Simplified Fly Fishing: It Gets You on the Water and Fishing With Flies in Half an Hour

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Summary: This Book Delivers!
Review: When writing about fly fishing many authors use reverent, almost mystical, terms to describe their subject. Newcomers often find this preachy, elitist language intimidating and off-putting. While some may seem to practice fly fishing as their religion, we need to remember that it's just another form of fishing, albeit an exquisitely beautiful form. It certainly isn't sorcery, as some would have us believe. In seeking out instructional texts on this sport beginners are looking to gain useful information on catching fish, not entry into some shadowy, secret cult. Simplified Fly Fishing delivers on its promise to make fly fishing approachable to everyone. Even someone who's never handled a single piece of feather-tossing equipment before can begin reading this unpretentious, little book on friday, buy a balanced outfit on saturday and land their first fly-caught fish in the same weekend. That first fish will likely be a 6" bluegill, not a 20" brown trout but, by golly, it will have been caught on a fly! Slaymaker's very readable prose, along with the book's very clear illustrations, painlessly ease the neophyte through the basics of choosing equipment, casting, assembling a starter set of flies and understanding fish behavior. The author wisely advises beginners to start by casting to easily fooled panfish in farm ponds then, as their confidence and skills increase, work their way toward seducing more sophisticated gamefish in more challenging bodies of water. The author, rightly, assumes that with practice students will be able to work through the unique problems associated with fly fishing. As the purpose of this book is to put the beginner on the road to mastery, the author includes a chapter on building a skill expanding angling library. All of the recommended books are classics by masters like Lefty Kreh (who wrote this book's forward), A.J. McClane, Tom McNally and Joseph Bates Jr. Fortunately, much of today's entry level fly equipment is functionally superior to the finest equipment available in 1969, when Simplified Fly Fishing was first published, so success is now even easier to attain. For less than a C-note, including the price of this book, a beginner can obtain the basic tools needed to embark upon a lifetime of what many regard as the most absorbing and spiritually rewarding pastime of all. Tight lines!