A Man May Fish

A Man May Fish by the late Mr Justice Kingsmill Moore (1893-1979), one of the most respected men in Ireland in the decades before his death, has become a fishing classic since its first publication in 1960. The work covers a lifetime of fishing in Ireland for trout, sea trout (white trout), and salmon. The author was a skilled and long-experienced anger with an enviable command of the English language, and his book is full of information on how to fish. Although it is often reminiscent, there are no idle memories; ever incident teaches something of value, so that A Man May Fish is a really useful, practical book. In his introduction, Conrad Voss Bark writes that Kingsmill Moore ‘uses his subject as a key to open his readers’ minds to wider horizons. He has an astonishing ability too, to create living people.’ It is a book to enchant every angler for salmon and trout, whilst to the angling visitor to Irish waters, it must rate as essential reading. For this second edition, first published in 1979, the author revised the book, adding two more chapters, on lost Irish fish and on Delphi, and an appendix on the effect of waves and deeply stained water on a fish’s vision of a fly. In his Sea Trout Fishing (1975), Hugh Falkus (who has also written a Preface for this edition), placed A Man May Fish in his top-twenty best angling books – ‘a great man, a great book’.