Decoration Day was the forerunner to the modern celebration of Memorial Day. A reunifying United States  formally and corporately acknowledged the fallen. In steps through the decades and through other wars, Memorial Day as we know it came to be.

Thaddeus Norris’ The American Angler’s Book was published in 1864. Although the war was still being waged, soldiers still took time to fish for pleasure and for sustenance.  A man might have been fighting a trout one day and then fighting for his life the next. With the high death toll of the conflict, soldier-anglers were certainly among the casualties.

This observation is not meant to trivialize the sacrifice. Unless we personally know a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who has passed in the line of duty, Memorial Day and other observances can be somewhat abstract. It can be helpful, at times, to see the intimate lines of shared experience between us. They were husbands, neighbors, fathers, friends, and fly fishers.

Norris’ fishing book is by no means a treatise on fly fishing soldiers;  much less a work remembering their sacrifice. But it was written at the time of the conflict and reflects the kinds of fishing that was being done at the time. It is a legacy work that is worth perusing.

Read the entirety of The Angler’s Book: Embracing the Natural History of Sporting Fish and the Art of Taking Them with Instructions in Fly-Fishing, Fly-Making, and Rod-Making and Directions for Fish-Breeding, to which is appended Dies Piscatoriae Describing Noted Fishing-Places, and The Pleasure of Solitary Fly-Fishing on Google Books. (How’s that for a subtitle?)

Happy Memorial Day from Casting Across