We'd be hard put to decide whether Barry Fisher is better at fishing or storytelling. The three stories in this book are rollicking gems, salty as a flake of cod set out to dry. "A Wharf Rat's Tale" takes us to Gloucester, Massachusetts, a town where, "if you didn't go fishing, you got out of town." It was a fascinating, adventurous place for a boy in the late '30s, as young Barry and his pals pick up odd jobs on the wharves, repair a beat-up dory, hang out with the schooner crews, and take up fishing themselves, catching the fattest flounders at the sewer outfall in the harbor.

Barry Fisher went offshore dory-fishing for real when he was eighteen, and "A Doryman's Day," he says now, is "as accurate as my old mind can make it." He describes fishing longline trawl gear from Grand Banks dories launched off the deck of a schooner in wonderful detail and paints a vivid picture of a working day in a fishery straight out of history. A few years later, he went on a late-season swordfishing trip, dory-fishing from a schooner with a crew betting against the weather and the odds that they'd come home with a catch. "Mysterious Ways of the Lord, or How Captain Jack Brant of the Swordfishing Schooner lorna b Found God in a Split Second and then Achieved Salvation on the Northern Edge of George's Bank" gives you just a hint of the story to come.