This is the broadest of Nick Lyons's books, with sections on tarpon and pike fishing in the Marquesas and in France, bass bugging on a small Connecticut pond, and trout fishing on unnamed creeks and blue-ribbon western rivers, as well as reflections on such aspects of the sport as the flies that are the underpinning of it all, the pursuit of records, the odd characters he's met along the way, and the increasing challenge of crowds who pursue this ever-popular sport.