Fishing Stories nets an abundant catch of wonderful writing in a wide variety of genres and styles. The moods range from the rollicking humor of Rudyard Kipling's "On Dry-Cow Fishing as a Fine Art" and the rural gothic of Annie Proulx's "The Wer-Trout" to the haunting elegy of Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It."

Many of these tales celebrate human bonds forged over a rod, including Guy de Maupassant's "Two Friends," Jimmy Carter's "Fishing with My Daddy," and an excerpt from Ernest Hemingway's The Garden of Eden. Some deal in reverence and romance, as in Roland...