On the heels of my last best advice post (you guy/gals are all awesome) heres my new question…
What is your favorite fly fishing book?
Begginer and Advanced
My picks:
Begginer: Fly Fishing for Dummies
Advanced: the New American Trout by Merwin
What about you?
Beginner: Curtis Creek Manifesto. Sorry - can’t remember authors name.
Non-beginner: The Practical Fly Fisherman by A.J. McLane
Tight lines, Alec
Beginner - Sheridan Anderson “Curtis Creek Manifesto” and Howard Walden’s “Upstream and Down” (On how a boy can get hooked on fishing}
Advanced - Ray Bergman “Trout”
“The number and excellence of books devoted to the exposition of angling is so great that no other sport can compare with it in these respects.”
James Robb Notable Angling Literature" (1947)
Beginner: BSA fly fishing merit badge book. Very good basic advice that won’t scare away a 10 year old.
Advanced: “The flytiers benchside reference” No patterns ,but if you want 30 different ways to hackle a fly this is the book. The only better source for fly tying tips are the people here.
“Illegitimus nil Carborundum”
My favorite book is “Two Centuries of Soft Hackles” by Sylvester Nemes. All of his books are first rate and this one is my personal favorite. As far as a begining book I would have to vote for Skip Morris’s “Fly Tying made Clear and Simple”
Lets go fishin
Antron Midge >> )))*>
…fly tying is the next best thing to fishing; it is the sort of licking of the lips that eases a thirsty man in the desert
Arthur Ransome
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Beginner: Skip Morris: Fly Tying Made Clear and Simple.
Advanced: Peter Gathercole: The Fly-Tying Bible
Regards
Beginer or Advanced:
Trout * Ray Bergman
Streamside Guide * Art Flick
It just doesn’t get any better than that.
“If we carry purism to it’s logical conclusion, to do it right you’d have to live naked in a cave, hit your trout on the head with rocks, and eat them raw. But, so as not to violate another essential element of the fly-fishing tradition, the rocks would have to be quarried in England and cost $300 each.”
~John Gierach
Ditto on Ray Bergman’s Trout. Also, Fly Fishing by Tom McNally.
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"Are Fisherman People?’ Ed Zern 1951. Reading it sparked the fire enough to get me to badger my Dad into bringing me to a store so I could plunk down saved allowance to get a beginners outfit and try to unravel the mysteries of flyfishing. I’m still unravelling… For a ‘how to’ book, “The Idiots Guide to fly Fishing” by Mike Shook is pretty good- but I hate those insulting titles!!!
“Knowledge is knowing, wisdom is understanding”
‘THE CAST’ by Ed Jaworowski!
From the inside jacket cover “Ed is the first to admit you can’t learn how to cast from a book, no matter how remarkable it is, but you can learn about casting, how and why certain principles work, what to look for, and how to identify and correct mistakes.”
This is absolutely the best self-help material I’ve seen in any form to improve one’s cast.
Regards
nam
Im gonna go out on limb and stray from the how to and self help books.
This book is extremely funny if your into dry humor.
“Zipping My Fly”, moments in the life of an American Sportsman. By Rich Tosches.
Seege
I too am going out on a limb. While I do not believe this is in a bound copy, I have found nothing that compares to learning as that found on this site. I looked for a book, took a fly tying class and found that what was available to me by Mr. Campbell’s fly tying instructions and the information available on just about everything to do with fly fishing on this site was an endless source of wealth----Free of charge.
Steve (Rookie)
beginner: trout bum–wonderful introduction to the sport.
advanced: the longest silence
Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching is by far the best book I have ever read. It applies to everything from fishing to life.
-MZR
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Here is a decent list:
The Fly Tier’s Benchside Reference (you have to have this one)
Master The Cast by George Roberts (very clear, well done)
The Curtis Creek Manifesto (you could teach a kid with this one)
Presenting The Fly: A Practical Guide to the Most Important Element of Fly Fishing by Lefty Kreh (this is the best I’ve read, the man is on the stature of J Caswell
Last I recommend the Orvis Streamside Guides, as the few I’ve read and highlighted were quite good.
I can also make recommendations in Ice Climbing, World Politics, Six Guns, IPSC, and non fiction as I love to read.
Miguel
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I read “zipping my fly” and thought the humor was terrible. There were 2 parts I found funny but not too impressed overall. I like the geirach books for light reading, Production Fly Tying by AK Best has made my tying much better and I loved Brook Trout by Karas. I think one more deserves mention. The best backcountry flyfishing book has to be flyfishing the rockymountain backountry." Unbelievably informative. Good topic too.
<*(((((><
Jim in CO
Techniques of trout fishing and fly tying by George Harvey
Trout Tactics by Joe Humphreys.
Read these books and DO WHAT THEY TELL YOU and you will catch fish…it aint brain surgery.
Sheridan Anderson’s “The Curtis Creek Manifesto” for stream fishing
Dave Hughes’ “Trout Flies” for tying and everything else (there is more in this book than mere tying)
These are two of the books I will not sell or trade. All others I keep are on the specifics of specialty fishing or locations. If you want trout stream fishing info, these will get you there. Watching Joe Humpheys’ videos on nymph and dry fly fishing should round out the education.
It goes without saying that if you are reading this, then you already know the equivalent of countless volumes of useful info on this site.
Randy Knapp
“A River Never Sleeps”, Roderick Haig-Brown
I read it in October every year.
Good Fishing,
Les Johnson