Oregon Humanities

Art, meat, and enlightenment in American sport fishing

Oregon Council for the Humanities sponsors a free public event on June 6 in Bend.

13 May 2008

The closure of nearly all ocean salmon fishing in Oregon this year will have a devastating financial impact on working-class Oregonians who make their living in the state’s multimillion dollar fishing industry.
But besides being a profitable industry, sport fishing, whether catch-and-release fly-fishing on Central Oregon’s pristine rivers or bait-and-hook fishing on the Oregon Coast’s fisheries-stocked waters, is also a strong symbol of the region’s identity.
Oregon Book Award-winning poet Henry Hughes, a dedicated angler who uses both bait and fly, explores how the sport illuminates human relationships to art and nature at a free public event, “Crossing (Class) Lines: Art, Meat, and the American Angler,” at McMenamins Old St.... More