On the water with dad

Although fish literature rarely hooks non-anglers, knowing the lingo isn’t necessary to enjoy these collected stories, columns and poetry. The father-as-fisherman theme ranges from an aloof-but-kind Ernest Hemingway on a Montana river, depicted by his son Jack Hemingway, to the bumbling dad presented by W. Bruce Cameron, knocking his son into the lake and losing a big fish to boot.

This genre easily stretches to include a piece on a pair of inherited ice-fishing boots that save the dignity of a fleece-clad writer sharing a hut with woolen-swathed vets.

Some stories and poems are just a few pages, whereas other segments, such as an excerpt from Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It,” are longer journeys.

-- Emmett Berg