Customer Reviews

Reading The Water (David Hughes Fishing Library)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dave Hughes does an excellent job describing and teaching how to read water. On most rivers, you will often see flyfisherman fishing the wrong type of water or at least fishing certain types of water with the wrong technique. Dave Hughes explains the basics water types (riffles, runs, pools, dead water, etc.) in detail. He also explains the different types of aquatic insects found in each type of water and why will be found in certain types of water over others (e.g. why certain nymphs are found primarily in the riffles and others more in pools. He explains where fish will be in each type of water, what insect types will be in each type of water and what techniques work to catch the fish in each water type. It is an all-around very educational book for both the beginner and advanced flyfisher. The beginner can get a wealth of information from the book. A more experienced flyfisher will get many tips/techniques from this book and can use it as an all-around reference book to be read at least once a year. Don't pass up this book because the title seems simple. Everyone can learn a ton from this book. I highly recommend this book.

I think that the other review does a good job reviewing, but I'll take a stab at it...I am an semi-experienced fisher who needed to learn more about reading the water, and I am gaining a wealth of good information. The only drawback, and this is coming from me, is a lack of good illustrative pictures. Reading about a riffle or ledge is good, and I am learning alot, but if the book had more photos I would think it would be perfect. But I would definately recommend this book.

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.

Really helped me to identify the different water types and why trout hold in certain areas more than others.

OK, this was an awesome book from every angle you look it at. The only drawback is the lack of fish porn :P, but its a must for beginners, intermediate and expert fly fisherman's.

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.

I was unaware that this was an American book, this was no doubt my error but it was not made very clear. However the general advice can be used for fishing English waters.