Lords of the Fly

Fish and fishing. Obsession and competition. Mother nature and the most interesting creature on earth-man. Monte Burke is completely obsessed with flyfishing for tarpon. For the past decade or so, he has chased them up and down the coast of Florida, from the Keys to the Everglades to the Panhandle. For him, and for a healthy portion of the nearly five million flyfishermen in the United States, fishing for tarpon is the absolute apex of the sport. The popularity of the tarpon is no surprise. They are an amazing species that has been around for 100 million years and can live to 80 years old. They can grow to eight feet long and range from 65 to 300 pounds in weight. They have silver scales on their sides and large plates covering their gills that rattle when they jump, making the fish appear-and sound-like medieval knights. Michelangelo painted a tarpon in the Sistine Chapel-about to swallow Jonah himself. Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and George H.W. Bush fished for them while in office. Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos were frequent tarpon-fishing buddies. Their mystique is only magnified with a fly. The pull of the fish is immense and otherworldly, "A tarpon is immediate unreality," the late poet and tarpon obsessive, Richard Brautigan, once said. I can think of no better way to describe those first few seconds after a hook up. In Lords of the Fly, Buke delves into the heart of this world. Filled with larger-than-life characters and vivid prose, Burke's book captures that primal search for complete transcendence. It's something we all seek to achieve somehow. Some find it through alcohol, drugs, sex, or yoga. Some of us fish for it....