Book excerpt: Ed Van Put begins this important book with the history of native brook trout and offers little-known details about their sizes, range, and demise from over-fishing, the growth of streamside industries, and the introduction of competitive species. Sweeping in its scope, Trout Fishing in the Catskills tells a thorough tale of the often tumultuous history of fishing in the Catskills. With a scope of over a century, Van Put tells of the Catskill’s frontier fishing beginnings and tracks the rise, fall, and eventual revival of the fisheries. Throughout, this is a history of people and methods as well as rivers, and there are profiles of Theodore Gordon, Art Flick, Harry and Elsie Darbee, Sparse Grey Hackle, and more. No serious trout fisherman, in any part of the country, will want to miss this pioneering portrait of a seminal region in American angling history. Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for fishermen. Our books for anglers include titles that focus on fly fishing, bait fishing, fly-casting, spin casting, deep sea fishing, and surf fishing. Our books offer both practical advice on tackle, techniques, knots, and more, as well as lyrical prose on fishing for bass, trout, salmon, crappie, baitfish, catfish, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.