Hello everybody and welcome back to the backcountry hunters and anglers podcast and

blast I'm Hal Herring and I wanted to record a short

introduction to today's podcast with a literary hero of mine. Thomas

McQuane is one of the most outstanding men of letters of

our time, lifelong hunter and fisherman conservationist essay as screenwriter, novelist, the list goes on and on and I didn't want to waste Tom

McGuain's time with this long introduction. So I'm bringing it here.

McLean was born in 1939 in YINOT, Michigan

and he was a pioneer of tarp and fishing in the keys with his friends.

There was a literary circle there of the beautiful poet and

writer Jim Harrison whom a lot of people know it was a circle of people who were

pioneering hunting and fishing in the 1970s in particular and they've just

kept that up. Jim Harrison of course passed away a couple of years ago. He once said

of McGuain that he was the best writer on fishing ever

Which allowed to sink that in a little bit given the incredible history of fishing writing

But beyond that, McQuain was the author also of three

collection of essays, which are seminal texts really for outdoor enthusiasts of any sort.

The now an outside chance which was published in 1981 but

included about 10 years of work. The longest silence, which is really a treatise on fishing.

One of my favorite essays ever written by anybody is Small Streams in Michigan, which is included in that, the longest silence.

And it carries, it runs a gamut of drought fishing to the title essay,

the longest silence, which is about tarpin fishing off the keys.

There's also a third collection called Some Horses which delves into McGWane's lifelong fascination

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