The Year I Didn't Fish

The Year I Didn't Fish is a personal recollection of the 2008-2009 Financial Crisis written by a money manager in the trust industry in Portland, Oregon. As the crisis reached its crescendo with the collapse of Lehman, Rick Trout, the author was diagnosed with a spinal condition which required surgery. The surgery was unsuccessful, and he was told that he must curtail almost all strenuous physical activity, including his lifelong passion for fly fishing. Over the next twelve months he walked along Oregon's Deschutes River with his black Labrador retriever, Lucy. His reflections on life, fishing, and the financial panic that was then raging through the world, are set against the timeless rhythms of the river and the salmon and steelhead that have returned to it for tens of thousands of years. Not a history, but a recollection, the book is a meditation on human behavior and nature by one who has lived his life along the water. Rick Trout was born in Texas and lived along the Gulf Coast until 1995. He fished in the bays and lakes along the Texas Gulf Coast with friends and family for more than forty years. In 1995 he moved to Oregon, where he still makes his home. He and his wife Leslie keep a fishing cabin in the little town of Maupin, Oregon, along the Deschutes River as it flows toward the Columbia.