James Prosek loves fishing. He is interested in birds, fascinated by fish, and, perhaps, obsessed by trout. He has studied, written about and painted them since before he reached his teens. It began casually; with his father showing him John James Audubon’s book, Birds of North America. But by the time he was six, Prosek was copying the images in crayon.

He started fishing about three years later and his devotion to both angling and art only grew. His illustrated fishing journals impressed everyone who saw them, and by the time he entered Yale University, he had secured a publisher for his book, Trout: An Illustrated History. The book went on to become one of the most popular volumes of its kind, both critically and commercially and was soon followed by Joe and Me: An Education in Fishing and Friendship. Now his fans can’t decide whether he is a fisherman who writes and paints, or an artist-writer who fishes.

For Prosek, however, it all comes from the fish. He photographs them immediately upon discovery, because their brightness and color fade quickly, then paints them from life whenever possible, redoing the watercolors as many times as necessary to make the picture perfect. Such attention to detail has seen Prosek proclaimed the "Audubon of the Fishing World" and the "Roger Tory Peterson (Field Guide to the Birds author) of Trout."