You need to find some fishing books that are good winter reads to get you through the chilly months of the year? Here are a few cool new picks for armchair angling.
Fly By the Seat of Your Kayak – A Guide to Simplified Kayak Fly Fishing in Tidal Creeks and Freshwater Ponds. By FishTalk contributor Mark Bange, this book dives deep into how and where fly fishing from a kayak can be both enjoyable and effective. The author uses his home waters of Chesapeake country as the backdrop, covering gear choices, how to rig a kayak for fly fishing, where and when to target specific species, and kayak fly fishing safety. This new book is available on Amazon for $17.98 or via email to the author at [email protected].
Delaware & Maryland Coastal Fishing Structure – Wrecks, Reefs, and Obstructions in Ocean Waters. This latest examination of bottom structure, wrecks, and reefs is by longtime FishTalk contributor Wayne Young, and like his articles and other books, spares no details while looking at potential fishing hotspots up and down the coast. With a forward by FishTalk’s own Lenny Rudow, the book covers coastal areas from the Delaware Bay entrance to below the Maryland-Virginia line. It also includes graphics from hydrographic survey data and sonar imagery, and a step-by-step illustrated guide to using the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Bathymetric Data Viewer. The price is $20 and it’s available on Amazon; you can find Wayne’s Facebook page at Chesapeake Bay Fishing Reefs.
The Way I Like to Fish – A Kayak Angler’s Guide to Shallow Water, Light Tackle Fishing. You’ve seen John Veil’s work on the pages of FishTalk, and now can read it in its entirety. With an angle favoring simplicity and a deep look at the basics, anglers new to kayak fishing will find info on choosing and rigging a yak, picking out the right equipment without breaking the bank, and then using it to do what we all love — catching more, bigger fish. Order it on Amazon for $17.99 (black and white) or $34.99 (in full color), or you can email John at [email protected] to order it for even less.
Light Tackle Fishing Patterns of the Chesapeake Bay – A Guide to Month-by-Month Pattern Development for Striped Bass. This is Alan Battista’s third book, and as one might surmise from the title, in it he helps anglers track the patterns striped bass follow though the course of the year. We found that this book delved into more experiential and scientific information about the fish itself than the author’s past works. And although Battista is known as a kayak guy and maintains a slant towards kayak fishing throughout, the information in “Light Tackle Fishing Patterns of the Chesapeake Bay” is not nearly as kayak-centric as in his earlier books and will be appreciated by boat anglers and shoreline fishermen alike. If you want to get some new insight into where the fish should be this month, next month, and the month after that, check this one out. Price: $29.99; visit the Light Tackle Kayak Trolling the Chesapeake Facebook page, or go to Amazon.
Guy Harvey’s Underwater World – Guy Harvey is well known for his art, but before he made any of the art that we all know and love he was a marine biologist. Over the years he has also become an explorer, entrepreneur, and conservationist. In his new book “Guy Harvey’s Underwater World,” he showcases his art and photographs, adventures, and scientific research of the past 20 years. If you’re looking for something to do on a cold winter evening sitting next to a warm fire, grab a copy — it’s an adventure that I’m sure you’ll enjoy. In this wonderfully written and illustrated book you’ll read about his fishing exploits, traveling around the globe from Alaska to the Caribbean, and the adventures and marine habitats he’s explored. Price: $49.95; visit Guy Harvey.
-By Eric Packard