I don’t like reading reviews of books where people say someone is “back on form” or the writer is retuning to their “classic style”. It gives the impression that the author’s last couple of books have been pretty shit and they have finally pulled their socks up and decided to write something decent instead of milking the offline publishing cash cow.
So after saying all that, how do I then say that this book holds its own with his earlier works? I mean I am not saying John Gierach’s last couple of books have been bad it’s just that I just don’t return to them as much as his older works. I will probably return to this one though….lots of interesting info and stories..
So what did I like about it?
Well for a start it was about fishing and catching them – he gives an accurate description of going Pike fishing on the fly – a little bit scary and a little bit crazy. When I told one of my pals about the pike exploits he sniffed and said “he must be running out of material” as a justification as to why he was not writing about trout. Still this guy loves Gierach and catching trout on a dry fly however I don’t think it’s true the man has run out of material. Robert Traver managed to solely talk about brook trout for a couple of books and countless articles so I think Gierach is evolving with his readership – more people are keen to read about catching other species on the fly, so he is not afraid to write about it. I suppose it stems from his magazine writing background, a few years ago you would hardly see an article about Pike on the fly and now they are in every other issue (over here in the UK anyway).
You can buy it from Amazon UK
