What’s almost as good as going fishing? Hearing, telling, and swapping great fish stories. Shaun Morey is a fisherman, a connoisseur of fish stories, and a journalist with a novelist’s eye (and vice versa) in this collection of over 100 incredible (and true!) fishing stories. Here are Remarkable Catches—like the time Billy Sandifer caught a 1,000-pound tiger shark in the surf (he released it after nabbing a souvenir tooth). Grueling Battles—like Bob Ploeger’s record-breaking 37-hour fight with a Pacific salmon. Hilarious Feats of Bravery, like the exploits of Matt Watson, who leapt out of a helicopter to land on the back of a marlin. And, in what can only be considered poetic justice, Shocking Acts of Fish Aggression, like Mitchell Lee Franklin’s visit to the emergency room with a 5-pound catfish attached to his chest via an impaled dorsal fin. Includes illustrations, photos, and links to videos on the author’s website.

From a grueling 37-hour fight with a Pacific salmon to the maimed fisherman whose severed thumb turned up in the belly of a Mackinaw trout. From extraordinary marlin quests to hair-raising tales of "fish catches man," here are fishing's 80 most unpredictable and spectacular tales. To get them, Shaun Morey-a fanatical fisherman and inveterate story collector-traveled from Alaska to Australia, Mexico, and the Caribbean to interview anglers, boat captains, guides and witnesses; to dig up photographs, and to confirm each tale. You'll read about Captain Jimmy Lewis who, in a moment of sheer bravado (or insanity), speared by hand-and landed-a 1,600-pound hammerhead shark. Or Bob Smith, fulfilling his twenty-year quest to catch all forty species of North America's wild trout on the bitter cold morning after his eighty-first birthday. Or the 800-pound blue marlin that made a final lunge-ripping up the deck and dragging a chair, with Paul Clause strapped in it, to the bottom of the ocean. (Paul survived; so did the marlin.) Truth is stranger than fiction.

True stories of spectacular catches made by "kids."

Kreh, the Johnny Cash of fly-fishing writers ("Baltimore Sun"), takes his readers on an angling journey through the last half-century. He relates tales of fishing expeditions with Fidel Castro as well as solo battles with some of the most elusive fish in the world. 10 color photos.

The Greatest Fishing Stories Ever Toldis sure to ignite recollections of your own angling experiences as well as send your imagination adrift. In this compilation of tales you will read about two kinds of places, the ones you have been to before and love to remember, and the places you have only dreamed of going, and would love to visit. Whether you prefer to fish rivers, estuaries, or beaches, this book will take you to all kinds of water, where you'll experience catching every kind of fish.Read on as some of the sport's most talented writers recount their personal memories of catching bass, trout, bluefish marlin, tuna, and more. You'll read about all kinds of fish, and all kinds of fishermen in these pages. Explore the Pacific with Zane Grey, as he fights a 1,000-pound blue marlin, or listen as A.J. McClane explains just what it really means to be an angler. Take a step back in time when you read Ernie Schwiebert's tale of fishing a remote lake in Michigan, when he was still only a young boy. Each of these stories, selected because of its intrinsic literary worth, reinforces the unique personal connection that fishing creates between man and nature.

The daredevil who leaped from a helicopter onto the back of a marlin and rode it rodeo-style. A staggering 3,001 bass caught in a single short summer season on Long Island. A grueling 37-hour fight with Pacific salmon. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction! From crazy billfish quests to the scientist who hooked a grizzly, from "fish catches man" horror stories to those nutty catfish noodlers who grope into the murkiest holes bare-handed, her are fishing's most unpredictable and spectacular tales. Shaun Morey traveled the world—including Alaska, Australia, Mexico, and the Caribbean—to interview anglers, boat captains, guides, and witnesses who can say: Yes, this really happened! Includes illustrations, photos, and links to videos.

A tale of obsession and very big fish from Jeremy Wade, the presenter of ITV's RIVER MONSTERS. Over ten feet long, it weighs in at nearly a quarter of a ton. Covering its back are armoured plates made of bone. Five hundred stiletto-sharp teeth line its long crocodilian jaws. It's a prehistoric beast of staggering proportions; a fearsome creature from the time of the dinosaurs. But the Alligator Gar, an air-breathing survivor from the Cretaceous period is still with us today, patrolling inland rivers, hunting in murky waters shared by human communities. And for Jeremy Wade, described as the 'greatest angling explorer of his generation', the Gar and other outlandish freshwater predators have been an obsession for all his adult life. With names like Arapaima, Snakehead, Goonch, Goliath Tigerfish and Electric Eel, many of them have acquired an almost mythical status. In a quest that has taken him from the Amazon to the Congo, and from North America to the mountains of India, Wade has pursued the truth about these little known, often misunderstood animals. Along the way he's survived a plane crash, malaria and a fish-inflicted blow to the chest that, according to a later scan, caused permanent scarring to his heart. In RIVER MONSTERS, Wade delivers a sometimes jaw-dropping blend of adventure, natural history, legend and detective work. It reads like a hunt for the Loch Ness Monster. But it's all true. These are fisherman's tales like you've never heard before. The stories of the ones that didn't get away ...