A Mean-mouthed, Hook-jawed, Bad-news, Son-of-a-Fish...

is not your average book about fly fishing. Written by a Jewish South African, Wolf Avni, it gives you a personal insight into as much about what fly fishing is in SA today, to what it actually could be tomorrow, if the correct attention was given to the sport and the main players in it. The book starts off describing a monster-sized trout, lurking in the depths of one of Wolf's favourite fishing holes...his front garden in the Giants Cup Wilderness Reserve in the southern Drakensberg of SA. But then you only once ever hear about the fish again throughout the entire 160 pages and you wonder if he is not actually referring the title to himself instead of the fish. Certainly there are one or two instances in the book where Wolf uses expletives ("His only fishing rod was a fucked-up, no-name glass-fibre thing with neither spine nor class", or when describing different weight rods, "They both have their uses, and the 1-ounce would be out of place in a surfline, just as an 8-weight would be as useless as tits on a bull when waved around in the trickle of some mountain catchment"), but mostly the writing is about Wolf and his alter-ego "Salmo Nella" who, I believe, may also be based on an actual friend of his. As the cover expounds: "Whether you are a keen fly-fisherman or merely a collector of fine tales and piscatorial literature, Wolf Avni's collection of hilarious and irreverent fishing stories and superb photographs cannot fail to delight you. The sparkling anecdotes range from the factual to the myth of the mean, uncatchable monster with a cult following, after whom the book is named, to droll descriptions of a local hostelry decked out in 'drop-dead-tourist trout motif'. Fisherman's yarns abound, but are entwined with lyrical narrative describing the beautiful environs in which trout fishing streams occur. Leavened by a sizeable dose of self-deprecating humour, this collection of wonderfully written tales will provide hours of entertaining reading." For all you fly fishers out there, if you can get hold of a copy, do it. You'll read it in about six hours or so, but it's six hours well spent. It is published by Struik and the ISBN number is "ISBN 1-86872-098-5". I thought it a great, light-hearted read, as well as a well-aimed cast at some of the fishermen, as well as government and fishing bodies in SA, who might do well to sit up and listen to what the man has to say...