River Music

The much-awaited sequel to "Crosscurrents" departs from traditional essays on fly fishing, featuring ribald tales imbued with Babb's devastating wit, ornery perspective, and musical language.

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For Michael Checchio, fly fishing has been a process of refinement and personal introspection, a journey that included dropping everything and moving to the West to fly fish -- particularly to the North Umpqua for steelhead. As he says in the introduction, "I feel I owe the river the very best I have to offer; after all, the river has done so much for me . . . the North Umpqua makes me want to be a better fly fisherman. This is the journey I took to become that better fly fisherman."In humorous and beautiful prose, Checchio recounts his years as a novice and self-taught New Jersey fly fisherman, and how he set out to find the hallowed trout-fishing Meccas of the Rocky Mountain West: the Snake, the Firehole, the Henry's Fork, Silver Creek, the East Walker, the San Juan, the Cimarron, and California's McCloud. Along the way we meet iconoclasts, wildlife, and the breathtaking landscapes of fly fishing's most fabled Western rivers, and at journey's end is the West Coast, and the pursuit of the beautiful and elusive steelhead.