Sometimes, when you are sick, for example, you just can’t go fishing. And you can only do so much at home, such as rummaging through old gear and reminiscing about how you lost that big one on this lure and how you never got a bite on that plug at all.

If there’s anything I can do, it’s read. So, I am starting the Skunk Report Book Review section. There are two guidelines. First, the book must have to be at least remotely connected with fishing. Second, I have to get it for free. So, authors and publishers, send me those free books for review. I’ll start with Catch and Release: Trout Fishing and the Meaning of Life by Mark Kingwell. The title itself presages a high P-factor in my rating system.

I will rate each book primarily on two factors: readability and pomposity. If I can’t get through it without breaking a sweat, then it gets a good grade. The pomposity factor (P-factor) is the key in my rating system. Most fishing books are readable, so I am not too worried about that, but most authors of fishing books are pretty full of themselves, as well, and they fancy themselves to be great philosophers. In fact, philosophizing is right up there with lying among traits found in nearly all fishermen. The P-factor will give potential readers a good gauge as to how much of this characteristic is present in a given book.

Actually, I have found that, as with lying, philosophizing comes sort of naturally to one when fishing. It’s as if we piscators are blessed with a gift, that of seeing the universe and life itself in the face of a still pond or a gently flowing mountain stream in late spring….