The Fly Fishing Anthology

Book excerpt: 'The Fly Fishing Anthology' features glorious artwork and more than twenty stories and essays celebrating, reminiscing, and bemoaning the high sport of fly fishing. This first-of-its-kind book is divided into six themed chapters. The first chapter features stories of initiation -- none painless and all memorable. Chapter two explores the glorious vistas of fly fishing country. In the third chapter, our writers go nuts for trout, that highest echelon of game fish. Chapter four examines the seductive art of fly-tying. The fifth chapter is devoted to reminiscences, and the final chapter defends the great sport of fly fishing. More than half of the pieces take jabs -- some gentle, some sharp -- at the sport of fly fishing and the men and women who aim to master it. Highlights include John Gierach's Keillor-esque vision of a sleepy Colorado trout fishing town jolted awake by the age of neoprene waders and Latin terminology, Charles Elliott fly fishing for the elusive bone-fish at the elbow of baseball great Ted Williams, and newcomer George Tichenor self-deprecating with cheerful aplomb as he practices casting a fly on the revered Willowemoc.The writing represents the best that fly fishing literature has to offer. In these pages, dry fly master George LaBranche argues with passionate conviction that dry fly fishing is the highest art of angling. Zane Grey waxes poetic on the wild, lonely beauty of his beloved West, and sports-writing genius Red Smith wrests a hilarious, epic tale out of an amateur fly tier's first Silver Tip pattern. Of course, the fly fishing legends are present in these pages, including Cornelia 'Fly Rod' Crosby, G. E. M. Skues, and Joan Salvato Wulff.