Skip to main content

Bookshelf: River Songs by Steve Duda

River Songs: Moments of Wild Wonder in Fly Fishing by Steve Duda. Mountaineers Books, 2024, 192 pages, $24.95 hardcover, ISBN: 978-1680517019

Bookshelf: River Songs by Steve Duda
River Songs: Moments of Wild Wonder in Fly Fishing by Steve Duda. Mountaineers Books, 2024, 192 pages, $24.95 hardcover, ISBN: 978-1680517019

It’s easy to forget why we first came to the river with a fly rod; we get consumed by counting numbers of fish, comparing ourselves to anglers, or what epic hatch or big fish we’re missing out on based on who we follow on social media. We can easily lose the connection we feel for the places and people that give us so much joy and wonder and, even at times, frustration. Steve Duda, in River Songs: Moments of Wild Wonder in Fly Fishing, his first collection of essays, reminds us, with attentive care to language and gloriously boisterous storytelling, why we keep coming back to rivers—to be part of a family of anglers who love the mysteries of river bends and deep friendships built around plunge pools and campfires.

In the opening essay, “Lessons,” Duda writes that “fly fishing isn’t just one thing . . . ” which he, with great prose and a knack for setting the hook at just the right moment, shows us on each of the following pages. This book isn’t just a collection of fishing stories—it’s an exploration of what it means to be a good human, a steward of this world, and how “. . . a ridiculous activity like fly fishing can help us to be a generous friend, point us toward excellence, and encourage a profound and abiding love for this planet . . . .” Reading this collection is as joyful as catching brook trout on a Parachute Adams in May, but it’s also heady stuff that asks us to think about why we do what we do, where we come from, and how humans and rivers and fish all influence and impact each other. Duda is a philosophizer as much as he is a bard, and I’ll sit around any fire he’s at spinning his yarns.

Each chapter is separated by a “river song” that always seems to veer into the poetic. These songs are beautiful little odes to flies we plucked out of our hats, all the glorious fragrances of steelhead such as “armpit, ash, ass, bacon, baked beans,

Band-Aids, bar floor,” barracuda that smell like “cucumbers splashed with lemon,” a one-sided conversation with a steelhead-swinging bourbon-sipping sage, and even a sing-along to “Pressure Drop” after landing a bonefish. Each song has its own melody, but each reminds us why we go to the stream, and what a life without fly fishing would be. “Imagine not fishing. Imagine no road trips. No old pals. No fires.” With similar energy and love of the lyrical as the great Brian Doyle, Duda creates a rollicking rhythm and pace for this book by gathering unique insights and observations from his lifetime of fishing.

Duda shows time and time again that fly fishing is indeed not just about catching fish, but the people, places, ecologies, and histories that make up every watershed we explore. “Ghosts” is as much about carp fishing as it is a history lesson about dams, the Lewis & Clark Expedition, and the flies that carp love. His descriptions are keen, biting, and staggeringly honest. On a long trip to Patagonia where he somehow has angered the fishing gods, he feels “. . . like a nasty strip of carpet lying by the highway . . . .” Duda captures the hell we have all been in as anglers where everything that could go wrong seemingly does. Yet, in the end, we find ourselves “in the middle of nothing, in the middle of everything,” because that’s where fly fishing, thankfully, takes us.

“It Pleases Me, Loving Rivers” is a love song to Port Angeles where “everyone fishes” and where Duda spends a whole season trying to “find” Raymond Carver, who lived there until he was diagnosed with cancer, passing away just a year later after moving just outside of town. With the same ease as throwing a roll cast, Duda takes us from a simple story about a fishing town and out into a deep river of literary criticism, biography, and meditation on fly fishing as escapism. This piece explores our need for and love of distractions, and takes us into the dark waters where we finally understand that “sometimes even fishing cannot save us from the unfortunate events that life deals.”

Duda is able to make anything into a lesson on humanity and how to be a good angler without ever coming across as didactically dogmatic. We read these essays for the same reason we go fishing with a good buddy, because it’s a great way to spend time and hopefully learn something new about the world or ourselves.

One of my favorite essays, “Burning Pram,” considers the fact that “ultimately, we all fish alone,” so we are stuck with the relentless chattering of our brains. Yet fishing somehow knocks us out of our own way. When we go to the water, we begin to listen, to notice. This essay, for me, feels like an exemplification of that great Mary Oliver quote: “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” Yes, we go to the rivers to catch fish, but to really fish, we must find those moments that free us enough from our daily doldrums to rejoice in a communal experience with others and the vibrant lives around us. This is what constitutes “real life”; sharing love and joy. Ultimately, Duda realizes, when we fish, we inevitably find community and “. . . go to awesome places with our friends and make friends with places that are awesome.” Yes, yes we do.

Steve Duda is a master storyteller, and these essays are full of his unique humor and sharp wit. River Songs is a book, much like Russell Chatham’s Dark Waters, that I’ll always keep in my truck so I can read it while sitting on my tailgate eating an Italian sub waiting for Sulphurs to hatch. It’ll be the book I give to all my fishing buddies for their birthdays, it’ll be the book I return to again and again to remind myself why I spend so much of this life staring at blue lines on maps and sitting next to a good friend streamside trying to read something as mysterious and elusive as water.




GET THE NEWSLETTER Join the List and Never Miss a Thing.

Recommended Articles

Recent Videos

From Patagonia: “Each time we remove a dam, life comes rushing back in. For years, we've known that dams are lethal. Now...
Destinations/Species

Simms Presents - Destination: Skeena

From Patagonia: “Each time we remove a dam, life comes rushing back in. For years, we've known that dams are lethal. Now...
News

Just Do It: Nike and Drake Plunge into Fly Fishing

From Patagonia: “Each time we remove a dam, life comes rushing back in. For years, we've known that dams are lethal. Now...
News

Abel x Nocta Fly Reel

From Patagonia: “Each time we remove a dam, life comes rushing back in. For years, we've known that dams are lethal. Now...
How-To/Techniques

G. Loomis's “Feel Connected” Episode 2: "Rolled Up"

From Patagonia: “Each time we remove a dam, life comes rushing back in. For years, we've known that dams are lethal. Now...
Gear

How to Tie Chicone's Magnum Mantis Fly

From Patagonia: “Each time we remove a dam, life comes rushing back in. For years, we've known that dams are lethal. Now...
How-To/Techniques

Fly Tier's Bench: How to Tie Egan's Poacher

From Patagonia: “Each time we remove a dam, life comes rushing back in. For years, we've known that dams are lethal. Now...
How-To/Techniques

Small Stream Hopper Fishing

From Patagonia: “Each time we remove a dam, life comes rushing back in. For years, we've known that dams are lethal. Now...
Destinations/Species

The Tightest Line

From Patagonia: “Each time we remove a dam, life comes rushing back in. For years, we've known that dams are lethal. Now...
How-To/Techniques

How to Tie Craven's Mr. Jones Dry Fly

From Patagonia: “Each time we remove a dam, life comes rushing back in. For years, we've known that dams are lethal. Now...
How-To/Techniques

How to Tie Craven's Mr. Jones Dry Fly

From Patagonia: “Each time we remove a dam, life comes rushing back in. For years, we've known that dams are lethal. Now...
How-To/Techniques

How to Fight Trout Effectively and Get them in the Net Quickly

From Patagonia: “Each time we remove a dam, life comes rushing back in. For years, we've known that dams are lethal. Now...
News

Patagonia Advocates for Dam Removal

Fly Fisherman Magazine Covers Print and Tablet Versions

GET THE MAGAZINE Subscribe & Save

Digital Now Included!

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Give a Gift   |   Subscriber Services

PREVIEW THIS MONTH'S ISSUE

Buy Digital Single Issues

Magazine App Logo

Don't miss an issue.
Buy single digital issue for your phone or tablet.

Get the Fly Fisherman App apple store google play store

Other Magazines

See All Other Magazines

Special Interest Magazines

See All Special Interest Magazines

GET THE NEWSLETTER Join the List and Never Miss a Thing.

Get the top Fly Fisherman stories delivered right to your inbox.

Phone Icon

Get Digital Access.

All Fly Fisherman subscribers now have digital access to their magazine content. This means you have the option to read your magazine on most popular phones and tablets.

To get started, click the link below to visit mymagnow.com and learn how to access your digital magazine.

Get Digital Access

Not a Subscriber?
Subscribe Now

Enjoying What You're Reading?

Get a Full Year
of Guns & Ammo
& Digital Access.

Offer only for new subscribers.

Subscribe Now

Never Miss a Thing.

Get the Newsletter

Get the top Fly Fisherman stories delivered right to your inbox.

By signing up, I acknowledge that my email address is valid, and have read and accept the Terms of Use