Only very rarely do I find an honestly great angler who is also an honestly great writer. By my measure I can only come up with four or five. A large majority of fly fishing authors writings fall into what I call the "Art Lee" genre: Thinly cloaked attempts at self aggrandizement. Generally speaking, any useful information or tactics are nearly absent.
Dave Hughes understands the topics he so skillfully writes about. He has been uniformly successful in presenting most of the significant topics in fly fishing in a flowing, entertaining, and educational style. Read ALL of Dave's books: you will, without a doubt, become a better angler.

The problem with reviews is they reflect the personality of the reviewer. So, take everything I write with a grain of salt.

I have a problem with someone taking 20 minutes to explain something to me that really only takes 2 minutes. I feel that Dave took 222 pages to say what could've been said in about half that. A great deal of the information is repeated, more than once. Now, I know in some educational circles, this is the best way to teach. However, he could've said it once and suggested rereading the book a few times.

Although the author has a homey, familiar writing style, a lot of the material is very dry. So much so, that about a third of the way through I demoted the book to bathroom reading.

Now having said all that, there IS a lot of really good information in this book. The problem is geting through the whole thing to extract what is useful. For a shorter more-to-the-point, see John Gierachs' book on small stream fishing.

I do still recommend the book, particularly for newcomers to fly-fishing for trout.

The problem with reviews is they reflect the personality of the reviewer. So, take everything I write with a grain of salt.



I have a problem with someone taking 20 minutes to explain something to me that really only takes 2 minutes. I feel that Dave took 222 pages to say what could've been said in about half that. A great deal of the information is repeated, more than once. Now, I know in some educational circles, this is the best way to teach. However, he could've said it once and suggested rereading the book a few times.



Although the author has a homey, familiar writing style, a lot of the material is very dry. So much so, that about a third of the way through I demoted the book to bathroom reading.



Now having said all that, there IS a lot of really good information in this book. The problem is geting through the whole thing to extract what is useful. For a shorter more-to-the-point, see John Gierachs' book on small stream fishing.



I do still recommend the book, particularly for newcomers to fly-fishing for trout.

The problem with reviews is they reflect the personality of the reviewer. So, take everything I write with a grain of salt.

I have a problem with someone taking 20 minutes to explain something to me that really only takes 2 minutes. I feel that Dave took 222 pages to say what could've been said in about half that. A great deal of the information is repeated, more than once. Now, I know in some educational circles, this is the best way to teach. However, he could've said it once and suggested rereading the book a few times.

Although the author has a homey, familiar writing style, a lot of the material is very dry. So much so, that about a third of the way through I demoted the book to bathroom reading.

Now having said all that, there IS a lot of really good information in this book. The problem is geting through the whole thing to extract what is useful. For a shorter more-to-the-point, see John Gierachs' book on small stream fishing.

I do still recommend the book, particularly for newcomers to fly-fishing for trout.

Tom Rosenbauers "Orvis Guide to Reading Trout Streams" is a much better read with more comprehensive, useful, understandable information. Dave Hughes has a few decent tying books and his "Small Streams" book, in my opinion, is his best work, though Gierach gives him a run for his money. Try Rosenbauers book first. You'll be so glad you did.