make for a compelling narrative. It’s all very nice, but 100 pages would done the job just as well.

It isn’t a bad read, but it’s probably better not to read the whole thing at once. Put it beside your favourite chair in the TV room and read a chapter from it whenever you have nothing better to do. Let it take you to the river, but don’t stay there too long. It’s a pleasant diversion.

I’d love to fish on the Miramichi. Sounds like a wonderful river.

6/10.

Last summer I was walking up the street here in Seattle and in the drainage ditch with six inches of water in front of a row of houses I saw a 7″ trout dart into a culvert. The ditches drain into a creek system here which is full of small trout and very, very infrequently admit a returning salmon that doesn’t die from the lawn fertilizer, antifreeze, oil, and pesticides. Somehow completed all those days of “fishing” for me.