cover image Montana Time: The Seasons of a Trout Fisherman

Montana Time: The Seasons of a Trout Fisherman

John Barsness. Lyons and Burford Publishers, $18.95 (128pp) ISBN 978-1-55821-162-9

Montana's fishing streams--looking at them, standing in them, floating on them--seem to have taken over the author's senses. Fortunately, Barsness reports these sensations without the purple prose that often marks articles about fishing the waters of the West. Observing as though with Thoreau's ``big eye,'' he writes in stream-time: ``Then one of the smaller fish starts upward . . . tail sweeping from side to side like a leaf easing down through the air.'' With the notable exception of his wife, Eileen, whose brief beginning casting efforts he captures with Tolstoyan perfection, readers meet few characters on these streams; even fewer events occur here, yet instantly recognizable truths emerge throughout. In these six slight essays Barsness, a freelance writer, reaches for the single right phrase, recalling the finely wrought stories in the late Norman MacLean's A River Runs Through It. (Aug.)