Reeling In Russia: An American Angler In Russia

by Fen Montaigne

In the summer of 1996, award-winning journalist Fen Montaigne embarked on a hundred-day, seven-thousand-mile journey across Russia. Traveling with his fly rod, he began his trek in northwestern Russia on the Solovetsky Islands, a remote archipelago that was the birthplace of Stalin's gulag. He ended half a world away as he fished for steelhead trout on the Kamchatka Peninsula, on the shores of the Pacific.

His tales of visiting these far-flung rivers are memorable, and at heart, Reeling in Russia is far more than a story of an angling journey. It is a humorous and moving account of his adventures in the madhouse that is Russia today, and a striking portrait that highlights the humanity and tribulations of its people.

In the end, the reader is left with the memory of haunted northern landscapes, of vivid sunsets over distant rivers, of the crumbling remains of pre-Revolutionary estates, and a cast of dogged Russians struggling to build a life amid the rubble of the Communist regime.

Genres: Travel, Russia, Nonfiction, Memoir

304 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 1998

About the author

Fen Montaigne is a journalist and author whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, National Geographic, Outside, Smithsonian, and The Wall Street Journal. A former Moscow bureau chief of The Philadelphia Inquirer, he is the author of Reeling in Russia and has co-authored two other books. For his work on Fraser’s Penguins, Montaigne was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006. He now works as senior editor of the online magazine Yale Environment 360.

Reviews

[Josh]

I got way more than I bargained for with this book. Montaigne's descriptions of people and places are wonderfully vivid. I feel as though I was along with him on his journey across the largest nation on Earth. There were many times where reading about his experiences made me never want to visit Russia, but immediately afterwards there would be something so compelling as to completely reverse that decision. The book's title is somewhat misleading, as I expected this to be a book strictly about fishing in various parts of Russia. What I got instead was magnificently better than I could ever have dreamed. A must read for Russophiles.

[sarai]

fen is a braver person than me for actually trawling through the nitty gritty back end of post soviet russia. but my god he is a horrible fly fisher lol

(also i'm not sure how i feel about how he talks about women. of course i'm sure that at least part of this is due to the unique form of russian chauvinism - the idea that russian women are the backbone of the society /because/ they have to put up with what the men do to them - but the way he describes individual women still rubbed me the wrong way at least a little bit. to be fair he does also describe in detail the appearance of most of the men he encounters as well.)

[Mary]

fly fishing
12 time zones of Russia and as many adventures and insights into a world I will never get to experience myself.
beautiful writing.

[Laurie]

Interesting travel book of rural Russia in 1990's.

[Joe Lorenz]

Right book at the right time for me. I could see it as a four. A 5 if you are interested in post soviet raw Russian travel. Good book

[Michael Llewellyn]

Fen Montaigne was Moscow Bureau Chief for the Philadelphia Inquirer before trekking from the White Sea across Siberia to Kamchatka on the Pacific coast. His goal was fly fishing (hence the title’s double entendre), but the book is much more about people and places than sturgeon. The author visits faraway spots few outsiders have seen and delivers a litany of human wretchedness in the wake of imploded communism. Much is made of Russia’s ferocious alcoholism. “The countryside is awash in an 80 proof (vodka) sea, and there is no hope.” One elderly Baikal salesclerk says, “Son, there has not been one period in my entire life when we lived well. Not one. These days a lot of us are just waiting to slip into the grave.” But there are glimmers of optimism in some of Montaigne’s human connections and his descriptions of Russia’s natural wonders--albeit grossly endangered-- are breathtaking. His visit to Kolyma, the most remote and infamous of Stalin’s gulags, is haunting and hideous, a study in human detritus. The book was published in 1998, but owing to Tsar Putin’s current disdain for human rights, it remains a fair portrait of a deeply troubled nation. So do the words of the Marquis de Custine written over 200 years ago: “The Russians have rotted before they have ripened.”

[Dianne Oliver]

This man's travels and insights into Russia (1998) are fascinating, good humored and eye-opening. The tales of how Russia has fared in the aftermath of the USSR is sobering. Not an overly sporty book, though it includes this reporter's exploits as a fly fisherman, I found it immensely interesting. Reading about the people and places I have recently explored in the documentary by an actor motorcycling through Russia added to the delight.

[Tom]

You might like this even if you aren't a trout fisherman. It really ends up being more about Russia than the fishing there. I'm not much of a fan of travelogues, but this was good.