Full Creel: A Nick Lyons Reader

by Nick Lyons

One way to judge the quality of an angling writer's work is to put it to this does the writer sound like somebody you'd want to go fishing with? For some 30 years now, Nick Lyons--angler, college professor, essayist, and book publisher--has passed the exam effortlessly. A fisherman's fisherman and a writer's writer, Lyons is an acknowledged master of both crafts. Literate, philosophic, passionate, witty, and self-effacing, he has stories to tell and he's skilled in the art of telling them. Who wouldn't want to spend time on the river with this guy? Through Full Creel, you spend a virtual half lifetime with him. The book is a splendid omnibus, self-culled by Lyons from the seven collections of essays that he's published since 1970. If you've never read him before, this is a perfect volume to wade into; if you're already a fan, the book will remind you why as it flows around the bends of an angler's life from what Lyons calls "the innocent enthusiasms" that marked The Seasonable Angler, his first book, to the more brooding contemplations of an older, wiser, more seasoned human being who loves to fish. This is a man who adores his gadgets, his streams, his family, the traditions of his sport, and the marvelous places fishing takes him--both internally and externally. He can look at a simple fly, as he does in "The Things of Fly Fishing" and deem it a "minor monument" just as he can look at himself in "The Aging Fly Fisher," ponder the good and bad of growing old, and muse, "For it is a happy progression, a seasoning of our timber, from bumbling to skill, from not knowing to knowing ... but never all."That is the magic of fly fishing, really--however much one knows there's always more to be learned. As Full Creel moves through time, it is evident just how enthusiastic a learner, how genial an observer, and how graceful a writer Lyons has been and continues to be. It makes Lyons, like that beloved fly, something of a minor monument himself, one that, essay by essay, just beckons to be scaled. --Jeff Silverman

Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.

Nick Lyons taught English at the University of Michigan prior to accepting a position at the Hunter College of the City University of New York in 1961. He remained on the faculty of CUNY until 1988. He also worked as the executive editor of Crown Publishers from 1964-1974. An avid fisherman, Lyons found a way to combine his avocation and profession in 1977 when he created his first publishing company, Nick Lyons Books, eventually Lyons Press. It earned the reputation as one of the premier publishers of fishing books, but the company also printed works on nature, camping, adventure, gardening, woodworking, travel, the sea, history, food and wine, art and reference, hunting, general sport, and a few fiction titles. In 1999, Tony Lyons, Nick's son, took over the firm which was acquired by Globe Pequot Press in 2001. As well as being a book publisher Nick Lyons is a prolific writer and has produced several books on fly fishing. He has written introductions, forewords and prefaces for many Lyons Press books and also had a feature column of essays named the "Seasonable Angler" in Fly Fisherman Magazine for many years. Lyons has written articles for many other periodicals including Field & Stream and the New York Times, and several anthologies of these essays have been published.

Reviews

[Tom Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nick Lyons is a good writer of trout fishing lore. Reading this book, I received a good sense of his fishing life from the time he was a child until his late 60's. In that sense the book was an entire autobiography of the major aspect of his life; fishing. I still think that Lyon's strongest skill is that of editor and publisher. All in all, I enjoyed the book and was caught up in his fishing fever.

[Andrew Wayment · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nick Lyons writes as good on fly fishing as anyone. My favorite chapter in this book is "On the Divide," as I have fished the very locale he mysteriously describes and can picture succinctly the author 's son catching the monster brook trout. Good stuff!

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful collection of Nick Lyons' best work. If you love reading fly-fishing memoirs you'll love this book.

Randy

[Bret · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you can't go fishing...