Posts tagged: fly fishing writer

John Gierach Interviewed (Mentions Steelheaders Who Can’t Leave River Long Enough to Wiz??)

January 18, 2011, by 4 comments

Trout Unlimited (the other, less-famous TU) published a short interview with Underground Fave fly fishing writer John Gierach.

Gierach fans will want to read the whole interview, but a few bits rose above the rest (at least for me).

In this passage, Gierach deftly (and amusingly) described the kind of people you meet steelheading:

Does steelheading attract a certain kind of personality?

It attracts two distinct personalities. It attracts guys who will pee in their waders rather than stop casting and go on bank. There’s a guy I met—you could smell him. And that’s why—he wouldn’t stop for 10 minutes a couple times a day to pee. He’d probably say you can’t steelhead fish unless you fish ferociously. And then there are guys like me and some of the people I steelhead with who aren’t maniacal about it. For me, it’s very meditative and restful. Here’s a nice run that’s about 600 yards long, I’ll get in here about 2 o’clock and be done by dinnertime. Cast, swing, step. Cast, swing, step. It’s absolutely methodical.

Note to Self: when you meet “that guy” – the one you could smell because he was unwilling to leave the river long enough to wiz – it’d be best to avoid shaking hands.

The interview’s short but worth reading, and yes – Gierach’s next book is still listed for a May 17 release – so stay tuned. More to come, I’m sure.

See you reading, Tom Chandler.

We Uncover A John Gierach Essay On Writing – And Reveal An Embarassing Secret…

April 20, 2010, by 5 comments

Almost two years ago, I interviewed John Gierach for the Trout Underground – another publicity chore for the notoriously PR-averse writer.

Sadly, that interview never saw the light of day.

John Gierach

The original Trout Bum

It was destined to be a short, “ten questions” thing – a quick glimpse into the life of fly fishing’s most-famous trout bum.

Instead, the new recording gadget I’d bought (and tested several times) fizzled exactly three minutes into the interview, which turned into a rambling talk almost two hours long.

Naturally, I didn’t know it had failed (it worked perfectly prior, and never worked after, earning it a trip to the trash bin).

So I didn’t take notes.

Later – after discovering the empty space where the recorded interview should have been – I didn’t feel like publishing my impressions of what Gierach may or may not have said in response to my questions (“When asked about his motivation for devoting his life to fly fishing, the author presumably could have said something sorta like this…”).

In a career spanning almost 2.5 decades, this was not my proudest moment.

That’s why stumbling across a new Gierach essay and interview is like finding a pod of big, happy trout eating Green Drakes – on a small stream you’ve driven by, but never fished before.

It’s not something you expect to happen, but because fly fishermen live in hope, you allow for the possibility.

And you sure as hell take advantage when the stars finally align.

In this essay, Gierach muses about his own writing process – a dangerous place for any writer to go (that way lies madness).

That’s because writers are often hideous egoists, though in Gierach’s case, the essay offers proof of the opposite: Read more →

The Fly Fishing Manifesto: StoryArc (And Those Other Fly Fishing Sites That Mean Something)

February 17, 2010, by 21 comments

The Trout Underground has long had a manifesto – a reflection of the moment when the light bulb went on (albeit weakly), and (yet) another fly fishing site was born.

While I credit Gierach for exposing me to a different sort of fly fishing writing (remember, this was back in the late 80s), the Trout Underground came to life after reading (again) the introduction to McGuane’s seminal The Longest Silence.

Since then, the world has seen the birth of thousands of personal fly fishing sites, some of which probably qualify as national treasures – assuming that fly fishing qualifies as a national anything (Fly Fishing: “The Official National Time Sink of the USA”)

I’m not referring to the big sites, but the smaller, more personal – and often more literate – sites.

They’re labors of love, lacking both a publishing schedule and commercial underpinnings. Their authors are the true children of the digital publishing revolution, and at the very least, they offer a beguilingly personal glimpse of the sport – unencumbered by commerce, sponsorship or squeamishly narrow editors.

StoryArc - a fly fishing literary site

And yes, you’re probably running down a mental short list of your favorite little fly fishing sites. They’re not aggressively promoting a commercial angle on anything (gear, company, or even the writer), and they’re usually updated far less often than you’d like. (Feel free to identify your favorites in the comments section; unlike small trout streams, good little fly fishing sites don’t need the protection of anonymity.)

One of the best – and probably most unfairly overlooked – is the site I’d try to develop if I was writer enough – David Kim Mote’s StoryARC, which features a lengthy, but hugely appealing manifesto of its own: Read more →

The Greatest Fly Fishing Writer Nobody’s Ever Heard Of?

April 26, 2009, by 6 comments

I’m sure we’ll receive a raft of emails from outraged fans of William Humphrey’s work, but the Washington Post’s book critic (Johnathan Yardley) singled out the late Mr. Humphrey as a “Great Writer That Got Away.”

Odds are you’ve never heard of William Humphrey, much less read one of his several books, an unhappy reminder that even the best of writers — and from the publication of his first book in 1953 until his death in 1997, Humphrey was indeed one of the best — have a terribly hard time finding the readers they deserve.

…

So to make up for that, here are two exercises in what Humphrey called “the literature of angling”: “The Spawning Run” (1970) and “My Moby Dick” (1978). They really are longish essays disguised as books, padded out with large type and lovely illustrations, both having fewer than 100 pages, all of which merely goes to show that small is, or can be, beautiful.

I admit it; I hadn’t read either of Humphrey’s essay books. Have the Undergrounders?

See you at the library, Tom Chandler.

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