Product Description

Trout often prefer underwater aquatic insects because they're more vulnerable than surface stages and are more abundant as well. Fly-fishers know the importance of imitating the specific life stage that trout are feeding on, however most current flies only imitate size, shape, and color of the natural insect. Soft-hackled nymphs also imitate movement and behavior. Tying & Fishing Soft-Hackled Nymphs explains how to imitate sub-surface aquatic insects using both traditional and modern soft-hackled nymphs and flymphs along with the most effective presentation techniques. By exploring effective thread and translucent fur body material combinations, as well as game-bird hackle collars, these flies take on life-like properties. These patterns can be fished throughout the water column from the stream bottom--to imitate immature nymphal forms--to the surface mimicking transitional emergers. Drawing on both traditional and evolved patterns and methods, these wingless wet flies will take you beyond for mulaic fishing techniques to unlimited presentation possibilities and will help you catch more trout.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #306623 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Customer Reviews

A really great book
This book is everything that I was hoping it would be. It contains wonderful pictures, detailed descriptions of the soft hackle nymphs and flymphs and specific details on tying all of the variations. In addition, the author has added a chapter on a variety of methods of fishing these flies and another chapter detailing types of flies to use in various streams and situations. Highly recommended for anyone interested in testing the waters with these new variations on a very old fly - most of which cannot be found in your local fly shop.

Good info, but difficult to read
This book provides valuable information for anyone who is interested in fishing soft-hackled nymphs, particularly for someone with limited experience with this classic style of fly. There are a number of of interesting pattern recipes and detailed information on fishing techniques. The overview of leader construction was thorough, if a bit overwhelming.

The reason this book only rates a three is that it was riddled with typos, grammatical errors, and non sequiturs. I can't believe any publisher would distribute something of such poor quality. I have a couple of fly tying books published by Frank Amato and both are well edited.

Most surprising is that the author studied journalism and is a professional freelance writer. He doesn't seem to know when to use a comma. At times, his writing is disjointed, with adjacent paragraphs having no connection to one another.

As a reader, the poor editing and lack of proofreading got in the way of the quality content, making it difficult for me to really enjoy this book.

Unique Book
This is really a unique book. It is not at all an in your face, my way or the highway type work. In fact it is more like a low key tutorial. Mr. McGee works at trying to explain to the reader what he does and why he does it. There is a lot of rehash here from other books and writers but Mr. McGee relies on these sources to help illustrate his points. And he is not at all shy about giving credit where credit is due to others who have contributed so much to this sport. I especially appreciated the section on how to use the oversized partrige hackles when tying small flies. The photography and lay out makes this book worthy of any collection on the piscatorial art(s).