I suppose everyone has their favourite list of fishing quotes, but laid end to end few of us would have enough material to make a book from them, but Nick Lyons has managed it. The Quotable Fisherman is a little unusual; something of a cross between a commonplace book of fishing and a book of quotes and it has a charm all of its own, like everything that Nick has anything to do with.

There is some great stuff in here, although I should warn you that it is biased towards fly fishing. I looked in vain for any of those marvellous Chinese proverbs about fishing (can some reader rescue us?) but how about Ed Zern on size? ‘I make it a rule never to weigh or measure a fish I’ve caught, but simply to estimate its dimensions as accurately as possible, and then, when telling about it, to improve those figures by roughly a fifth, or twenty percent. I do this mainly because most people believe all fishermen exaggerate by at least twenty percent, and so I allow for the discounting my audience is certain to apply.’

I should add that the book itself is very well designed - it has a good feel in the hand. If you search for it on Amazon, you will gain the impression that the book is out of print, but as of May 2011, when I last checked, it was available from Skyhorse Press.