Fly fishing book reviews

Fly Fishing for Bass | Smallmouth Flyfishing

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Fly Fishing Smallmouth: Book Reviews

Fifty Places to Fly Fish Before You Die | Chris Santella
This is a beautiful book, one that is smartly designed and packaged, pleasant to leaf through and to handle, but somewhat lacking in substance. This is more of a coffee table book than a detailed travel tome. Use it for what it is, a celebration of fabulous places to spend time with unrivaled natural beauty on the planet earth.

Here's an example of the kind of lapse that would have been caught had the book been written for hard core fisher people. We read, "The South Island of New Zealand is awash with beauty and teeming with trout". And then a few sentences later, "The South Island trouting experience is certainly one of quality rather than quantity. A majority of the rivers simply don't support large numbers of fish. Some of the most fishy-looking water you can imagine may not contain a single fish".

Ultimately it doesn't really matter. This isn't a book about information - it's a wonderful collection of vicarious fishing trips. I'd never flicked a fly rod when I got it, yet I was engrossed, transported, and in the end captivated.

Reviewed by Brad Miller 12-10-07

Fly-Fishing for Smallmouth | Bob Clouser 2007.
This is a collectors type book. It features lots of great information amid wonderful photographs from Jay Nichols and others. Bob takes the time to decipher each important aspect of the sport with indepth info only one of his stature could contribute. This is a great book with enchanting stories laced in to add warmth and depth to the effort. My only criticism might be the fly section where 90% of the list is a Clouser creation. Since this is actually what he uses I can’t take too much issue, but Lord knows there’s a ton of other great flies out there as well. Overall it’s right up there with Randall Kaufmann’s “Bonefishing” (which is the ultimate in outdoor/fishing related publication, in our view).

Review by Brad Miller 12-09-07

Clousers Flies | Bob Clouser 2006.
For those of you that want to catch more smallmouth, you can’t overlook the most deadly fly developed in the last 20 years: The Clouser Deep Minnow. Oh yeah the fluffies will argue its a jig, but you can say the same about any weighted fly. The photography and text is first rate as he intimately describes tying some of his time proven favorites such as the Minnow, Half & Half, Clouser’s EZ Popper, and several others. These patterns will work from the Arctic to Antarctica. A very nicely done almost “coffee table” type book. No, the Clouser minnow is not difficult to tie and you can get instructions elsewhere on this and other websites. But if you want an elegantly produced book teaming with fish catching patterns, this one’s for you.

Review by Brad Miller

Fly Fishing for Smallmouth Bass | Harry Murray

Harry Murray wrote one of the first books devoted specifically to smallmouth in 1989. This book is viewed by many as the source for smallmouth life cycle, places to find them and especially fly patterns and tying hints. I think the drawings by Dave Whitlock are enjoyable in and of themselves. (I like Dave Whitlock, I like his wife even more.) The black and white photographs are amateurish, but OK. Harry has a companion video that puts the book into action. This is heavily into fly patterns and tying which most of us appreciate. You fly tiers will definitely want this one in your library since it contains more information on patterns than any other I’ve seen.

There is a ton of good information, some of which gets lost in the occasional long stretches of uninterrupted text. I really liked the knot section. This is the most heavily promoted smallmouth book on the internet and since its been around for about thirty years, has withstood the test of time.

Fly Fishing for Bass: Smallmouth, Largemouth, Exotics | Left Kreh

I got most of this as a subject focus book within the “Lefty’s Little Library of Fishing” which I bought several years ago. Lefty Kreh is the foremost author, probably in the world, on fly fishing. I take my hat off to anyone who can travel throughout out the world catching fish on a fly rod and finding a way to make money doing it!

Left Kreh is more than just an author, he’s an excellent teacher, as well. Nearly everything he has ever written is well done and jam packed with more nonsensical and practical fishing information than anyone else could get in two lifetimes. He is the Ralph Waldo Emerson of fly fishing writing - no sentence is wasted, everything he writes gives you something useful. His treatise on saltwater fly fishing is the absolute Bible, bar none. This guy has done it all. Do yourself a favor and read everything you can from Lefty. You will expand your horizons through him and become a much better angler.

That said, the book is good. The photographs are beautiful and there’s a lot of good how to information between the covers. His anecdotal references are always good. In the end, I wish there was more. He simplifies fly selection much more than Murray. I think this is good. I tend to be a generalist and get confused by three boxes overstuffed with every pattern known to mankind. My biggest criticism of Lefty’s book is that it is too short.

Smallmouth Fly Fishing | Tim Holschlag

TimsBook7502 I’m sure there’s other fishing authorities out there that are monomaniacal. Few demonstrate the tunnel vision of Tim Holschlag. No one is more dedicated to smallmouth bass. I met Tim years ago when my brother arranged a smallmouth trip down the Mississippi with Tim. We had a great time fishing and getting an unusual tutorial on micropterus dolomieu. I knew it was going to be different when Tim repeatedly referred to walleyes as those other rough fish.

Most fishing writers learn to flock shoot when it comes to passing for a guru. They quickly realize its better to cover a number of different species for monetary reasons. The saltwater boom saw many trout writers “osmo-regulate” (changing biological chemical requirements from salt to freshwater, like salmon) to saltwater after just a couple of trips. Follow the money!

Tim Holschlag is different. He has unabashedly promoted the smallmouth bass, almost exclusively, for over twenty years. (He’s also a closet pike expert, don’t tell anyone). During that time he started the Smallmouth Alliance which is currently responsible for special regulations on many waters contributing to the overall improvement of quality smallmouth fishing and environmental appreciation. Tim’s is a top notch fanatic, unrivaled in the world of smallmouth bass experts.

Tim Holschlag has spent more time learning about smallies than perhaps anyone else on the planet. He’s personally fished every type of water and reports on the best ways to approach both moving and static water conditions. His destinations section is up to date and pertinent whether you live in Minnesota or Arizona. In short, this book is on a different orbital in the small world of smallmouth fishing books. If you are serious about taking your fishing to the next level, you must have this book!

Smallmouth Bass: A Handbook of Strategies | Al Lindner

For those of you interested in basic smallmouth natural history, location, and presentation tactics throughout the country this book is OK. To me, this book seemed like a rush job. It is is basically a scrap book of previously written info with a bunch of stale “filler” techno-stuff” that we all kind of got back in the 70’s. The Lindners “fill” too much space with their calendar system of seasonal classification. The spend too much time describing limnological (lake stuff) detail that gets boring very quickly. Nearly the entire book is devoted to spin fishing. There is a tiny section on fly fishing that can is easily missed if you are rifling through this book. If you are a die hard fly fisherman, rifle through it and put it back on the book store shelf. There are much better books for you.

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