Book Review: Dan Smith’s “The 20 Greatest Fishing Trips on Earth”
I’ve been jealous of Dan Smith for a while. It’s not just that he’s fished more cool places than I have, but also that he got the idea for a fishing travel website long before we did. I’ve made clear that while we didn’t copy him per se, his site was one of the best we found when we started publishing, and as such we always used it as a benchmark for what we’ve become.
Now he’s ahead of me again, having published a hardback book, “The 20 Greatest Fishing Trips on Earth.” While I’ve ghostwritten two books, I’ve never penned one in my own name, about my passions. I’m not really sure that most people even read books anymore, but I do, and I treasure the ones that speak to me like this one.
Dan has certainly been on more than 20 trips – some of them to places we’ve fished like Costa Rica, Zambia, Brazil and Alaska. He’s also been to places that are high on my list, like Jurassic Lake in Argentina, Baja Mexico, and Australia. He mixes those in nicely, but also made me want to visit places that weren’t previously high on my agenda, including Oman and Mongolia. Ideally, a travel book like this one should be a warts-and-all description of his journeys, unfiltered, that helps you determine what you want and don’t want in your upcoming trips. Even if you’ll never go to any of these places, it should help you understand how they affected the author. In that respect, Dan is quite successful. It certainly helps that it’s readable and loaded with full-color pictures of exotic and semi-exotic species, but beyond that, I want you to understand why this is a great read for beginning and experienced fishing travelers alike. Here are seven of my top reasons:
He's not in a silo – Dan doesn’t limit himself to freshwater or saltwater. It’s not just fly fishing, or conventional fishing, or artificials only. He takes it all in, and chases the most interesting bite, rather than just a single type of experience. There’s nothing wrong with doing the latter, but I can honestly say that since transforming from bass-only to a more inclusive worldview I’ve become a happier and better angler. It’s a judgment-free zone and that encourages exploration.
It’s about fishing first – Dan has been to a lot of beautiful places, a lot of culturally-significant places and had some amazing brushes with nature, but as he plans his trips, it seems that fishing matters above all else. He provides a ranking system for destinations, which includes factors such as fishing action, trophy potential, variety of species, ease of access and others, so you can make your own judgments, but it’s clear that the driving force in his decisions about where to go is what he’ll chase and how he’ll chase them.
He’s not sponsored – Unlike just about everyone else in the fishing industry (mea culpa), Dan has no sponsors. He’s not going on junkets, or to show off a new product. Quite to the contrary, if he says a product or a place is noteworthy, he means it, and he’s not afraid to say when something is subpar. Where our travel experiences have overlapped geographically, I’ve found his statements to be accurate.
He’s not limited by accommodations – It’s great to stay in five-star lodges, approach virgin waters by helicopter, and have sherpas to carry your gear, if that’s what you’re all about, but go back to bullet number one: For Dan, it’s all about the fishing. If that means an uncomfortable trip in a leaky jon boat up an Amazonian tributary, he’s going to go if he thinks the fishing will thrill him. Tents are ok, but so are plush lodges. Based on how much he travels, it appears he has the budget to do what he wants, but he goes on plenty of trips that you don’t need to be a bigtime CEO to afford, and plenty where the creature comforts are limited.
He’s willing to just pick up and go – I’ll admit that I’m an over-researcher. I want to know everything about a place and to have a significant chance of success before I plunk down my money to go someplace. There’s nothing wrong with that, and Dan has done plenty of research, but he also has a slightly more carefree attitude in many cases – going on trips on the promise of greatness.
He's not afraid to fail – That risk-taking booking strategy I described above? It leads to some epic excursions, but it has also led to some miserable ones. He takes that in stride, writing about the failures as much as the triumphs. If you’re going to fish, and going to travel, that’s part of the game. I hate it when a place doesn’t live up to my expectations, and I tend to be grumpy when that happens, but it’s part of the processes, and it’s more than just a cliché to say that the occasional tough trips makes the great ones even that much sweeter.
People matter, but not entirely – I’m fortunate to have a wife who likes to fish, so I often have a built-in travel partner. I also have a fair number of friends who like to fish, some of whom have the desire and the means to travel to do it. Dan likewise sometimes travels with family members or friends, but he’s also willing to fly halfway around the world solo to insert himself into a group of anglers who may not speak English. Being in a boat with strangers, whether they’re family, fellow anglers or guides, is an equalizing process, and you can tell from reading the book that in his extensive travels he’s become more aware, more understanding and more curious about the world around us.
Dan’s website is “How to Catch Any Fish”
Click here and scroll down to order the hardcover version of the book (I strongly recommend it over the eBook).
If you’d prefer the eBook on Amazon, click here.
If you’d prefer the eBook on Apple, click here.
