"I still don't know why I fish or why other men fish, except that we like it and it makes us think and feel. But I do know that if it were not for the strong, quick life of rivers, for their sparkle in the sunshine, for the cold grayness of them under rain and the feel of them about my legs as I set my feet hard down on rocks or sand or gravel, I should fish less often. A river is never quite silent; it can never, of its very nature, be quite still; it is never quite the same from one day to the next. It has its own life and its own beauty, and the creatures it nourishes are alive and beautiful also. Perhaps fishing is, for me, only an excuse to be near rivers. If so, I'm glad I thought of it."

--- Roderick Haig-Brown

A River Never Sleeps is one of the best books ever written about fishing. The above quote, which is the last paragraph of the book, is one of my all time favorites. In A River Never Sleeps, Roderick Haig-Brown takes us along, month by month, through the year and lets us experience the constantly changing moods of both river and fish. He eloquently describes chasing mysterious steelhead in the bitterness of January, quirky sea-run cutthroats in May and the spawning salmon of October.

Roderick Haig-Brown was consumed with a passion for rivers and it really comes through in this book. He had the good fortune to have lived in the Pacific Northwest where fishing for steelhead was a year-round proposition. He loved to spend time on the rivers fishing and observing the nature that lived there. Haig-Brown was an early conservationist who fought for the protection of the Pacific Northwest steelhead, salmon and rivers back in the 1940s and 1950s..

A River Never Sleeps should be required reading for the serious steelhead fisherman. It is not a "How to" book like many of us have read over the years to learn how to catch more fish. A River Never Sleeps is about a way of life and a philosophy of why we love to fish. I highly recommend giving this book a try.

Tom Blotzer