A Fly Fisher's Life

Well, I had seen a brilliant performance and I thought I had understood. Clearly, Monsieur X was a Hercules, a magician, to catch a trout with a fly! That is Charles Ritz recalling his reaction, as a boy, to seeing a trout landed on fly fishing tackle for the first time. The year was 1912. Now in his sprightly eighties, Charles Ritz himself a Hercules in the angling world. Mr. Ritz has fished the finest rivers in Europe and North America, learning and teaching everything there is to know about fly-fishing, becoming a magician himself. In sixty years of almost single-hearted devotion to this sport (Mr. Ritz also directs the famous Ritz Hotel in Paris) he has developed unique casting and tackle innovations. A FLy Fisher's Life is a kind of modern Complete Angler, undergoing revision and expansion until now it is one of the classics of our time.