James O'Gorman, 1845

'Gorman was definitely one of the angling greats and he had the gift of being an entertaining writer, too. His book stands out as one of the few genuinely amusing works written about fishing prior to 1900 and it is filled with anecdotes -  tales of big fish, smashed tackle and wild Ireland. When you read the book, take care to remember that it was published one year before the great famine and that the places he wrote about were peopled by folk who scratched a barely scratched a living from the ground. Within a few years a third of them would be gone. The book, however, remains and many respects it is the first book about Ireland written by an angler:

Out we went again, with two flies, nor had we made many turns, when my my beautiful rod got a drag, that made every loop in it sing, and I had firm a most enormous spring fish. We, as usual, made for the shore, my beast leading quietly until I got in, when I set about butting in prime style; away he went down and across for a considerable distance, then doubled against the stream, and began to get slack; I wheeled up very quickly, until the weight came on my "multiplier," and then one yard I could not get up. At this time, a malignant grin came across the stern phiz of Kean. I made another effort to wheel up, with all the force I could employ, when smash went the multiplying machinery. I then dragged down the line quickly through the loops, and had my fish under the bow of the rod, but he came to the surface, ploughed across the current, took the line on his back, and away he went. My line ran out fairly for a time, but at last hitched in the loops, two or three of which gave; the line would not run; it twisted up, my rod snapped in the butt, about a foot and a-half from the wheel, and my brute got off, taking about forty yards of line. He was one of the largest salmon I ever saw.
"I knew," said Kean, "what the multiplying wheel would do."
"But," replied I, "did you know what the rod you persuaded me to buy, with its fine spring in the butt, would do?"

If you read this, make sure you read Scrope's Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing, because they make a pair.