An Advanced Course in Fly Fishing
The mission of
The Little Red Book of Fly Fishing was to demystify and un-complicate the tricks and tips that make a great trout fisher. There are no complicated physics lessons in that book. Rather,
The Little Red Book of Fly Fishing offered a simple, digestible primer on the basic elements of fly fishing: the cast, presentation, reading water, and selecting flies.
In this,
The Little Black Book of Fly Fishing, authors Kirk Deeter and Chris Hunt take you to the next level, building upon what Deeter and Charlie Meyers did in
The Little Red Book. The Little Black Book will helps fly fishers build upon what they learned in the
Little Red Book. Read this valuable, thought-provoking guidebook, and you'll be at the point where you'll be catching fish when no one else is, and you'll know exactly why you are. Advanced casting, presentation, reading the water, fly selection, and much more, including proper gear selection, are all covered. The table of contents, below, explains it all.
The Little Black Book of Fly Fishing
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
Part 1: CASTING
- A double-haul is really important, and not just in the salt
- Teaching someone new? Start with Tenkara
- Everybody needs a casting lesson. Everybody.
- Casting longer leaders
- ‘Casting’ nymphs under indicators
- Get a practice rod
- How to cast a 15-foot leader (and why you should)
- Casting at taillights
- The cast killer
- Your casting stroke follow joints by size
- Challenge your cast
- Great casts are the ones that get bit
- Score your casts like golf strokes; fewer is better
- The sand-save cast
- A reach cast is worth a thousand mends
- Five feet short on purpose (the linear false cast)
- Be Lefty in the salt, and Rajeff in the fresh
- Give yourself a “D”
- Beating wind
- Don’t out-kick your coverage
Part 2: PRESENTATION
- Fast strip for saltwater predators
- A swirl, not a rise
- Casting streamers upstream
- Carp: Not just for city kids
- Step out of your comfort zone
- What are the birds after?
- The potato chip fakeout
- Why natives matter
- But I still love brown trout best
- Micro-drag: where you stand matters
- You’ll never beat a fish into submission
- Take it to the lake
- Float tubes and garbage cans
- Food never attacks fish
- A case for the dry-fly snob
- Go Deep in the name of fish research
- Roll fish for fun
- They’re in skinny water for a reason
- The cafeteria line
- The escape hatch
Part 3: READING WATER (AND FISH)
- The stripset
- Covering water
- Skate and twitch big flies in low light
- Rod tip down for streamers
- Weight an unweighted fly with fly-tying beads instead of split-shot
- Urban angling
- Get in shape. Stay in shape.
- Dry your fly first, apply floatant second
- Most fish (and some bugs) face upstream—present accordingly
- Head up, game over
- Step when you streamer
- Babysit your flies
- ID the “player” and get after it
- Gin clear water
- Flat calm water
- Developing “TSP” (trout sensory perception)
- A fish doesn’t see like humans do
- Walk on
- The 10 second rule
- Like a dog on a leash
- Tip up or tip down?
- The keys to spotting fish
- The full-court press usually fails
- Use the whole spice cabinet
- River personalities and handshakes
- What the cloud layers tell you
- Knowing what they are not doing is equally important as knowing what they are
- Upwelling v. the straight seam
- The speed of the strike is proportionate to the depth of the water (in rivers)
- See this, do that
Part 4: FLIES
- UV resin in home-tied flies
- Nymphs on the swing
- Multi-purpose flies
- Sparse for saltwater
- UV parachute posts
- Tip the fly for tying parachute posts
- Caddis: the most dishonest fly ever
- Wire or tinsel for dry flies
- The “pellet fly” you can feel good about
- Practice, practice, practice
- Peacock herl … and why it works
- The mystery of the Purple Prince Nymph
- Profile is everything
- The Adams family
- Lethal mice
- The Mole Fly miracle
- Bob Behnke on colors
- Terrestrials are opportunity bugs
- The end of the duck
- Colors change with depth
- Un-matching the hatch
- The monkey poo fly
Part 5: MISC. (Everything from gear, to fighting fish and angler ethics)
- Fly reels for trout are just line holders
- Fly reels matter for saltwater fish
- Faster rods aren’t always better
- You get what you pay for
- Pride cometh before the fall
- Sheet-metal screws
- Wire for predators
- Quick-dry attire for the flats
- ABC. Anything But Cotton
- Snip your tippet at an angle
- Rod weight depends on fly types
- The best loop knot… perfection
- 7X tippet is BS
- Colors and camo above the surface
- Guitars and fly rods
- Bucket list places
- Tiger snakes and long hemostats
- It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock ‘n roll
- Score fishing like cricket
- It’s okay to fail
- I cheer for the fish
