Books – by which I mean proper books made from paper that you can store on a shelf and read at leisure on the couch or from the bedside table – are becoming less common in our lives. Notwithstanding the convenience and accessibility of online content, I think that’s a shame.
Flyfishing books aren’t immune from the trend, and so the arrival of ‘Upstream in a Dream’ brought a smile to my face, and doubly so because the author (and at a quick browse, the subject matter) appeared more or less local. The mountain rivers of north-east Victoria, the Otways, Barwon Heads, Tasmania, and NZ’s South Island are all places I have fished often, and I was looking forward to seeing them through a different lens.
This initial response came from my position as a one-eyed flyfisher. However, after reading it properly, I suspect Hamish Brooks would argue the case for his book to be considered as much about human relationships and the angling environment, as flies and fishing trips. As well as landscapes and weather, his wife and daughters feature prominently, plus good friends, siblings, parents, grandparents; even mere acquaintances.
I’m not much for flyfishing books of the ‘my wife left me and my dog died’ kind (which I’ve read a couple of), so it was good to discover that Hamish Brooks errs more towards gentle humour and reflection, than pathos and sorrow. Not that there aren’t some serious moments, such as the story of a compound fracture wading at Little Pine Lagoon and a complex rescue; or a tumble and a whole rod & reel swept to oblivion on NZ’s Ahuriri River – mid-trip too!
But overall, the tendency is for Brooks’ words to bring a smile rather than a frown. Like trying to explain to an outdoors shop sales assistant his intentions for a pair of boots (“‘You want to what with them?”). Or pondering more esoteric matters: “The long drive can be an obstacle when trying to act on that near-constant urge to fish. Sometimes you don’t have enough time, but at other times it just feels like you don’t.” Then, while wrestling with the topic of proof of success, “…all hearers of fishing stories are sceptics… as they should be, because flyfishing is unbelievable.” And the pub cook’s response when the author and his brother come off the water late, requesting a steak just before closing time: “I thought you were going to say medium well,’” he said, after we’d ordered medium rare, “I would have had to boot you out!”
To me, the chapter which best demonstrates Hamish Brooks’ talent as a storyteller, is ‘Tuna’, about a wild and woolly day on a charter boat out of Portland. Flyfishing itself gets only the briefest mention (it’s a conventional tackle trip), and yet Brooks’ descriptions of the rain-battered drive down, the 1970s motel accommodation, and then the charter itself, had me completely in the moment. Brooks observes that, when booking, the charter owner had warned that if conditions were too bad, he would cancel. But Brooks’ goes on to reveal, “The conditions seemed too bad, and yet here we were cowering in the front of the boat, intermittently awash in sea spray as we smashed and crashed our way out of Portland Harbour and into the open ocean.”
Overall, this book will appeal to flyfishers, and yet as the Tuna chapter and many others demonstrate, there’s a lot more to like.
RRP $34.95.
