Covered Waters is a collection of Joseph Heywood's wanderings and wonderings about fishing and life, and how the two are connected. The book begins just after the author has had a stroke. As he lies in his hospital bed, he looks back on his life and reminisces about his days in the U.S. Air Force, training to drop nukes on the Soviet Union in the Cold War; his experiences in Vietnam; his temporary but intense obsession with bear hunting (which ended the moment he finally killed a bear); and, of course, his international adventures in fishing, recounting such hilarious episodes as when he happened upon two women in France engaged in what appeared to be strip fishing--wherein each time one caught a fish, the other had to remove an article of clothing. After fishing the world over, Heywood finds that there is no water like home water, and no fishing partners like old friends.