“Tributaries: Essays from Woods and Waters” by Ryan Brod; Islandport Press, Yarmouth, Maine, 2023; 200 pages, paperback, $18.95.

Years ago I had a friend who liked to fish. Actually, it went way beyond “liking.” He was obsessed with it. He hounded me to go with him. He recited dreams he had of plodding around in marshes and bogs, up and down brooks and streams in southern Maine.

Usually more things happened in the dreams than in the expeditions. When I suggested to his girlfriend that he might have gone a little overboard, she said, “Yeah, but he never catches anything.”

It’s another world that’s hard to wrap your head around if you have nothing analogous in your life. In a way it’s something like being in love. You can think of nothing but the beloved. It’s so consuming it starts to seem like a religious experience.

This is the world Ryan Brod depicts in his essay collection, “Tributaries.” Brod grew up in Smithfield, learning from his dad the traditional fishing and hunting life as it’s evolved in the modern world. The book’s 23 short essays take us onto rivers, streams and lakes in central Maine, on an ice-fishing expedition with a bunch of city rubes, to the north woods to fish for muskies and hunt for moose, and to Merrymeeting Bay which, we learn, is the only place in Maine where you can find carp.

One of the pinnacle skills for sport fishermen is fly casting, and Brod spent his life from childhood perfecting this art. There’s a lot more to it than just placing the fly accurately, and all this is tested when Brod goes fishing for the monstrous tarpon in the Florida Keys.

A Maine Guide himself, Brod enlists a Floridian guide, Rich, who we eventually learn will become a close friend, and he takes us through the frustrations and fine points of learning to spot and cast a line for the wily fish. In “The Cast,” one of the most vivid pieces in the book, Brod, now experienced with tarpon, drives to Florida with his friend Parker who is putting in a mighty effort to become a viable fly fisherman. The drive itself, the gritty stops, the road weariness, and the anticipation that’s motivating the pair, are given in atmospheric detail.

By the last day of the trip, they haven’t caught anything. But Ryan admires Parker’s doggedness, and on their final excursion, they spot some fish. Their first attempt fails. Then:

“I poled farther down the flat. Parker adjusted line. I could sense his confidence rising … (He) took a few false casts: tight loops and good line speed. He stopped the rod tip high, and the line shot forward. His fly landed just off the tarpon’s snout, a perfect cast.”

In this passage, typical of the book’s skillful writing, we get not only the details of fly casting, but of the emotions that come with it.

These essays are in their own ways explorations of the identity provided by the outdoors obsession, especially fishing. “Serpentine” concludes on the reflection that the “overwhelming number of ponds, lakes, rivers, streams” in Maine — the many “tributaries” — offer each another memory and “I’m faced again with a different version of myself. I return and remember who I am.”

This book gives a remarkably vivid picture of the dreamlike world of obsessive fishing.

Ryan Brod lives in Portland and teaches writing at the University of New England. “Tributaries” is available from local and online book sellers.

Off Radar takes note of poetry and books with Maine connections the first Friday of each month. Contact Dana Wilde at dwilde.offradar@gmail.com.