Book excerpt: A Fish Come True celebrates the enduring joys, mysteries, and miseries of fishing through a series of “what-if” stories: What if someone discovered a fly that worked on every cast? What if we could fish anywhere, any time in the distant past? What if we could explore the fishing on a different planet? What if our sport’s leading thinkers suddenly decided that an infamous trash fish was really cool and a great sporting trophy after all? A Fish Come True answers these and other engaging questions in stories full of sympathy, surprises, good humor, and—most important of all—hope. In this remarkable array of stories, a tour de force of literary styles ranging from unadorned tale to historical mystery to faux press release to science-fiction adventure, Schullery honors the angler’s innate and precious need to hope. And in the midst of this lively storytelling he illuminates the rich rewards and deeply satisfying misadventures that arise from the fulfillment of our angling dreams.