For fiction, the chapter on fishing in George Orwell's Coming up for Air takes some beating.
Agree as this is my favourite book period and one you can get away with in normal/female company! I read it first whilst on a boating holiday on the Thames as a fishing obsessed 10 year old and was pleasantly surpised to find the fishing bits. I revisit it every 5 years or so.
Great thread as I have a small but expanding library myself and always keen to hear of a good fishing read whatever the species. Yates is the daddy for me and BB and R.Walker of course, but will check the P.Boote one and a few others I've not come across.
A few ommissions I think worth mentioning:
For barbel my fave book for giving me a kick up the backside motivation wise is "Big Barbel - Bonded by the Challenge". Great stuff about Adams Mill and various chapters from top barbeleers. Nice photo's to drool over too.
For carp both of Terry Hearns books I re-read every so often as they are great, but most recently Gareth Fareham's 'The Forgotten Chapters' is simply, and this is not a word I ever use normally; awesome.
It's just come out, no connection to me, but I can't recommend it highly enough. £30 quid gets you 500+ pages, brilliant line drawings from Gareth himself, lovely atmospheric photographs as well as some of the UK's finest carp. Excellent print quality and binding too which many fishing books fall down on I feel.
It's awe inspiring stories of the lengths some carp fisherman go to in order to catch their goals. I have fished a few of the waters in the book but I'm blown away by the efforts of the chaps writing - it's really a different league to most carp books and written by top anglers who are not your usual famous on the circuit magazine writers. It's certainly another book to help you re-double your efforts when the going gets tough.
Great thread.
