Signed by the author on the title page. First Edition, First Printing.

"The secret places are the soul of fishing.... It may be a private spring creek with armed guards where there are huge browns and lots of them, or it may just be an unknown beaver pond where a handful of book trout have grown to a whopping eleven inches. In either case, it's a spot that, by the simple virtue of being left more or less alone, has reached is full potential." So begins this brilliant short book, in which half a dozen such places are featured. There is a pool made memorable because it is part of a risky childhood adventure; hidden local streams; sections of a wealthy ranch; secret stretches - full of rattlesnakes - and private ponds with trout as long as your leg. All are made magically vivid by Gierach's special prose - and all stand starkly against a more public natural world increasingly threatened with ecological disaster.