Fly Fishing the California Delta
By Mike Costello; photographs by John Sherman. Published by No Nonsense Fly Fishing Guidebooks, 2009; $49.95 hardbound.
Disclaimer: the author and photographer of this book are my friends. I was privy to some of the early drafts of the book and was honored to write the forward. Can I write an unbiased and fair book review? Absolutely not. The editor of California Fly Fisher, Richard Anderson, agreed to play judge and jury to my notions of the worthiness of this book, so blame him if I wax a bit too poetic.
Today I received a copy of Fly Fishing the California Delta, opened the book to page 1 (a good place to start), and was blown out of my seat. John Sherman’s photo of a boiling striper framed by a bent rod is one of the most story-telling pictures I’ve ever seen in the fishing world. Without stopping to read a single word, I flipped through the pages and over and over again was thunderstruck by the photography. I’ve spent my fair share of time trying to capture subsurface photos, and I am in awe of what John has been able to render from the murky waters of the Delta. The eye candy and fish porn alone are worth the price of admission.
This is not just a pretty book, however. Between the covers are nearly two hundred pages of hardcore, useful information. Mike Costello both recounts the history of the introduction of stripers into the Delta and marshals facts that destroy the premise of Central Valley agribusiness advocates who contend that it is the striped bass, and not water diversions, that have led to the near extinction of several native fish species. The introduced fish filled a niche and coexisted for nearly a century side by side with hundreds of thousands of salmon and other native species.
An entire chapter is devoted to the natural history of stripers. Not since Nick Karas’s The Striped Bass has such a concise natural history been laid out in layman’s terms. Of course, the natural history of Nick’s East Coast stripers differs significantly from that of stripers in the Pacific, and Mike has gone to great lengths to illustrate the Delta striper’s migratory patterns, bait preferences, and habitat choices — all invaluable information when trying to figure out where your quarry might be hiding.
Finding Delta stripers is 85 percent of the game, and Mike spares no words describing how to use seasons, tides, moon phases, weather, and water temperatures to find them. The Delta is a vast system of waterways, and fishing the western part of the Delta is entirely different from fishing the northern part. The book breaks the Delta into manageable geographic units, complete with maps and tips to squeeze the maximum potential from each.
The book details fly-fishing equipment choices right down to the brand name. The best flies are shown in large plates, along with their tying recipes and the best ways to fish them. The book also covers retrieves, hook sets, and casting techniques for dealing with big flies and windy conditions.
Fly Fishing the California Delta started out being a book about fishing for stripers, but grew into a tome covering fishing for largemouths, smallmouths, and even chinook salmon, carp, and catfish. I could rave on and on about how useful this book is, but these words would start sounding like a press release, rather than a book review.
One gripe: Fly Fishing the California Delta is in serious need of an index. The first printing should sell quickly, and I hope the publishers will correct this glaring omission by the second. Also, an observation: When comparing the original drafts with the final book, it is apparent that much of Mike’s voice has been edited out. The editing is done in a professional way that preserves a steady cadence from beginning to end, but I miss the exclamation marks and contagious enthusiasm that is familiar to everyone who knows Mike. For anyone who fishes the Delta, who has ever thought about fishing the Delta, or who wants to learn more about this tremendous and tremendously endangered resource in the heart of California, I cannot suggest strongly enough that you get your hands on this book. This is an instant classic, and in my opinion the best fly-fishing book of 2009.
Ralph Cutter
Where the Fish Are: An Angler’s Guide to Fish Behavior
By Daniel Bagur. Published by McGraw-Hill, 2009; $18.95 hardbound.
It was if some focus group had put me under a lens and figured out exactly what sequence of words would pull my buying trigger. The back cover of Where the Fish Are says: “An impressive body of scientific research shows how fish respond to daily and seasonal changes in weather, light, temperature and food availability and how they react to shape, movement, scent and sound. These behaviors determine not only where and when you find fish but what sort of offering will attract them.”
I cautiously nibbled at the bait, opened up the cover, and flipped through the pages, looking for the credentials of the writer. Who is this Daniel Bagur? What is his cred? Is this the next Gary LaFontaine, or just some stringer with access to a keyboard and a stack of old In-Fisherman magazines? A biography was conspicuously and suspiciously absent. Did this guy think I am a fool, or what? I read the back cover again, swallowed the bait, and bought the book.
I read Where the Fish Are over the course of a week with the same start-and-stop page flipping I had when buying it. The book is a patchwork of summary conclusions from various scientific writings. Most, but not all of these summaries clearly cite their sources. It is a novel writing concept that I somewhat enjoyed: a factoid approach with enough conjecture and observation used as mortar between the summaries to keep it readable.
Unfortunately some of the observations and conjectures were so odd as to make you wonder if we were reading the same summary of the original research. As an example, when discussing how warm water speeds metabolisms and the need for fish to feed, the author surmises that shark attacks are more common in the summer because warmer water speeds the shark’s metabolism and feeding requirements. I had to stop and wonder if there aren’t more attacks in summer simply because that’s when humans are most abundant in the shark’s larder.
Though the title would lead you to believe otherwise, much of the book is completely irrelevant to anglers. The sex life and feeding behavior of sticklebacks (small fish related to seahorses) is thoroughly explored. I enjoyed the stickleback summaries, but had to stop (again) to ponder the link between a stickleback and my pursuit of a game fish.
Then there was page 98. Nothing on this page cited a scientific paper, but the author describes how fish are safe during floods because fish-eating snakes leave the water for high ground. (“Be very careful during floods because venomous snakes congregate in the same areas as people.”) This train of thought derails, then couples with a narrative describing how, during floods, American river otters and their babies get scooped from their dens and thus become easy pickings for predatory fish. I did a lot of stopping and starting on page 98.
I understand what the author was trying to do by linking together all these summary conclusions, but somehow, he missed the mark. The bones of a good book are here, but it would take a skilled editor to flesh out those bones and make a coherent read of the information.
As a general source of information, the book is a useful tool because of its very detailed index. The summary conclusions were interesting enough that several times I sourced the cited papers themselves. All in all, I’m OK with having parted with the nineteen bucks, but I still haven’t figured out who the author is.
Ralph Cutter
Fly-Fishing Secrets of the Ancients: A Celebration of Five Centuries of Lore and Wisdom
By Paul Schullery. Published by University of New Mexico Press, 2009; $29.95 hardbound.
Most of us operate under the assumption that fly fishing is a constantly evolving sport, with each generation of anglers building upon the wisdom and experience of those who fished before us. It’s a concept that is especially relevant in our modern era of television, widely available books and magazines, and an Internet that can spread information across regions and countries at a speed that’s literally as fast as one can type at a keyboard.
But the rub with this line of thinking is that we have to be aware of how the “ancients” actually fished, whether they preceded us by, say, four decades or four centuries. The currents of time can certainly roil the passage of knowledge, sometimes drowning good ideas entirely or stranding them in back eddies where few, if any of us can find them. Still, as angling historian Paul Schullery observes in his introduction to Fly-Fishing Secrets of the Ancients, “It is as true in fly fishing as in any other pursuit that we ignore history at our peril,” adding:
History reveals how generations of our fly-fishing predecessors dealt over the course of their own fishing lives with the same problems and challenges we face today. In fact, I can’t imagine any sort of formal “instructional” fishing lesson that can do an angler more good in the long run than witnessing the savviest, most experienced, or weirdest of our predecessors working their way through the exasperating obstacles that keep fish off the hook.
Schullery, a scholar-in-residence at the Montana State University Library in Bozeman, has long experience in revealing the angling habits of our predecessors, having written American Fly Fishing: A History among his forty-plus books. He currently writes a history-related column for American Angler magazine, and FlyFishing Secrets of the Ancients draws in part on research done for that column, which is also reflected in how the book is organized — as a collection of essays, rather than as an overarching historical argument. Part One focuses on aspects of historical fly design, Part Two on fly delivery, Part Three on four particularly American aspects of fly fishing (specifically, Pacific salmon, the double haul, grasshopper patterns, and streamers), and Part Four on the “assembled lore, hints, and insights of earlier generations of fly fishers.” This last section somewhat ties together the preceding three and also serves as manual for how to angle “with historic smarts.” I won’t go into the details here (the text is dense with observations), but it’s all interesting, and much of it is particularly relevant if you’re fishing with tenkara gear. (See the “California Confluences” column in the November/December 2009 issue.)
If you enjoy understanding why you fish the way you do, then Fly-Fishing Secrets of the Ancients is certainly worth reading — even more so if you’re the sort of angler who is always looking for ways to improve the flies and tackle we fish with, as well as the ways we fish. History loads the rod of innovation.
Richard Anderson
The New Hooked on Fly Tying Series DVDs
Produced by Bennett-Watt HD Productions, Inc., 2009; running time varies between 60 to 98 minutes; $24.95 per DVD.
Jim and Kelly Watt have been producing fly-fishing and fly-tying videos for years, and are well-regarded for the high quality of their work. They recently launched a line of instructional DVDs under the name “The New Hooked on Fly Tying Series,” which, unlike their prior “Hooked on Fly Tying” videos, are shot with high-definition cameras. The eight DVDs in the new HD series all feature Californians: Tim Fox, with Signature Nymphs (7 patterns for trout, including the popular Fox’s Poopah) and Trout Dries and Steelhead Flies (6 patterns); Zack Thurman, with Next Generation Nymphs (6 patterns) and Suggestive Stillwater Flies (7 patterns); Justin Miller, with Winter Swinging Steelhead Flies (2 patterns, but they’re complex) and Summer Low-Water Steelhead Flies (3 patterns); and Bill Marts, with Stealthy Steelhead Flies (4 patterns) and Sexy Saltwater Flies (4 patterns).
Each fly-tying segment opens with a materials list (also printed on the back of the DVD case) and a rotating view of the fly, which gives the viewer a 360-degree perspective on how it should look when finished. The video then cuts to the fly tyer, who introduces the pattern and demonstrates the steps involved in tying it. Basically, this is what happens with any fly-tying video, but the Watts understand how to use the film medium for teaching. The tyer, for example, sits in front of a black background, which by eliminating visual distractions helps ensure the viewer pays attention to what’s happening on camera. The lighting, too, is bright and well-placed, which is especially important given that close-ups, both from over-the-shoulder and frontal perspectives, are frequent (and very useful). My only quibble might be sound levels, which sometimes vary between segments, but this is easily rectified with one’s thumb.
All four tyers come off well on camera. Their individual personalities shine through and they’re good at explaining what they’re doing. Given their positions as employees of a major and well-reputed fly-fishing outfitter, it’s safe to assume that each of them is a talented, knowledgable, and experienced fly fisher — intent, as Tim Fox says, on presenting fly patterns that will let others catch fish. And when the (rare) mistake is made on camera, it’s not necessarily edited out, but instead is kept to help show what can go wrong during the tying process and how to recover from it. I found myself learning new tricks for improving the effectiveness of the flies I tie, as well as for improving the ways I tie them. Bottom line: Not only have I learned new patterns, I’ve become a better fly tyer.
Richard Anderson
