It’s a daunting project that Project Gutenberg & Google has undertaken, scanning all the books in the world and making them available online. It’s not without incident considering they already incurred $124 million in infringed copyrights – but they’re forging ahead undaunted.

With Amazon’s Kindle creating quite the stir over Christmas, and competitors lining up to enter similar products into the mix – it appears we’ll have the opportunity to add to our fishing library virtually.

As my vision is on the wane – I can’t admit to comfort while straining over a dimly backlit screen, but it’s likely to intrude more each decade.

There’s quite a few famous angling tomes already available, and many out of print classics that are unavailable to anyone other than collectors.

George Kelson – The Salmon Fly, how to Dress it and how to Use it (1895)

G.E.M. Skues –  The Way of the Trout with the Fly (1921) and Modern Development of the Dry Fly (1910)

Mary Orvis Marbury – Favorite Trout Flies and their Histories

George M. LaBranche – The Dry Fly and Fast Water (1914)

Frederick M. Halford – Floating Flies and How to Dress Them (1886)

There are many hundreds of titles, some you may have never heard of – and the tags under each allow you to refine your search to specific areas of the online collection. Most of the books are old enough to no longer be copyrighted, and it makes sense that Google would want to avoid all the litigation until it’s determined how the author will receive compensation.

Kelson’s book on the Salmon Fly is still considered the Bible of the married wing, eyeless hook crowd. You can download it for free in PDF form versus paying $500 for an old copy.

I’ve read many of these and am continually fascinated over the convictions of their authors. Adding a certain perspective to read, “the Salmon, being the noblest of all fishes, eat Butterflies …” – then grab a copy of a current magazine and read, “they eat leeches because …”

… and in a hundred years will some fellow be giggling over our assumptions?

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.  – Gustav Flaubert

Anglers today shrink from the old tomes as being antiquated and out of date – and while the language may be archaic, the lessons are still current.

Download a fistful of PDF’s and fish the turn-of-the-century Catskills, or a Irish freshet for sea run trout – then tuck them away as reference materials or simply a good read.

Tags: Project Gutenberg, Google Internet Book Archive, copyright, George Kelson, G.E.M. Skues, Mary Orvis Marbury, George M. LaBranche, Frederick M. Halford, Amazon Kindle, out of print angling books