Hatches

The cover and title of a book serve two very important purposes. The first is obvious - to grab the attention of a potential buyer. The second - related to the first - is to set expectations. It should be a strong indicator what the reader will experience. Consider "Matching Major Eastern Hatches". The words that jump out at me are "major" and "eastern" - I am curious what the author considers a major hatch, and which watersheds are included in "eastern". Since most of my fishing is in the trout rivers of the Catskills, my attention is piqued. I expect to be able to learn something that I can directly apply to my own fishing. The subtitle "New Patterns for Selective Trout" gives me further clues - this is a fly tying book more than a fishing strategy book, and I am expecting to find original patterns and tying innovations. That is a pretty tall order, as the trout rivers of the Eastern US represent the birthplace of US fly fishing and their hatches have inspired fly tyers for a couple centuries. What more is there to say that hasn't already been said? Well, let's open the book and find out.

My first impression after a quick skim through the book is that it is chalk full of excellent photographs, whether they be of insects in various stages of their life cycle, beautiful rivers and their trout, or the steps to tying the hatch matching patterns. The fly tying steps are particularly impressive - close up, crystal clear, and appropriately detailed - but the photos of the insects are key here. We're supposed to be matching hatches - and it is important to know what those hatches should look like if we can evaluate how well the flies presented match them, right?

A quick reading of the introduction and a scan the photo captions tells me that "Eastern" in the author's experience is primarily Pennsylvania. I was hoping more of the book would be devoted to discussing the insect activities in the major eastern regions from North Carolina up through Maine - what I would consider "Eastern US" in the context of trout angling. It would be impossible to provide details every watershed's favorite hatch, of course - it's a book not an encyclopedia - but since most of the anecdotes in the book are Pennsylvania based, I would have suggested a title change or a few tales from other places. A handful of pages listing the significant watersheds and a summary of their major hatches, with a few words the reader could use to extrapolate the book's information to their home waters, would help create a stronger bond with a wider audience.

Each chapter after the introduction focuses on either a specific hatch ("The Sulphur Hatch", "The Beatis Olive Hatch"), or a fly pattern that can be adjusted to match multiple hatches ("The Swimming Caddis Pupa" and "The Emerging Dun") by choice of color of material. A common format is used throughout - an extended summary of the topic, a step-by-step procedure for tying the pattern, and when appropriate a depiction of finished flies intended to match specific hatches. As mentioned previously - the supporting photography is top notch.

Are the flies original and innovative, as I was expecting based on the subtitle? I guess the best answer is yes and no. Take the chapter on Marino's thorax dun. Which is the innovation - Marinaro's development or Ramsay's substitution of a different wing material and a simplification in the hackling procedure? As stated earlier, these insects have been collected, studied, imitated, and argued over for a very long time. A new variant of a thorax dun might not make you slap your forehead and holler "why didn't I think of that?", but it also shouldn't make you roll your eyes and dismiss the contributions of Henry Ramsay. Most of the patterns shown here are alterations to existing patterns, which is what fly tyers have been doing since - well since the beginning. We learn and we adapt to our situation - that is what we all do. Henry Ramsay has given us a peak inside his fly box and shared with us his rationale for how and why he made his adjustments. To a fly tyer, that is pure gold. I would be willing to bet that people who tie the flies shown in this book will apply even further refinement and adjustment, making them personal.

The "eastern" trout angler will enjoy this book. It is chock full of good ideas, sound angling theory, and easily digestible fly tying concepts. It's not an "elbows and arseholes" entomology book, but neither does it have a "just fish a green one" level of simplicity. There are flies in here that I will try. That is always the best thing a fellow fly tyer can say about a book like this.

I have had this film for a while now. It was released in 2005, but spurred by a recent new release by Felt Soul Media, I decided to dig this out and watch it again - and review it.
Upon loading this DVD I again felt like I was in for a scary movie. I remembered this brief feeling from my first viewing. Seeing the first title page with its eerie, noisy and scratched B/W visuals (with large bugs in silhouette) and its short and somewhat mystic title accompanied by dark sounding music I had the clear feeling of something a bit frightening. And the tone of the DVD continues is this mood for a minute or two, but then darkness and gray shadows shift into beautiful colors and lighter-hearted music as you fly over the gorge in a small plane, seeing the Black Canyon where the Gunnisson River in Colorado runs.
Even though the mood does get a lot happier, you immediately know that the crew behind the film both want to celebrate this fantastic place and its astonishing fishing, as well as strike a more sinister chord, warning about the immediate and long term danger of depleting the Gunnisson of its water for irrigation and households. As Bruce Driver from the Western Resource Advocates puts it: "Get used to it: We live in a desert!".

The film covers both this aspect of the river as well as the fabulous fishing that takes place in it during a few weeks every summer where the salmon fly hatches. Fish go crazy and every feeding lane seems to be occupied by large rainbows or brownies, and judging from the imagery, quite a few anglers have a great time when this happens.
Different anglers and guides tell about their relationship with this phenomenon mixed in with the fishing scenes.

One guide, Woody Pattishall, says, "I don't know who the *beep* told anybody about it. It wasn't me!". But someone obviously did, because it actually seems that letting out the secret in one way saved the river from being dammed and ruined.
Travis Rummel, who guides on the river, has together with Ben Knight made this little gem of a film that tells this story in fascinating footage and very sensible words spoken by guides, anglers and rangers from the area.

Now, the term little gem is not chosen by coincidence, because the film truly is "little". With a running time of about 22 minutes, it's as short as fishing DVD's come. It's well produced, well filmed and mixed, but I do miss just a little more dwelling at a fishing scene or two, or the opportunity to get to know some of the guides or anglers just a little better. But still, I enjoyed every minute - I would just have loved to have some more of them.

You can watch an apetizing trailer on the Felt Soul Media homepage. The site is purely Flash, so I can't provide a direct link, but click around a bit and you'll find it.

PS: A review of Felt Soul Medias latest epos "Running Down The Man" about chasing roosterfish is coming soon.

Charles Meck is no stranger to fly fisherman, at least those in the mid-Atlantic states, as he's been writing books and articles about fly fishing since the 1960's. His latest book, "Fishing Limestone Streams", tackles those most special of trout waters where hatches can be intense, the fish can be grow large, and the catching can be difficult.

The book opens with a chapter defining limestone creeks - what they are, what makes them different from other creeks, and why trout (and thus anglers) find them so appealing. The chief advantage of limestone creeks is that they typically originate as springs with underground sources, which both regulates the temperature of the water throughout the year as well as the flow rate, leading to much better living conditions for all plants and critters that call limestone creeks home.

Meck then goes on to list some of the better known limestone creeks in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. While he does not include maps of the locations himself, he does give good cross-references to those large "Delorme" atlases for each state. The problem here, of course, is that he assumes the reader has one of these maps. I think it would have been a good practice for him to also include town names, so the reader can locate some of these streams on a normal road map. I also wish he had listed the sections of these chapters in the table of contents, so I could easily flip to "Southeast Pennsylvania" for example. As it is now, if I want to find streams in a certain region of the state, I have to flip pages looking for the appropriate heading. I know - it's a small nit - but aren't table of contents all about helping people find what they want in the book?

The rest of the book deals all the "how-to's" associated with limestone creeks. While trout are trout no matter what water they are found in, every situation has its own set of tactics that will help an angler increase their chances of hooking fish. If you've ever read Meck's writing in the past, you know that he's a hatch guy, so he spends quite a bit of time describing the hatches and the flies associated with those hatches. The lure of limestone creeks is the year-round insect activity and the willingness of trout to rise to meet the hatches (which absolutely does not imply their willingness to rise to your hair and fur offerings).

"Fishing Limestone Streams" is not one of this high gloss full color books that are as much eye candy as they are information sources. The photographs within the book are all black-and-white, and the recipes for the flies are all classics. You have to wonder how many of Meck's books and magazine articles include a recipe for his famous "Patriot" dry fly. The book has an old feel to it, but then again - these limestone streams are old themselves and you simply cannot argue with time tested patterns and techniques used to catch their trout. Meck has been catching trout from these waters before some of us were born, so we should not dismiss his ideas simply because they've been written about before.

While I'm sure plenty of the material inside the book has been published before, I have the feeling this was one of those efforts to consolidate all of Meck's writing about limestone streams of the mid-Atlantic states under one cover. If that was the goal - then I say mission accomplished. For those of us who live outside the area covered in the book, this will be a valuable reference if we get the urge to go exploring.