Fishing books have three main purposes: 1 to get novices up to to speed, 2 for the hardened angler to improve his or her skill and 3 for recreational reading. Below are some examples.

For the novice, a useful, cheap and readable book is "Begin Fishing, The Right Way" (paperback) by Ian Ball and at only £3.50 you can't go wrong.

The book is written in clear English. There’re no coloured pictures but the line drawings are adequate.

A good book for the complete novice and there're others in The Right Way series.

For the hardened angler there're too many books in print to give them all justice in these few lines.

However, if you want to understand advanced rigs and more experience carp fishing techniques then Julian Cundliff's book called “Successful Carp Fishing” is a good start but it's probably out of print now (hardback, circa £8.00)

For recreational reading again there are too many books around but I’ll just give two examples. “Fish, Fishing and the Meaning of Life” (paperback) by Jeremy Paxman is a great bedtime read.

You can dip in to any section and read a great short (true) story.

This is a good book. RRP is £10.99 but you can pick it up much cheaper on Amazon. (ISBN-13 978-0140237412)

If you want to dip in at the deep end and do over night reading then I can recommend “A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth” (paperback, 240 pages, Harper Paperbacks, February 6 2001) by Samantha Weinberg.

This is the true story about the discovery of the “coelacanth” a long thought to be extinct fish, but now celebrated as one of the world’s oldest species.


Hope this helps and let me know if you can recommend a good read.

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