An intensely private and shy man, Hoover the person was largely unknown to the American public. In this extensively researched biography devoted to the angling side of Hoover, author Hal Elliott Wert examines the often overlooked life of our thirty-first president.
In a presidency plagued by the Depression, in a time when the country was poised between the agrarian society of the past and the advent of a modern professional class, Herbert Hoover faced numerous challenges. A thinker and a doer who shaped the way we live today, Hoover found relief from the stresses of his professional life in his pastime, fishing.
Herbert Hoover fished near his hometown of West Branch, Iowa, as a boy and then moved to Oregon, where he fished the Rogue, Willamette, McKenzie, and Columbia rivers. As a young man, he attended Stanford and fished and camped throughout the West during breaks. He fished and spent time in the outdoors throughout his life and especially in his years as president. He founded Cave Man Camp at Bohemian Grove north of San Francisco, a yearly getaway for powerful Republicans, and Camp Rapidan in Virginia while he was in the White House. In addition to freshwater fishing, Hoover enjoyed fishing the salt. On trips to Florida later in his life, he stalked bonefish and fished for permit and the larger species, such as sailfish.
Wert’s own knowledgeable enthusiasm about the places Hoover fished, as well as his tireless research in the local newspapers, diaries, and other rarely used records from which he has assembled the story of Hoover’s passion for fishing, make this book unique.
With verve and insight, Hal Elliott Wert traces Hoover’s remarkable lifelong adventures as a fisherman and thereby opens a window on Hoover’s soul. Readers of this lively story will come away with a deeper understanding of one of our most enigmatic statesmen—and a powerful urge to explore the streams where Hoover found solace and renewal.
Although Herbert Hoover struggled with many world crises throughout his public life, he always found peace when he stood in mountain streams in search of the elusive brook trout. Hal Wert shows us how fishing tempered and relaxed this extraordinary American and made him a better, more compassionate humanitarian.
