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

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of well-written short stories describing the author's fishing obsession during the first 35 or so years of his life. I enjoyed this book for a couple reasons: (1) his boyhood years were similar to mine as I spent much of my youth fishing for carp and bullhead in the Maumee River in Ohio while he spent his fishing in urban areas of Chicago., and (2) some of his stories involved fishing on rivers in Alaska that I had worked on (and floated) during my career with the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game. While my youthful obsession with fishing gradually faded as I got older, the author's did not. Karczynski spent his twenties and early thirty traveling the world flyfishing various waters and he relates a series of tales from them. All were interesting to me, many were quite humorous. The last few stories are about the changes to his life after marriage and the birth of his daughter. This book has sparked an ember in me to pick up a rod again and do a little fishing myself.

[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.

[Christian Colucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

I often think about giving it all up and becoming a trout bum - this book made that want burn even more. Short story after short story of why I should give it all up to chase around these slimy creatures.

[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.