The hardship of a winter when fishing is impossible (I don’t count ice-fishing; dropping a hook and line through a hole in the ice doesn’t cut it) can be relieved by good books about the art, and is made almost bearable by a book such as this one.

Despite being bitten by the fishing passion at the age of four, Richards had little encouragement from his family to pursue his piscatorial dreams, and spent his childhood fishing intermittently. Nevertheless, the passion survived and grew into a life-long commitment – predominantly to fly-fishing, with its gorgeously named flies, such as the Royal Coachman and the Parchemene Belle – which he details in this elegant, poetical autobiography about fish and fishing on the great New Brunswick river, the Miramichi.

Like any aficionado, I’m a captive market for stories about this urge that so many of us share, which sends us down to great and small waters at dawn and dusk to, as my young son once boasted, pit our wits against fish. Richards has engaging tales to tell of fish caught, fish seen but not caught, and the fish that get away (whose loss lies in one’s heart for days), and they give warmth and hope to our winter days. As with all of Isaak Walton’s brethren of the angle, some great and memorable characters have informed Richards’ fishing passion, and he brings them briefly to the surface of this book, without landing them, which is the book’s only fault, for fishing characters are as interesting as fish and fishing, as he knows. But this is to quibble, to wish for a perfect salmon when one has caught a spunky grilse.

I loved this book; I read Richards’ descriptions of great salmon and lovely trout, and know why his breath comes sharply at the sight of them; I nod in recognition at his evocation of the splendid loneliness of a remote and unpeopled stretch of river in the late afternoon; I stand in his shadow as he casts and shares his joy. Every fisherman is in this book – though it is one man’s story – that is its strength.