Trout Culture: How Fly Fishing Forever Changed the Rocky Mountain West

by Jen Corrinne Brown

Overview

From beer labels to literary classics like A River Runs Through It, trout fishing is a beloved feature of the iconography of the American West. But as Jen Brown demonstrates in Trout Culture: How Fly Fishing Forever Changed the Rocky Mountain West, the popular conception of Rocky Mountain trout fishing as a quintessential experience of communion with nature belies the sport’s long history of environmental manipulation, engineering, and, ultimately, transformation.

A fly-fishing enthusiast herself, Brown places the rise of recreational trout fishing in a local and global context. Globally, she shows how the European sport of fly-fishing came to be a defining, tourist-attracting feature of the expanding 19th-century American West. Locally, she traces the way that the burgeoning fly-fishing tourist industry shaped the environmental, economic, and social development of the Western United States: introducing and stocking favored fish species, eradicating the less favored native “trash fish,” changing the courses of waterways, and leading to conflicts with Native Americans’ fishing and territorial rights. Through this analysis, Brown demonstrates that the majestic trout streams often considered a timeless feature of the American West are in fact the product of countless human interventions adding up to a profound manipulation of the Rocky Mountain environment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKMwEkKj9jg

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295805818
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	05/01/2015
Series:	Emil and Kathleen Sick Book Series in Western History and Biography
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jen Corrinne Brown is professional assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Headwaters

2. Trout Empire

3. Trout Culture

4. Trash Fish

5. Lunkers

6. Wild Trout

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Michael W. Childers

"A truly intriguing argument that reshapes our understanding of the region, its environment, and culture. Features a wealth of original research."

William Philpott

"In wonderfully approachable prose Jen Corrinne Brown guides readers through the many environmental manipulations that were needed to create the mountain states' renowned trout fisheries. In the process, she ties fly-fishing into the wider history of outdoor recreation and environmental change in the West, giving anyone who loves the region or the sport much food for thought."

Paul Schullery

"Jen Corrine Brown's timely and well-researched Trout Culture should become a key feature of the national conversation over the ecological, economic, and recreational future of western rivers. Whether we knew it or not, we have been waiting for this book."

Annie Gilbert Coleman

"A welcome and clear-eyed history of Rocky Mountain fly fishing, Trout Culture links the growth of the sport and its passionate following to western tourism, and, most importantly, to a history of fish management and environmental change that reveals the significant and often troubling results of our fascination with trout. Fishing enthusiasts and western historians alike should read this book; they will never look at a trout stream the same way again."

Interviews

Starting in the 1860s and continuing for over a century, fish culturalists and anglers introduced new fish species and stocked billions of hatchery trout in western waters. In narrating this history, I demonstrate that the iconography of western fly fishing and the nostalgia for majestic trout streams was not a timeless feature of the West, but rather the product of anglers, fisheries managers, tourists, guides, local business people, and regional boosters and their century-long profound manipulation of the Rocky Mountain environment. This manuscript situates these changing historical developments within various scales, from the local and watershed levels to national conservation policy and a transnational angling culture. By shifting the geographical framework in a way that addresses multiple scales of environmental change, this manuscript moves western history beyond the provincialism of many place histories and the determinism of strictly bioregional approaches. By doing so, it allows historians to circumvent the dichotomy of process versus place that has dominated western historiography. In addition, by examining how local places and people shaped national and transnational developments in fisheries conservation, a clearer picture of western conservation emerges, one that does not match the recent historiographic thrust of conservation history that has centered on its elite character.This manuscript has the potential to reach a broad audience beyond western and environmental historians and their students. It should furnish important context and background to the current work of many western conservationists, fisheries biologists, and fisheries managers. The focus on fly fishing will tap into this large readership of fly fishers and fly-fishing tourists.

Editorial Reviews

"[A] remarkable book. Brown’s pithy, beautifully written prose conveys an important message: that anglers and managers need to stop imagining western lakes and rivers as wild places and start thinking about how the human history of Rocky Mountain trout has had a disastrous impact on ecologically significant native species that genteel recreationists too readily deemed ‘trash fish.’"

Western Historical Quarterly - Miles Powell

"Trout Culture appealingly recounts the complex dance of environmental and social changes that led to the western icon. . . . A valuable, clear, and timely contribution. . . . Trout Culture is an excellent, engaging book that will appeal to scholars and general readers alike"

Environmental History - Terence Young

"Readable and thought-provoking. . . . The author does not sugarcoat the story of trout fishing in the West, and she deserves credit for being a voice for the native fish of all species that existed prior to human attempts to change nature’s plan and for documenting how the trout and angling opportunities we have in the Rocky Mountain West came to be."

Montana - James Thull

"Engaging, perceptive, interpretive, meticulously researched and documented. . . . This careful delineation and assessment of the evolution of western trout culture will be valuable for those interested in the history of the American West as well as students of science and aquaculture."

Choice

"This is a well-researched, richly detailed history of trout and trout fishing in the Mountain West that, as the author promises, 'overturns the biggest fish story ever told.'"

Wall Street Journal - John Gierach

"This is a well-researched, richly detailed history of trout and trout fishing in the Mountain West that, as the author promises, 'overturns the biggest fish story ever told.'"—John Gierach, Wall Street Journal

"Engaging, perceptive, interpretive, meticulously researched and documented. . . . This careful delineation and assessment of the evolution of western trout culture will be valuable for those interested in the history of the American West as well as students of science and aquaculture."—Choice

"[A] remarkable book. Brown's pithy, beautifully written prose conveys an important message: that anglers and managers need to stop imagining western lakes and rivers as wild places and start thinking about how the human history of Rocky Mountain trout has had a disastrous impact on ecologically significant native species that genteel recreationists too readily deemed 'trash fish.'"—Miles Powell, Western Historical Quarterly

From the Publisher