Excellent reading
Hello. My name is David. New member. I have been fly fishing about ten years. Mostly warm water but also trout.
I found these two excellent books online. You can read them for free!
Floating Flies and How to Dress Them - A Treatise on the Most Modern Methods of Dressing Artificial Flies for Trout and Grayling with Full Illustrated Directions and Containing Ninety Hand-Coloured Engravings of the Most Killing Patterns Together with a Few Hints to Dry-Fly Fishermen is a fly fishing book written by Frederic M. Halford published in London in April 1886 by Sampson Low. A deluxe edition (100 copies) on large paper sold out before publication and the trade edition of 500 nearly so.
* Chapter I - On Eyed-Hooks - 1
* Chapter II - On Materials and Implements For Fly Dressing. - 7
* Chapter III - On Dyeing - 22
* Chapter IV - To Dress Floating Flies on Eyed-Hooks - 31
* Chapter V - On Artificial Flies - 75
* Chapter VI - Hints To Dry-Fly Fishermen ? 116
* List of Coloured Plates
o Crawshaw and Co.'s Special Dyes - To Face Page 30
o Plate I. Olive Duns - 84
o Plate II - Blue Duns and Hare's Ears - 88
o Plate III - Red Spinners, Wickham?s, Indian Yellow, Little Marryat, Blue Winged Olive, Etc. - 92
o Plate IV - Hackle Duns and Spinners, Badgers, Etc. - 96
o Plate V - Bumbles, Red Tags, Green Insect, Etc. - 100
o Plate VI - Grannom, Alder, Ants, Fisherman's Curse, Black Gnats, Etc. - 104
o Plate VII - Sedges, Etc. - 108
o Plate VII - Green Drakes - 112
o Plate IX - Spent Gnats - 114
http://ia350633.us.archive.org/1/ite...00halfrich.pdf
And also
The Way of a Trout with the Fly and Some Further Studies in Minor Tactics is a fly fishing book written by G.E.M. Skues published in London in 1921. This was Skues' second book after Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream (1910).
* Foreword - ix
* Division I
* Part I
o I. Considerations Of Motive - 1
o II. The Why - 3
o III. Freewill and Predestination - 5
* Part II
o I. The Sense Of Taste - 8
o II. The Sense Of Smell - 9
* Part III - The Vision Of Trout
o I. A Preliminary Cast - 10
o II. The Sense of Form And Definition - 13
o III. The Invisibility of Hooks - 17
o IV. The Sense of Position - 18
o V. A Problem for The Optician - 20
o VI. The Sense of Number - 23
o VII. The Sense of Colour - 24
o VIII. The Sense of Size - 31
o IX. Tone - 32
o X. In Dusk and Dark - 34
o XI. Looking Upward - 36
o XII. Looking Upward In Dusk and Dark - 43
* Part IV - How
o I. The Mouth of A Trout - 48
o II. A Speculation in Bubbles - 50
o III. The Rise - 51
o IV. Assorted Rises - 59
o V. Fausse Montee - 65
o VI. The Moment - 67
* Part V - What
o I. Flies as Food - 69
o II. Fly Dressing as An Art - 75
o III. Imitation, Representation, Suggestion - 77
o IV. Styles of Fly Dressing - 79
o V. Kick - 82
o VI. Ex Mortua Manu - 83
* Part VI ? Bafflement - 89
* Division II - Some Further Minor Tactical Studies
o I. Some Problems - 90
+ The Hare's-Ear Puzzle - 90
+ Upstream Wind - 91
+ A Curious Contrast - 96
+ The Red Quill - 100
+ The Entrance Out - 102
+ The Alder and Canon K. - 104
+ The Willow-Fly - 107
o II. Some Fly-Dressing Examples - 108
+ Iron Blue - 108
+ A Good Small Olive - 109
+ July Dun - 110
+ Little Red Sedge - 113
+ Pheasant Tail - 115
+ Rusty Spinner - 117
+ The Pope and the Tailers - 118
o III. Some More Fly Dressing?Principles and Practice - 121
+ Theories of Wet-Fly Dressing of Trout Flies - 121
+ The Dressing of Nymphs - 125
+ The Purposes of a Hackle - 129
+ The Spade Feather - 132
+ Buzz - 133
+ A Good Entry - 134
+ Quality in Fly-Dressing Materials - 135
o IV. Sundry Observations - 138
+ What Made the Dry Fly Possible - 138
+ The Excommunication of the Wet Fly - 139
+ The Cultivation of Shyness - 149
+ Semi-Submerged, Etc. - 154
+ Wind and the Evening Rise - 157
+ On the Accuracy of Authorities - 161
+ Driftweed and Bad Advice - 162
o V. B.W.O. - 166
+ B.W.O. - 166
o VI. Tactical - 172
+ Glimpses of the Moon - 172
+ Side Strain - 176
+ Of Pocket Picking - 180
+ Of the Ways of Brer Fox - 181
+ Picking It off: A Very Minor Tactic - 183
+ Argillaceous - 184
+ Of Glycerine - 186
+ The Switch - 188
o VII. Psychological - 192
+ Hands - 192
+ Accuracy and Delicacy - I94
+ The Triumph of the Inadequate - 196
o VIII. Frankly Immoral - 201
+ Makeshift - 201
o IX. Episodical - 205
+ Established Principles and Trout - 205
+ An Abnormal Day - 208
+ One of Life's Little Cast Ironies - 210
+ Another of Life's Little Cast Ironies - 212
+ A Borrowed Rod - 213
+ A Local Fall - 217
+ At the Second Culvert - 219
+ Bobbing Reed - 224
+ Sporting Hazards on a Berkshire Brook - 226
+ Four - 232
+ Nine to One - 237
+ A Travelling Companion - 242
+ The Following Day - 246
+ My Sticking-Plaster Trout - 252
o X. Doggerel from the Club Journal - 255
+ Little Brown Wink - 255
+ A Sequel - 257
o Advertisement?Amadou - 260
* ILLUSTRATIONS
o I. THE BLUE DUN AS RENDERED IN DIFFERENT SYSTEMS - Frontispiece
o II. Method of Dressing Nymphs - 124
o III. Another Method of Dressing Nymphs - 128
http://www.archive.org/details/wayof...thfl00skuerich
Also if you visit this wiki page you can find several other books dating from the 15th century to modern times and a link to online versions of several of them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annotat...of_fly_fishing
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