Spring Creek

The classic memoir of a fly fisherman's love affair with a river.

For years, Nick Lyons has been one of the most popular fishing writers in America. Thirty years ago, he wrote his masterpiece, Spring Creek, now reprinted in a beautiful collector's edition.

Spring Creek is one of those rare places where the trout are as long as your arm, but also exceedingly difficult to catch. Lyons recounts a month’s adventures on this river, a time in which he explores its secrets and confronts its greatest challenges. At first he catches little. Then, slowly, he acquires the various and special skills and disciplines necessary to take the large, wary brown trout of this extraordinary river.

Spring Creek is the record of halcyon days astream. It is a fisherman’s book, drawing a rare portrait of an angler actually learning to fish more wisely, filled with battles between angler and trout, a few epic victories, and even more epic defeats. Spring Creek is a richly humorous and perceptive account of an angler’s passion for his sport—and a book all fishermen will cherish.

Nick Lyons is a former English professor and book publisher, as well as the author and editor of many books on various topics. His latest book is Fire in the Straw. He lives in New York City.

Mari Lyons (1935–2016), whose line drawings grace Spring Creek, exhibited regularly at First Street Gallery. Her website is www.marilyonsstudio.com.

“I love Nick Lyons’s books. Every sentence is so full and ripe with whatever it is that keeps us fishing—and the minute-by-minute surprise and delight of it.” —Ted Hughes

“Spring Creek is everything a fishing book should be. It has the ability to convey the magic that always exists between somebody who loves fishing and a particular piece of water that endlessly lives up to its end of the bargain. And, more than anything else, Spring Creek is wise.” —Craig Nova

“A fisherman’s fisherman and a writer’s writer, Lyons is an acknowledged master of both crafts. Literate, philosophic, passionate, witty, and self-effacing, he has stories to tell and he’s skilled in the art of telling them.” —Jeff Silverman

“The waters of Spring Creek run deep with many messages, some of them sharp and others subtle, but all deftly conveyed in Nick Lyons’s vivid prose. This book represents Lyons at his very best, and fly fishing at its very best, and a reader could scarcely wish for more.” —Steve Raymond

“Nick Lyons’s angling quest, Spring Creek, is the best yet from a superb writer. Lyons’s evolution as an angler becomes a metaphor for life itself.” —George Reiger

“A month in the country by a busy man holds more for us these days than the posturing of sporting layabouts. Free of gimmicks and snazzy views, Spring Creek shows what fishing writing can be. Nick Lyons has written a genuinely literate and deeply felt book.” —Thomas McGuane

“Nick Lyons is a national treasure . . . a writer of literature who fishes, and one of the best we have.” —Harry Middleton

“Spring Creek keeps alive, in sensitive, heartfelt language, the spirit of why we fish to begin with, and why we will always do so.” —Russell Chatham