I just got the green light to let the Angling Trade community in on a little secret:
I recently finished producing a book with Matt Supinski. Tom Rosenbauer wrote the foreword. At 384 pages long (8×10) it’s stuffed with great photos by my Flylab and Angling Trade partner Tim Romano, as well as other luminaries in the fly-fishing world, like Terry Gunn, Rodrigo Salles, and others. It’s coming out next spring, published by Rizzoli in New York, and it’s called…
A Fishable Feast: Fly Fishing and Eating Your Way Around the World.
That’s right… it’s a foodie book as well as a fishing adventure book, with more than 66 original recipes that reflect 20 of the best fishing (and eating) destinations on the planet, from Alaska to Italy, Baja to English and French chalk streams, New Zealand to the Catskills, and much more.
Talk about a labor of love! The book combines two of the things I’m pretty good at—fishing and eating!
I’m able/encouraged to talk about it now because some of the major booksellers…
e.g. Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, and Booksamillion.com
…already have it listed and are taking preorders. So, someone who might be surfing around to find some of the other books I’ve written, like The Little Red Book of Fly Fishing (with Charlie Meyers), The Little Black Book of Fly Fishing (with Chris Hunt), and Castwork or Tideline (with my Flylab partner Andrew Steketee) might just chance upon this other thing and wonder what the heck is going on. Well, that’s the deal.
I am very hopeful—and will be extremely grateful—if some of you fly shops would pick it up and carry it. That’s where I’d prefer to send people to find it when the promotion engine cranks up next year.
I have a great partner in Supinski, who’s not only a guide and author, but he spent a “real-life” career in the food and restaurant business, earning accolades like Michelin stars in the process.
What I like most is that the book isn’t just about fishing… or recipes… it’s about adventure, and culture, and geography and history… it’s an homage to places the adventurous angler may have been, but it’s also meant to be an inspiration for those who are only a few steps down the miles-long trail of fly fishing. It’s the book that’s been kicking around in my head for the past several years or more, and I’m very proud (and grateful for the team at Rizzoli) that it turned out better than I imagined it might. It’s going to do very well.
The name isn’t exactly a coincidence.
A Fishable Feast plays right off of A Moveable Feast by the great Ernest Hemingway—perhaps the first of the great modern era storytellers who had a penchant for fly fishing.
He wrote: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
I certainly consider myself very lucky to have experienced some of the greatest fly-fishing destinations around the world while writing stories for Field & Stream, Fly Fisherman, Fly Rod & Reel, The Drake, Garden & Gun, SaltWater Sportsman, the Flyfish Journal, MidCurrent, Tail, TROUT magazine and others. And indeed, all those adventures have stuck with me. But oddly enough, what I remember as much or more as the fish battles fought and lost or won, were the flavors that emanated from those places, as well as the people with whom I was fortunate enough to share the adventures.
And if you’re not an epicurean expert, not to worry. We focused on “gourmet comfort food” that anyone, anywhere can cook up in their own kitchen to share the flavors of fly fishing with friends and family whenever they want.
So, there it is. I spilled the beans. Hang in there, we’ll have more to say in coming months for sure.
Thank you for your support. It means the world to me.
-Deeter
