Good Flies: Favorite Trout Patterns and How They Got That Way
by John Gierach
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Book Summary Information
Author: John GierachEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-01
ISBN: 1599212153
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: The Lyons Press
Book Reviews of Good Flies: Favorite Trout Patterns and How They Got That Way
Book Review: Good Story About Some Flies, But Thats All!!!
Summary: 4 Stars
This book was something I anticipated as I went to stand in the check outline at Borders on a snowy Saturday Feburary morning. I had cabin fever and was missing weather in which I could fish, so I went to purchase a book I hoped would help carry me back to my favorite stream. In reading this book, I was exposed to the ruminations of a good writer, but little that would lift the absence of my favorite hobby from, my mind. Sure, it was clearly and entertainingly written. But it was not much more than that. There was little insight offered to me, the reader who had some experience fly-fishing. That is why I gave if only four stars. It was good, but lacked new insight or information. Oh well, not everything can be a home run. Get it and enjoy.
Summary of Good Flies: Favorite Trout Patterns and How They Got That Way
John Gierach is an internationally respected and highly acclaimed fishing writer; people take note of what he has to say."Good Flies" is an intimate glimpse into the mind of the master fly fisherman, and focuses on the trout flies he has found most successful and how he ties them. There are chapters on how he developed as a fly-tyer - from being a hopeless tinkerer who tried every pattern there was to setting on a large handful of favourite patterns that now catch most of his trout.Throughout, the book is punctuated with fishing stories and observations, always full of wit and deft experience, making this and essential reference source - and a great read - for angling enthusiast everywhere.It's easy to forget that in between his collections of essays, John Gierach has published a number of slender volumes, each devoted to a single aspect of fly-fishing and usually of a more technical nature. Flyfishing the High Country and Fishing Bamboo come to mind. Some readers may grouse that these tracts are more about one angler's proclivities and lack the lode of quotable lines of the essay collections--and they'd be right--but like a comfortable old pair of waders, they get the job done in a familiar sort of way, which is to say they mark the developments of an ever-changing pursuit at a particular time, with a nod to the author's own role therein. If it sometimes seems like Gierach can write them in his sleep, so be it; that's what happens when the honing of style meets extensive first-hand experience. Good Flies finds Gierach behind the fly-tying vise, sorting through his neck feathers and homemade bodkins in an effort to make sense of his own fly-tying tendencies within the larger, centuries-old tradition. "Tying our own flies is where many of us go off the deep end in fly fishing," he admits in the introduction as a caveat emptor. Non-tiers might lose interest in the subsequent chapters of seeming arcana covering everything from the pros of spade hackle (essential for dry-fly tails) to the cons of beadheads (they're ugly). But amid this abundance of information and opinion, Gierach's puckish, Twain-like sensibilities poke through just enough so that any fly-fisher with a taste for the sport's hallowed literature, regardless of whether he ties his own, can settle back with a copy of Good Flies and enjoy the drift. Gierach has been around. He remembers when Dave's hopper first jumped into the scene as well as the nutty "graduate students" in the '70s who fished with "dinky little, otherwise useless rods, pocket-watch-sized reels, and leaders as fine as spider web" in order to catch the midge hatch before anyone really knew what a midge was. Tiers may take issue with some points, but they're more than likely to come away with some new ideas, too. It's all part of the ongoing riverside chat that John Gierach has been having with fly-fishers for the past two decades. --Langdon Cook
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