Good Flies Favorite Trout Patterns and How They Got That Way (Reviewed)

Good Flies Favorite Trout Patterns and How They Got That Way
by John Gierach
The Lyons Press, 2000
Hardcover, 192 pages, $22.95
ISBN 1-58574-139-6

Almost everyone enjoys John Gierach’s books. He fishes a lot, has an acerbic wit and writes well. That style is present here as well. That said this is also a very serious book. Serious to me means one that has a good chance of inducing a lasting change in the way I fish. Serious also means that I will read through it more than once. On stream with a fly rod the goal is to catch fish. Good flies improve the chances by an order of magnitude. Bad flies, wrong size, wrong shape, wrong color, wrong presentation, wrong whatever may still catch trout but rarely with the consistency and relentless efficiency that most of us strive for as our standard. "Like all schools of fly fishing, the people who believe in it manage to catch some trout." The "it" here for Gierach is the hot fly of he moment. This book is about separating the good from the bad flies. It is a sort of caveat emptor for your fly box.

Gierach prefers natural materials, not to the exclusion of the odd synthetic or dyed natural but, true natural whenever possible. This adds an immense measure of consistency from fly to fly. Nature’s dyes are programmed in the DNA and this means that all other things being equal identical natural materials all come from the same dye lot. Manufactured materials though similar to the eye may vary subtlely in the manufacturing process, think dye lot, thus in color as viewed through the trout’s different than human eye and under varying conditions of light and filtration by water. Substitution of materials is probably as good an explanation as any for inconsistent performance by a pattern. The fly doesn’t necessarily always look the same to the trout.

This whole book is about picking patterns. Flies that work consistently. Consistently, by-the-bye does not mean every time, but rather usually. This year’s hot fly will work for a while. Naïve trout will whack away at anything that floats by as witnessed by tales from virgin waters. Catch and release trout in popular waters do not remain naïve for very long and hot flies cool with time. Gierach’s flies, picked for this book, are patterns that have never cooled. Gierach quotes Tom McGuane on the Adams dry fly, "it says ‘bug’ to the trout in a general yet friendly and duplicitous way." What Gierach has sorted out here are flies or ties of flies that say bug time after time and the trout never learns. More is the pity. I have boxes of miracle flies, rarely touched, and a dozen patterns that take 99% of my fish.

Gierach sorts flies by size first, then shape and last by color. Structure counts as well. Parachutes are in favor as are emergers. A thoughtful contemplation of this book should result in a slimmer vest on stream, a narrower focus in your fly selection and more fish brought to hand. There is no harm in ties that please the fisherman as long as they also please the fish. But it is a sobering observation that "many of the fine points of tying are lost on the fish."

Very highly recommended. RWOL

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