The Offbeat Angler
Authors: Christopher
Arelt and Sebastian O'Kellyr
Review ©2006 by Tom Chandler
With big, rubbery carp lips poking out of magazines and fly fishing exploding in every direction, a book about "offbeat" fishing situations is probably just in time...
The “Brown Water Boys” are a pair of long-time fly fishing buddies who chase unusual fish, often in unusual waters. Most of their fishing takes place in hard, angular urban environments - far from the pristine mountain streams or tropical flats that leap from the pages of the mainstream fly fishing magazines.
Along the way, you'd expect to meet some unusual people (and unusual fish), and that's precisely what Offbeat Anglers – a book of essays about fishing "brown" water for unusual fish – is all about.
Consider the opening lines from their mostly apocryphal chapter about Monkey Fishing:
"When you travel down the offbeat fishing path, coming across the unusual can become common-place; experiencing the extreme not so out-of-the-ordinary; and even seeing the bizarre a some-time thing."
I assumed the two writers started fishing offbeat places simply because that was all that was available to these urban dwellers, but as is often the case, assumptions can prove wrong. In fact, it quickly becomes clear our pair of heroes were willing to bypass traditional water when something more unusual was in the air.
At one point, the book details their attempts to fish a pond in the midst of a concrete/freeway jungle, and like a pair of fly fishing commandos, they finally seek out an access point.
In truth, the “offbeat” here lies not so much in the fish as the location and the people; carp, shad, bass and tarpon are hardly unusual species, and the most entertaining adventure involved a character called “The Land Captain” - a Florida guide who eschews a flats skiff for a big American sedan and guides anglers on the canals and potholes of inland Florida.
It's possible the “Land Captain” chapter alone is worth the price of the book; the characters take on a surreal cast worthy of a Carl Hiaasen novel, yet the fly fishing remains wholly recognizable – especially when one writer is seduced by tarpon. Apparently the lure of the fish remains the same, even when the location is far from pristine.
Offbeat Anglers is unlikely to become a seminal work of fly fishing literature – the writing is a bit uneven, and a little extra editing could have pruned back some excessive passive voice - but it is an extremely entertaining read about a pair of fly fishing deviants willing to fish for almost anything with a fly rod, and their timing couldn't be much better.
Carp are the current fly fishing flavor of the month, and the sport is exploding in all directions. It's likely the Brown Water Boys saw themselves as iconoclasts chipping away at the sport's traditional foundations, but at this point, they're simply a little ahead of their time.
A good read, and an Underground natural.
The Offbeat Angler by Christopher Arelt and Sebastian O'Kelly
Flat Hammock Press (January 2006), 156 pages, hardcover
Read an excerpt here