If you are a carp fisher-person, you will like this book. Why? Because it is beautifully illustrated, and printed on glossy paper that feels good to touch. It is also highly informative: We learn that carp are the most intelligent of fish, easily rejecting your bait after it – the carp - has been caught (kissed and returned) a couple of times. However, they must feel relative comfort in the knowledge that what ever else happens, they will be put back into their wet domain – if they are British carp, that is. In most of the other places they are dinner. In Waterloo, Iowa, USA, some years ago, which Nedra and I were visiting, they were dinner for the ospreys; the civic- minded citizen-fisherpersons of the town wanted to clean them out of the river in order to give native species a chance to survive. Introduced into the US in the middle eighteen hundreds, it soon became apparent that they were destroying the spawning beds of the highly regarded native species, and operations began to seine them from the waters they inhabited, and to throw them up on the bank to rot, in order to make it apparent to anglers that the Departments of Fisheries were doing their job.

Carp came from China, made their way to Europe in tanks, and provide profoundest pleasure for millions of fishing-folk in Britain today who prefer to eat a vindaloo rather than a carp fillet, all of whom harbour the deepest desire to catch a fifty pound carp. But serious conflict has already arisen as large numbers of Poles have arrived on British shores, among them many fisher-persons, fisher-persons who eat their carp rather than kiss it good-bye. It is unlikely that these uncouth foreigners would have the compassion to apply medication to a carp’s mouth in order to heal a wound caused by a hook. Page 79 of this remarkable book shows it being done.

When you get hold of this book you are in good company. Ladle has a doctorate in marine biology, and Masters got his PhD doing research on Pike. So obviously between them all there is to know, they know, and they convey it in this beautifully done volume, replete with colour photographs. It’s hard for an American fisher-person to see these marvellous creatures as "coarse." They are anything but. My first big fishing trip, to northern Minnesota, within miles of the Canadian border, was for pike, and zander, and we travelled 1700 miles to get there. And what we caught, we ate. I was camp cook. The five of us ate ravenously. But I have two regrets: that we didn’t catch more of them, and that this book wasn’t then available, so that we would have caught more of them. As it happened, there was just one. It weighed eight pounds, and took a silver spoon that was dangling in the water next to the canoe while Bob worked to untangle his line. There were zander, which we call wall-eyed pike, or for short, wall-eyes, which we also ate with alacrity – I’m passing on the message to coarse anglers in Britain who think zander are "coarse." They make great eating. Try doing them on a fly rod.

And should you want to become even further involved, turn to the back of the book, and under "Further Reading", you will find a whole page of suggestions, including scientific papers, scientific research, journals and conference proceedings, and basic accounts. Now that should keep you busy for a while.

Pike, we learn, generally stick close to the bank, that fewer weeds equal fewer pike, and that not every pike is catchable.

Mr Potts begins his epic journey on sporting rifles in his introduction, providing an insight into what rifles are and do, and then proceeds to look at the quarry, rabbits, hare, squirrel, and birds, usually thought to be targets for a shotgun, but as Mr Potts suggests, there is no reason why crows, magpies and pigeons can’t be shot with a rifle. He then goes onto deer, telling about each of the species to be found in Britain, both natives and imports. He then goes on to clothing, mentioning an obvious fact, which until he mentioned it, was not obvious to me: that camouflage is "non-politically correct," in the sense that you stand out to non-shooters who see you as some kind of terrorist, bearing in mind that you are carrying a firearm. Far from looking like a terrorist in such get-up, the actual terrorist looks more like they do.

If you are doing your own gralloching you will want to carry a packet of disposable gloves. Mr Potts says that binoculars are the most important item you will carry next to your rifle and ammunition, which needs to be fog proof, shockproof and waterproof. He then goes into vermin class rifles, fox rifles and deer rifles, with ballistics following, sound moderators, reloading and much more. This is a very thorough work that puts you in the picture, and in the know. It answers the questions you didn’t know you needed to ask.

"A well-trained dog is the best companion that you, as a shooting man, can have." As the title suggests, this book is devoted to training and handling working gun dogs, starting with the right choice of puppy or young dog, (matching personalities as much as possible) and going on to discussing training the dog, while developing its natural instincts to serve you; building character (both you and the dog, really); adjusting your puppy to family life (without it becoming confused between family play and proper training) and all the while being sure that you are training the dog, and the dog isn’t training you! . Mr Deeley then goes into more detail, covering topics such as directional training, following a scent, introducing live game, keeping your dog fit and healthy, and much more.

Mr Deeley is aware that training is a two-way process and, to quote him, "You are going to manage and train not only the dog, but also yourself and maybe other people around as well", and further, that "Today’s partnership between dog and man should be based on mutual respect and understanding." According to him, both partners benefit from a well-trained dog: the dog should perform in a way that pleases its master/mistress, and in so doing gain pleasure for itself.

Mr Deeley writes in a friendly, chatty way, making the reader feel that he is a caring friend who is an expert in his field. The book is very nicely produced, is easy to read, and perhaps its most outstanding feature is the illustrations: over 120 colour photographs and more than forty helpful diagrams. Special note should be taken of the appendix that contains clearly designed diagrams illustrating training exercises. The book is highly recommended for its clarity and its ability to hold the reader’s attention throughout. (Reviewed by Nedra Du Broff)

This amazing little book will fit nicely into your pocket or fishing bag, and will soon become an essential part of your kit. In the small amount of space that it takes up, it packs more than a pocket-full of vital information. The actual insect is shown, which you might be observing, and the artificial fly that imitates it, bearing in mind that once the fly gets wet it will look different from when it was dry. It then shows you in which months this insect hatches, a silhouette of the actual size, where in Britain it hatches, and whether its domain is on a stream, still water, or both, and all of this on a page that measures just six inches by five. Further, the life cycle of the naturals you will meet on the water you are fishing, is illustrated, and the rise forms of the trout as they feed on their differing prey. We are indebted to the authors for producing an important work that will make us into better fisher-persons, and insure that more fish wind up in the frying pan.

Sutkus is a stateless Lithuanian, living in East Prussia, and like large numbers of Lithuanians, enthusiastically supports the German Nazis. He winds up as a sniper on the eastern front, boasts about the number of Russians he has killed. For those of us on the other side, it is difficult to be sympathetic toward him or his aims, and we wonder why Frontline Books has gone to the trouble of publishing this work. We would much rather have heard the exploits of a Russian sniper, who served our interests as well as the interests of the Soviet Union, our ally. Let us remind ourselves that were it not for the efforts of the Soviet Union, many of us would not be here now. A hundred and fifty German divisions confronted the Soviet Union on an 1800-mile front, from north to south, while the Allies, on the Western front, faced just 59 divisions. The German Army was propped up by large numbers from much of the rest of Europe; besides Lithuanians, the Dutch sent along the biggest contingent, and even little Denmark supplied its share of Nazi-supporting soldiers.

And so, when things begin to turn, and the Russians clean up on the Nazi garbage, the Lithuanians included, Sutkus isn’t too happy, on several occasions just missing out on being executed, which this reader deeply regrets – regrets, that is, that he wasn’t executed.

© Sidney Du Broff 2010