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The Internet is a powerful resource. It provides us instant
access to information, and brings us together via email,
bulletin boards, chat rooms, and instant messaging. FAOL
is a wonderful example of the Internet at its best. The Internet,
however, will never replace the printed page.
I've loved books and fishing since my youngest years, although
I did not start fly fishing until 1993. This column will give
me an opportunity to share reviews of some of my favorite fly
fishing and tying books (and some that are not such favorites)
with my friends here at FAOL. My library reflects my tastes
and interests, and so will this column. It will be heavily
slanted towards cold water fishing and tying for trout and
steelhead, and won't touch much on areas of which I know little,
such as warm or salt water fishing.
I hope that these reviews will motivate some of you to pick up
a good book, on this or any subject, and read.
~ Stu Farnham
Complete Book of Western Hatches:
Complete Book of Western Hatches:
An Angler's Entomology and Fly Pattern Field Guide
By Rick Hafele, Dave Hughes
Paperback: 223 pages
Publisher: Frank Amato Publications
ISBN: 0936608129; (May 1981)
Western Oregon is home to a disproportionately large number
of noted American fly fishing writers. John Shewey, Jim
Shollmeyer, Ted Leeson, Randall Kaufmann, and Skip Morris
are all Oregonians. Walk into your favorite fly shop in
the Portland area and you may run into one of the authors
of this book, Rick Hafele and Dave Hughes. Hafele is an
aquatic entomologist and writes a column on that topic for
American Angler magazine; Hughes has written dozens
of books, hundreds of articles, and is the editor of
Fly Fishing & Tying Journal.
This book is a basic reference for the hatch-matcher in the
Western US. It covers the 'big four' orders of interest to
the fly fisher (ephemeroptera, plecoptera, trichoptera, and
diptera, a.k.a. mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies, and true
flies), and includes chapters on the less-well-known orders
as well - dragon and damselflies, waterboatmen and backswimmers,
alderflies and dobsonflies, and water beetles (odonata,
hemiptera, megaloptera, and coleopteran). True to its title,
there's no information on non-insect aquatic food sources
(scuds, sculpins, etc), or non-aquatic insects (terrestrials).
Introductory chapters provide the basics: information on
lifecycles, basic insect anatomy, and the distinguishing
characteristics of the various orders, as well as a
getting-started guide to collecting and preserving aquatic
bugs.
There's a chapter devoted to each order which starts by
describing the basic characteristics of the order. There
follow sections on the major hatches of that order occurring
in the Western US. The sections include scientific and
common names, and approximate times of emergence for the
Pacific coastal and Rocky Mountain areas. (Warning: the
scientific names, while less ambiguous than the common;
taxonomists often change their minds as new data emerges,
and reclassify species. This book was published in 1981,
so it is likely that some of the Latinate monikers have
changed since publication.) Major field characteristic
of the species are listed.
Information on habitat will help you identify water likely
to contain each species; the paragraphs describing their
habits will help with your presentation. For the fly tier
there are descriptions of the key characteristics to imitate
in your flies, plus tying instructions for several patterns.
There are several excellent books on aquatic entomology,
and more on matching-the hatch; I have several feet of
shelf space full of them. The entomology books tend to be
somewhat heavy going for the casual student of the bugs
that interest trout; many of the classic hatch-matching
books published in the US emphasize Eastern rather than
Western Hatches. This book can provide most of the
information a Western fly tier needs to imitate and
fish the hatches of that part of the US.
My only complaint about the book is due to its age. Published
in 1981, the photographs of insects and flies are black-and-white
(except for a few pages of color plates). Rick and Dave started
work on a revised version of the book several years ago.
The last time I ran into Rick in Mark Bachmann's fly shop,
he said that the project had gotten away from them and morphed
into a 300+ page book on Western mayflies. The new work
should be published in 2003. ~ Stu Farnham
About Stu
Stu Farnham is a New Englander by birth, who was transplanted to
and put down roots in Oregon in the early 1990s, now residing in
the Seattle area. A software engineering manager by vocation,
he can be found in his spare time chasing trout and steelhead
in the rivers of the Pacific Northwest, chasing his four Gordon
Setters (who in turn are chasing chukar), tying flies, reading,
or working on his website. Colleen, his long suffering wife of
28 years, is a professionally trained personal chef.
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