The Most Influential Book........

[David]

Great topic. In order:
Trout: Ray Bergman
Hatches: nastasi / caucci (sp)
Collection: gierach

 

[outsider]

Interest posts about Hatches. I bought that book when it came out. Another good one. In the mid 80's I made a business appointment to Weiler Brush Company in the Poconos. I met with the plant engineer. Turned out to be Al Caucci. There are some pictures in the book that I recognize from a well known, heavily fished stream in the Poconos. The pictures are on pages 109 and 198. I also believe the picture on page 111 is from the same stream. Anyone care to guess the stream name?

 

[rrt]

Oops on me: I forgot to include Bergman's "Trout," which was certainly a major influence on me when I was young a looooooog time ago. It is still one of the best, if not the best, all-around trout-fishing help books and is written in a nice manner with lots of anecdotes.

 

[troutbert]

Trout by Ray Bergman was probably the most influential book for me, in two ways.

1) The book made flyfishing for trout seem very interesting, so it got me all enthusiastic to do that kind of fishing, even before I was old enough to drive to get to the streams.

2) Bergman was versatile, i.e. he fished dries, wets, nymphs, streamers, depending on the conditions. His book influenced me from the very beginning to think of that as the normal approach to flyfishing, and I still feel the same today.

 

[Tigereye]

Nymph Fishing Dave Hughes

 

[dryflyguy]

"Meeting and Fishing the Hatches" - Charles Meck.

Shortly after I started this sport, I quickly realized that fishing dry flies was all that I was really interested in.
And this read - my first FF book - gave me the knowledge needed to accomplish that rather successfully.
Read it from cover to cover countless times

 

[just_jon]

Another vote for the Modern Dry Fly Code.

 

[BrookieChaser]

"The Earth Is Enough" by Harry Middleton.

 

[riverwhy]

Middleton is great although I preferred On the Spine of Time. Upland Stream by W.D. Wetherell makes me want to move to New England. A River Never Sleeps by Roderick Haig-Brown captures the seasons very well and included the contrasting waters of England's chalk streams and the steelhead rivers of Vancouver.