By Rusty Dunn

2020 … what a year.  Cancellations, closures, abandoned plans, and broken dreams.  A year of seemingly endless sadness, as family, friends, and strangers near and far succumbed to the relentless virus.  We now enter a long winter of high anxiety and low expectations.  How should we pass the time?  You’ve already exhausted the Netflix library.  You’ve already organized the sock drawer umpteen times.  What to do next?  The murmur of flowing water calms a troubled spirit, and the next best thing to being there is reading about it.  Recommendations of selected fly fishing books follow below.  The list is by no means exhaustive or balanced, but the books contain insight and wisdom from some truly great authors.  They will lift your spirits, make you laugh, improve your fly fishing or, at the very least, help pass the time until winter’s icy grip abates and the pesky virus yields to human ingenuity.  You’ve probably already read some of the books and heard about others, but some little known and underappreciated gems are included as well.  The books are among my personal favorites for cold winter evenings.  Digital copies of those originally published before 1926 are available online for free at www.hathitrust.org, www.archive.org, or www.books.google.com.  Enjoy!

Books to lift your spirits

• The Compleat Angler by Isaak Walton and Charles Cotton
• Salmonia by Humphrey Davy
• Thy Rod and Thy Creel by Odell Shepard
• The Earth Is Enough, Growing Up in a World of Trout and Old Men by Harry Middleton
• A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean

Books to entertain you

• Rod and Line by Arthur Ransome
• Ransome on Fishing by Arthur Ransome
• The Longest Silence by Thomas McGuane (or almost any book by Thomas McGuane!)
• Spring Creek by Nick Lyons
• Notes from an Old Fly Book by Gordon Wickstrom
• A Summer on the Test by John Waller Hills
• Fishless Days, Angling Nights by Sparse Grey Hackle
• The Last Pool and Upstream and Down by Howard Walden

Books to improve your fly fishing

• The Way of a Trout With a Fly by G.E.M. Skues
• Fishing the Dry Fly As a Living Insect by Leonard Wright
• The Art of the Wet Fly by Roger Fogg
• Gentleman Preferred Dry Flies by William C. Black
• Tying Small Flies by Ed Engle
• Wet Flies by Dave Hughes
• How to Fish from Top to Bottom by Sid Gordon
• The Fly and the Fish by John Atherton