"Bug Water," by A. Thomason

[mcfinn]

Arlen Thomason is a photographer, writer, flyfisher and as fate would have it a recently retired molecular biologist. His writing is at once witty, scientific and concise, without pontificating. His love of buggy trout water is obvious as evidenced by the countless man-hours he put into the astonishingly sharp photos of, well, BUGS.
I'd expected plenty of campy splash pages with a few egg-headed latin captions reminicent of Wil.E.Coyote, but in his 211 pages Thomason produces tasteful and relevant bug awe. A little entomology here, some hydro/geophysics there... splendid stills and color sketches of tied flies (w/recipes)... and an (pardon the pun) eye opening section devoted to the '-ology' behind the eyesight of trout, with some well thought out presentation devoted to how a trout's eye acquires objects using refracted light, etc.
Does this book reek of science? Well, not exactly. What it does seem to reek of is a biologist's love of of his hobby of flyfishing, married to his passion for photography, then having a three-way with his skill as a writer... so to speak.
In short, flyfishers NEED this book as much as flyfishing needs caring, intelligent and observant folks like its author.

 

[jdaddy]

Looking at the Amazon preview it looks like there is some great photography in there as well. Great review. Certainly peaked my interest.

 

[mcfinn]

Good call, jdaddy... Amazon would've been the $mart way to go, but i was unable to delay gratification like most adults, so i drove around local bookstores 'til i found it. Nabbed the ONLY copy from Chester Co Books and Music.