The river of life
Author, painter and angler James Prosek’s work considered
By HANS IBOLD
Express Staff Writer
If you’ve never made a cast on water like the Big Wood River or
Silver Creek, you might have, like me, supposed that fly fishermen were on to something
more than just hooking a fish. The casters seem to be, like poets, immersed in a world
that is strange to the rest of us, a world that somehow inspires them to awe then to a
graceful response.
Trout: An Illustrated History (Knopf, 160 pages) is one of those
graceful responses to the world of the stream.
The 1996 book—popular in local bookstores—was illustrated and
written by James Prosek while he was an undergraduate at Yale. It is probably on the
coffee-tables of most trout fishermen. But Trout, unlike most books about fishing,
can be an enlightening companion to those of us who have never held a rod but are curious
about the world of the stream and its allure.
And that’s what its author hoped Trout would become.
"It’s not my mission to write for the fishing public," the
soft-spoken Prosek said in a telephone interview from his home in Easton, Conn.
"In fact, I’d like to write for the non-fishing public," he
added. "I don’t want to be pigeon-holed as trout boy."
Prosek’s fourth book, Early Love and Brook Trout, a memoir
with his watercolors running throughout, will be published in April. He’s working on
a fifth book about his travels along the 41st parallel, which crosses through his
hometown.
One look at Prosek’s dazzling greenback cutthroat trout on the jacket
cover of Trout and the "trout boy" moniker seems fitting.
Within its pages, there are 70 watercolors of popular varieties as well as
rare, exotic and extinct species, which are grouped in five sections: the Char; the
Apache, Gila and Mexican trout; the rainbow, redband and golden trout; the cutthroats; and
brown trout and Atlantic salmon.
Accompanying each of the vivid watercolors are brief but informative
descriptions of the fish and their habitat, which seem to be written not so much for the
angler but for the outdoor lover.
Of the Rio Grande cutthroat, he writes: "This colorful western trout
was described by Dr. Charles Girard in 1857 as virginalis, I imagine because he
felt its qualities suited a maiden—a pure, unsullied beauty, delicate and
desirable."
In other descriptions, Prosek is less playful and more urgent:
"Greenback cutthroats, highly vulnerable to hybridization, did not fare well when
their native homes were stocked with rainbows. Introduced brook trout, though they
didn’t hybridize, nevertheless overran greenback streams.
"The compound effects of non-native species and human exploitation
caused a sharp decline by the early part of the century, and the greenback was listed
under the Endangered Species Act of 1973."
After publishing Trout four years ago, Prosek was considered to be
"a fair bid to become the Audubon of the fishing world," according to the New
York Times.
The Audubon reference is appropriate. Prosek said his fascination with
cataloging fish came from days spent poring over his father’s book of John James
Audubon’s bird paintings of North America.
His fate as "trout boy" seems sealed with the two books he
published since then.
Joe and Me (William Morrow, 208 pages) is his memoir about a
relationship-in-progress that began a decade ago when Prosek was caught poaching on
Connecticut’s Aspetuck River by game warden Joe Gaines, whose beat was the Bridgeport
watershed area.
In The Complete Angler: A Connecticut Yankee Follows in the Footsteps
of Walton (Harpercollins, 336 pages) Prosek writes about his experiences fishing the
waters that Isaak Walton depicted in his 17th century classic, The Compleat Angler,
the third most reprinted volume in the language after the Bible and Shakespeare.
Perhaps no one loves trout and the mystique of fishing as much as Prosek,
and in Trout his passion is palpable.
In its introduction, he writes: "The brook, then, with all its colors
and sounds is an education, a place where I can learn about myself and other creatures as
well.
"The instructive nature of the trout stream is not forced upon its
visitors, but held candidly by the water and trees. The angler must make an effort to hear
the stream’s messages and see her beauty…Only after I’d become comfortable
with her modes of speech—winter silence, springtime growling roar, lazy summer
trickling and autumn calm—did I begin to understand that the stream was not only a
place where I fished but also a living, breathing celebration of hardship and joy."
In his writing and in the telephone interview, Prosek pays tribute to
those who have opened his eyes to the world of the stream—Joe Gaines, his father, his
uncle and, to those who have helped him bring that world to life on paper, his literary
agent, his editors and professors.
Now, Prosek is doing some mentoring of his own. A student at a middle
school in Easton read Trout recently and asked Prosek if he’d be a mentor.
Prosek has been helping him tie flies and even seeking advice about a possible fly fishing
book for children.
"I ask him, does this idea sound stupid to you?" Prosek said.
Also, Prosek is involved with the Connecticut Aquatic Resources Education
(CARE) program, which brings inner-city kids to Easton to fish the same reservoirs that
Prosek learned to fish on.
When he’s not on the water, Prosek said he’s writing and
painting.
"I like going in a straight line towards home," he said.
To young fly fishermen or any would-be casters, Prosek offers this advice:
"Do it at your own pace and don’t be intimidated by that whole force of
pretentious fly fishermen out there. I learned so much from watching people cast on the
stream and asking them questions. And I learned from reading."
Interestingly, the next generation of fly fishermen will likely have
learned from reading the works of Prosek.
Trout is available at local bookstores and fly shops.
