The Empty Bank

Some books about fly fishing teach you how to cast. This one asks you to stand still long enough to notice what changes. The Empty Bank is a quiet, literary memoir about time, routine, and companionship, told through years spent returning to the same river with a dog who never asked why. It is not a guide and not a how-to. Fly fishing serves as the setting—not the point—for a story about presence, repetition, and the subtle ways life shifts when you keep showing up. Across familiar walks, long afternoons, bad fishing days, and weather that asks for endurance, the bond between a man and his Labrador unfolds without sentiment or explanation. Nothing dramatic happens. Nothing needs to. Meaning accumulates through small, ordinary moments: waiting on a riverbank, sharing water on a hot day, adjusting without naming why. As time passes, the rituals hold—even as they change. And when absence finally arrives, the river remains. Written with restraint and clarity, The Empty Bank will resonate with readers who love fly fishing, nature writing, dogs, and books that trust silence as much as language. It is a reflection on companionship without instruction, loss without declaration, and why we return to the same places long after they have changed us.