The classic Western author’s riveting tales of his encounters fishing in the deep sea

Zane Grey (1872-1939) is best remembered for his novels of the Old West. His most successful work, Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), displays many classic features of the genre, including cattle-rustling, horse-theft, kidnapping, and gunfights.

Tales of Fishes, first published in 1919, reflects one of Grey’s favorite hobbies: deep-sea fishing. (His son claimed that Grey spent 300 days out of the year fishing.) This vivid and exciting book describes his encounters with various big-sea fish, including tarpon, sailfish, marlin, big tuna, and the broadbill swordfish, “the gladiator of the sea.”

Grey’s love of the sport shines at every moment of this luminous book. Describing his fight with a tarpon, he writes: “Five times he sprang toward the blue sky, and as many he plunged down with a thunderous crash. The reel screamed. The line sang. The rod, which I had thought stiff as a tree, bent like a willow wand.”

Throughout this book, Grey emphasizes the tremendous strength and skill required to catch fish that often weigh several hundred pounds. At one point, the blisters on his hands keep him from fishing for three days. But hardships never keep him from these intense encounters with wildness at its most powerful.

Grey also displays a strong and principled sportsmanship. He complains about the use of heavy tackle, which skews the game against the fish and which he finds unsporting.

Equally compelling are the characters that Grey fishes with: his brother and companion R.C.; his guide Attalano, with “a cheering figure, lithe and erect, with a springy stride, bespeaking the Montezuma blood said to flow in his Indian veins”; and an English nobleman “who never thought of himself. Hardship to him was nothing.”

One day, Grey remarks, “What sport I would have; what treasure of keen sensation would I store; what flavor of life would I taste this day! Hope burns always in the heart of a fisherman.”

Over 100 years later, Grey’s account of “the royal purple game of the sea” will mesmerize anyone who has ever gone deep-sea fishing—or even imagined it.