Modern-day books about angling tend to have something of an elegiac quality to them--wistfulness for a more innocent past, where the solitary fisherperson could enjoy the peace and quiet of an ice-cold stream, match wits with a few wily denizens of the waters, maybe catch a couple for his or her daily meal, and leave behind nothing but footprints:
The pace of life in the modern industrialized nations, rampant pollution of rivers and streams, and rapidly diminishing stocks of fish species worldwide due to almost continuous overfishing by great mechanized fleets, makes the above sort of bucolic memory less and less realistic:
Which is why many private libraries about fish and fishing increasingly include a number of titles that amount to a "call to arms:"
It is tempting, perhaps, to attribute the above sorts of titles to "tree huggers" or their equivalent ilk in the piscatorial world, but a review of many such titles published over the last several decades suggests that this is not, in fact, the case.
Most such titles have been penned either by scientists concerned with the deleterious effects of overfishing on the ability of the world's ever-increasing population to feed itself without destroying the planet in the process, or by fisherpeople who see such effects at their favorite fishing holes and seek to preserve what is left of an enjoyable pastime:
Because roughly 16% of the U.S. population 16 years old and older spends an average of 16 days a year pursuing this most ancient of pastimes, and because fishing remains key to the very survival of many indigenous populations around the world, one suspects that anyone building a private library devoted to this subject will need to consider to what extent such library should focus on the tensions outlined above....
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