Good Flies: Favorite Trout Patterns and How They Got That Way - Hardcover

Gierach, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1493007440 ISBN 13: 9781493007448

Publisher: Lyons Press, 2014

Synopsis

John Gierach is a highly trusted and trustable opinion-maker in fly-fishing. People take what he says to the bank. While most of Gierach's writing is essay-style and reflective, here he gets down to the nitty-gritty: how he ties his favorite flies and why he thinks they work so well for him. There is, thus, an instant reader connection: "Gierach's patterns are good enough for me."
Few anglers will skip knowing what a master angler and thinker prefers for his fly box. This title covers a gamut of patterns essential to trout fishing in a variety of circumstances: dry flies, wet flies and nymphs, and streamers. Gierach's legion of fans of his regular magazine column will be highly inclined to buy this title.

About this title

Review:

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

From the Back Cover:

In this intriguing look at his many hours at the tying bench, John Gierach focuses on the trout flies he has found most successful and tells how he ties them. He began as a hopeless tinkerer who tried to tie every pattern in existence, but eventually settled on a large handful of favorite patterns - "good flies" - with which he catches most of his trout. Gierach analyzes the tools he uses for tying and advocates those patterns that are simple and basic (and few), and he also makes his case for the use of natural materials. He then goes on to discuss the flies themselves - small, medium, and large mayfly imitations (which is how he arranges them in his fly boxes), spinners, midges, caddis, hoppers, nymphs, and streamers.

Good Flies is enriched with fishing stories and observations from days astream and days at his vise, all in Gierach's inimitable style: rambling a little, following this thread and that, always full of wit and deft experience, with a plain-spoken style that has made him America's favorite fly-fishing author. Every John Gierach fan will appreciate this delightful book, and every trout angler can base a successful approach to the fish on what the author offers here.

About this edition

• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1493007440
• ISBN 13: 9781493007448
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 176