Free Google E-Book of the Day: “Fishing With the Fly” (1886)

March 23, 2011 By: Marshall Cutchin

It’s quite a lot of fun — not to mention educational — to scan through the fly fishing books that are part of Google’s grand experiment to digitize all published works (a plan that took fire with co-founder Larry Page but which just yesterday had some very cold water thrown on it).

Take for example Fishing with the Fly by Charles F. Orvis and A. Nelson Cheney, subtitled “Sketches by Lovers of the Art with Illustrations of Standard Flies” published by Houghton Mifflin in 1886. In addition to essays that range from Navy captain L.A. Beardslee describing Alaska salmon fishing to poetic meanderings by Dr. James Henshall — whose Book Of The Black Bass was the very first devoted to the subject of bass fishing, there are more than a dozen colorful plates illustrating the favorite flies of era. Grab the .pdf version or EPUB version for your favorite reader and enjoy.