Calling After Water: Dispatches from a Fishing Life

by Dave Karczynski, Tom Bie (foreword)

Calling After Water is a collection of essays from fly angler extraordinaire and accomplished writer Dave Karczynski, and follows this general narrative writer falls in love with fly fishing, gets to travel the world, realizes that travel satisfies the soul only so much, and comes home to his heart in the Midwest. In the first piece, he buys his first fly rod. In a piece near the book’s end, he buys a trout camp. The collection’s narrative span is ten years, and adventure locations include Wisconsin, Michigan, Alaska, Chile, Argentina, India, Labrador, Ontario, and Poland.

224 pages, Hardcover

Published October 15, 2024

Reviews

[Braden Maddox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dave is an excellent writer, and his academic background shows through his prose.

“Suffering through a fair amount of nothing is necessary to be there for the beginning of anything…”

“Perhaps there is no clearer affirmation about the joy of bassing than the fact that, had a genie popped out of my empty beer bottle, I would have asked for only more of the same.”

I hope there are many more stories to come from the UP, Wisconsin, Canada, South America and beyond from Dave in the future.

[Marialise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book

I loved this book. He is a great writer and his descriptions of his fishing trips made me think I was there with him.

[David Pomper · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are a few fly fishing authors out there who write about the beauty of the sport. It can be, and often is a very humbling and at the same time rewarding pastime. After every other outing he describes it as his best and favorite outing yet. It just gets kinda ho hum after awhile so you end up putting the book down and giving it away. Read some Gierach instead.