Coffee Table Book of: Freshwater Game Fish (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Freshwater Game Fish is a large format book of freshwater game fish and the rivers, streams, ponds and lakes they live in, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: bass, trout, char, pike, muskellunge, perch, walleye, sunfish, crappie, catfish, carp, gar, sturgeon and bowfin in clear water at many hours and across the seasons.

In weedy bays and over rocky shoals largemouth bass hang in the shade of floating water lily pads, hold along the edge where thick pondweed meets open water, and guard clean round gravel nests in the spring shallows, while bronze smallmouth hover over river cobbles and beside steep underwater granite walls. In cold running water spotted brown trout emerge from undercut mossy banks at dusk, space themselves along gravel runs, and dig bright oval redds in the autumn stones, alongside brook char with white edged lower fins, cutthroat in mountain creeks and deepwater lake char over dark rock.

Along the reed and pondweed walls northern pike, barred muskellunge and chain pickerel wait in ambush with dorsal and anal fins set far back for a sudden lunge, and glide into flooded marsh grass as the ice goes. Over clean sand yellow perch travel in schools and settle onto the bottom at dusk, while golden olive walleye hunt along rocky ledges in the low light with their pearly reflective eyes.

In quiet backwaters and channels bluegill fan tight colonies of nests, pumpkinseed hunt pond snails among the stems, speckled crappie hang in midwater beside sunken timber, channel and flathead catfish read dark water with their barbels, and ancient gar, lake sturgeon and bowfin cruise the bottom and the surface film.

Short notes run through the book, on how these fish see, hunt and spawn, how their markings and fins work, and how light, current, weed and season shape the water they hold: floating weed gives a bass shade to sit in while anything crossing the lit surface above is silhouetted, smallmouth bass take cool, clear, rocky water, dividing a shared lake with largemouth between rock and weed, a reflective layer behind a walleye’s retina gathers dim light, letting it hunt at dusk and in stained water, and a sturgeon has rows of bony plates instead of scales and a mouth on the underside that vacuums the bottom.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.