Instinctive Fly Fishing: A Guide’s Guide to Better Fishing
Posted by admin on Thursday, December 31st, 2009
Product Description
In fly fishing, as in life, the very simplest things are the most important, and the easiest to overlook. Streit, in this important new book, reveals what he has learned in more than twenty years of guiding fly fishing trips.
Streit has witnessed thousands of clients catch trout over the years, and their successes and failures often boiled down to a few elementary rules: keep the sun at your back, keep your silhouette off the water, keep your fly in producti… More >>
Instinctive Fly Fishing: A Guide’s Guide to Better Fishing
Filed in fly fishing guide | 3 responses so far
Phaedra Greenwoodon 31 Dec 2009 at 9:09 pm 1In his book on fly fishing, which covers everything from fishing with children to riffles and gear, Taylor Streit writes with style and a joie de vivre that is engaging even if you’ve never cast a line in the water.
For fishermen and fisherwomen at all levels of experience, Streit advocates instinct and common sense–which is not so common. He gives fundamental advice such as “keep the sun at your back and your fly in the water; and think like a predator.”
In this book he offers hundreds of tips and intuitive predatory skills taken from notes he took while guiding fishing clients in New Mexico and Colorado, and from fishing in Argentina. He brings to the lively narration not just instinct, but knowledge gained from years of experience about what is going on in the invisible depths between the bobber, the fish and the mind of the fisherman.
He has great fun analyzing the fly-fishing personality such as the analytical fisherman who is so busy fiddling with his strategies he can’t see what’s right in front of him–which might be a dead fish.
The average human fisherman, he writes, is not focused in the moment but “…just standing there in midstream, mouth ajar, staring into his fly box.”
Being totally present, involved in the action, is a Zen thing which can usually be captured only fleetingly: “…that blissful place where instincts guide movements.”
But sometimes a beginner, not hampered by too much instruction, can become an instinctive predator. He tells about a woman client, Gloria, who is just “along for the ride” with her fishing husband. Gloria transcends boredom when she catches a 10-inch-rainbow trout. “…she emits screams, squeals, and giggles that echo off the canyon walls. She reels the trout right up to the end of the rod and is frantically grabbing for it.” Meanwhile, hubby hasn’t caught a thing, and his ears are turning red, so Streit gives him a few pointers that he was not receptive to at the beginning of the trip.
Streit recommends hiring a fishing guide because a good guide can read the water and will recommend only the high-percentage catch spots. In his advice to guides, Streit goes as far as how to push a hook on through a snagged finger and cut off the barb, or untangle an amateur’s badly snagged line.
“Various snags hold onto flies differently,” he says. “A fly hooked to a submerged rock will usually let go if it is pulled from the opposite direction from which it was hooked.”
Casting, of course, is the key to fly fishing, and perhaps one of the most difficult arts to master. “Casting is about feel,” he writes, and doesn’t try to translate the action into writing. “Video is a better medium.” With typical candor he confesses that, “I was a self-taught and ugly caster until I got help from two great instructors.” He highly recommends casting lessons, especially at the beginning of your fly-fishing career.
Written with humor and grace, this is a fine, informative book for anyone who ever eyed a fish in the stream and imagined it in the pan.
Rating: 5 / 5
Anonymouson 31 Dec 2009 at 10:04 pm 2Instinctive Flyfishing, the book, is exactly about that – the title says it all. Taylor Streit has packed a lifetime of flyfishing knowledge into it’s pages, all winnowed through the sieve of experience and distilled down to the essence. This is no frivolous “techie” book, or long-winded personality boosting diatribe. It is a book about real flyfishing by a real guide.
All the basics, from equipment selection, casting and being on the water are covered in a down to earth manner that is neither preachy nor over-explained. The section on “reading” water is, alone, worth the price of the book.
Streit’s underlying premise is that if you can just be present, and pay attention, you can learn that you already know everything you need to know to catch fish on a fly. Ultimately, it’s about being in your body, and listening to nature.
If someone asked me, “What one book would you recommend to a person who wanted to begin flyfishing?”I would unhesitatingly respond, “Instinctive Flyfishing, by Taylor Streit.” You can’t go wrong.
Rating: 5 / 5
James Benensonon 31 Dec 2009 at 10:38 pm 3I only fished with Taylor once — and learned a hell of a lot in one day, even though I had fished for years previously. There is a tremendous amount of information in this easy-to-read book, way more than most of us can absorb in just one reading. It is the only flyfishing book that I have read where I have kept a yellow highlighter with me to underline the stuff that I want to remember when I read it again, and again. I have an extensive library of flyfishing books, some written by the “greats”. Taylor’s book is right at the top!
Rating: 5 / 5