Audiobooks by John Gierach

Good Flies: Trout Patterns and How They Got That Way

John Gierach is a highly trusted and trustable opinion-maker in fly-fishing. People take what he says to the bank. While most of Gierach's writing is essay-style and reflective, here he gets down to the nitty-gritty: how he ties his favorite flies and why he thinks they work so well for him. There is, thus, an instant reader connection: 'Gierach's patterns are good enough for me.' Few anglers will skip knowing what a master angler and thinker prefers for his fly box. This title covers a gamut of patterns essential to trout fishing in a variety of circumstances: dry flies, wet flies and nymphs, and streamers. Gierach's legion of fans of his regular magazine column will be highly inclined to buy this title.

John Gierach (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

Audiobook

Fishing Bamboo: An Angler's Passion for the Traditional Fly Rod

Once an angler masters a graphite rod, his interests often move on to the original fly rod, pliant bamboo. Until the mid-twentieth century, nearly all fly rods were bamboo. By the 1970s, fiberglass and graphite changed the world of fly-fishing. But more and more anglers are seeing bamboo rods in retail outlets, and want to give them a try. With this book, John Gierach, one of the nation's top fly-fishing writers, provides a philosophical guide to the angler who seeks this new 'old' method. Gierach discusses how bamboo rods are built, how they differ from graphite rods, and how using one will change a fly fisher's approach to the sport. Fishing bamboo might be the pinnacle of fly-casting skill, and this book will help take you there.

John Gierach (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

Audiobook

Flyfishing the High Country

- Tactics for fishing high country lakes, the conflicting currents of high mountain streams, and the ever-changing waters of beaver ponds - Cutthroats, brook trout, goldens, rainbows, grayling - The best weather and seasons to fish and the tackle and flies to take into the high country 'The mountains-any mountains-can make you pay for your fishing with time, shoe leather, exertion, and even disappointment. But they usually give back more than they take in terms of solitude and a sense of adventure that you just won't find on more civilized waters.' -John Gierach Fly-fishing in scenic and remote mountain waters is a special kind of fishing, explored in depth by veteran fly fisher John Gierach. Along with Fly Fishing Small Streams, this guide, Gierach's first book, explains how to find the best waters and how to fish them to the best advantage.

John Gierach (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

Audiobook

Trout Bum

Brilliant, witty, perceptive essays about fly-fishing, the natural world, and life in general by the acknowledged master of fishing writers. While most of us fly-fish to escape from daily life, for John Gierach and his friends fly-fishing IS a way of life. They are trout bums. But John Gierach is also an exceptional writer. The essays in Trout Bum are reflective, bitingly humorous, and enormously wise in the ways of fishing and men. In vivid, unforgettable detail they recount the emotional, spiritual, and tangible adventures and pleasures of stalking trout in and around the Rockies-day in, day out, from season to season, with friends, and alone. John Gierach's essays join the literary tradition of angling classics like The River Why, and A River Runs Through It.

John Gierach (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

Audiobook

Fly Fishing Small Streams

John Gierach (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

Audiobook

The View From Rat Lake

Brilliant, witty, perceptive essays about fly-fishing, the natural world, and life in general by the acknowledged master of fishing writers. 'In the world of fishing there are magic phrases that are guaranteed to summon the demon. Among them are: 'remote trout lake,' 'fish up to thirteen pounds,' 'the place the guides fish on their days off,'' writes John Gierach in this wonderful collection of thirteen essays inspired by a fishing trip to Rat Lake, a remote body of water in Montana. Once again John Gierach does what he does best-explain the peculiarities of the fishing life in a way that will amuse novices and seasoned fly fishers alike. The View from Rat Lake deftly examines man in nature and nature in man, the pleasures of fishing the high country, and the high and low comedy that occasionally overcomes even the best-planned fishing trip.

John Gierach (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

Audiobook

All the Time in the World

Discover the answer to life's most pressing problems through the joy of fly-fishing from master philosopher John Gierach. Once again, John Gierach tells the world why the pastime of fly-fishing makes so much sense-except when it doesn't. In sparkling prose, with more than a touch of humor, he recalls the joys of landing that trout he's been watching for the last hour-and then losing an even fatter one a little later. Joy and frustration mix in Gierach's latest appreciation of the fly-fishing life as he takes us from his home waters on the Front Range of the Rockies in Colorado to fishing meccas all over North America. From fishing lodges in Alaska to memories of the local creek in the Midwest where he grew up, Gierach reminds us about the indispensability of the natural world around us.

John Gierach (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

Audiobook

Another Lousy Day in Paradise

Brilliant, witty, perceptive essays about fly-fishing, the natural world, and life in general by the acknowledged master of fishing writers. 'Good fishing and good writing use the same skills,' writes John Gierach, 'whether you're after a trout or a story, you won't get that far with brute force. You're better off to watch, wait, and remain calm . . . letting it all happen, rather than trying to make it happen.' As the wry and perceptive essays in Another Lousy Day in Paradise prove, Gierach knows his writing as well as his fishing. Paradise, Gierach shows us, is relative; it can be found in the guilty luxury of fishing private waters or when one is soaked to the skin, in a small canoe on a big lake in a storm a hundred miles from anywhere, exhilarated after a day's fishing. There are also pleasures to be found in unexpected places: solitary fishing trips, fishing for less-appreciated fish like carp, or meeting a guide who at first seems like an inarticulate ax murderer but who proves to be a 'Zen master among fishing guides.' The point is to let things unfold as they will-because after all, says Gierach, 'Basically, the world is a big, dumb trout, and you're a fisherman with all the time in the world.' As Gierach fans know, this is a description of paradise.

John Gierach (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

Audiobook

Even Brook Trout Get the Blues

Brilliant, witty, perceptive essays about fly-fishing, the natural world, and life in general by the acknowledged master of fishing writers. 'Once an angler has become serious about the sport (and 'serious' is the word that's used), he'll never again have enough tackle or enough time to use it. And his nonangling friends and family may never again entirely recognize him, either.' In other words, he (or she) will have entered Gierach territory. Whether debating bamboo versus graphite rods, describing the pleasure of fishing in pocket waters or during a spring snow in the mountains, or recounting a trip in pursuit of the 'fascinatingly ugly' longnose gar, Gierach understands that fly-fishing is more than a sport. It's a way of life in which patience is (mostly) rewarded, the rhythms of the natural world are appreciated, and the search for the perfect rod or ideal stream is never ending. It is not a life without risks, for as Gierach warns: 'This perspective on things can change you irreparably. If it comes to you early enough in life, it can save you from ever becoming what they call 'normal.'' Even Brook Trout Get the Blues will convince you that 'normal' is greatly overrated.

John Gierach (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

Audiobook

Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing

From the irrepressible author of Trout Bum and The View from Rat Lake comes an engaging, humorous, often profound examination of life's greatest mysteries: sex, death, and fly-fishing. John Gierach's quest takes us from his quiet home water (an ordinary, run-of-the-mill trout stream where fly-fishing can be a casual affair) to Utah's famous Green River, and to unknown creeks throughout the Western states and Canada. We're introduced to a lively group of fishing buddies, some local 'experts,' and even an ex-girlfriend, along the way. Contemplative, evocative, and wry, he shares insights on mayflies and men, fishing and sport, life and love, and the meaning (or meaninglessness) of it all.

John Gierach (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

Audiobook

Where the Trout Are All as Long as Your Leg

Brilliant, witty, perceptive essays about fly-fishing, the natural world, and life in general by the acknowledged master of fishing writers. Fly-fishing's finest scribe, John Gierach, takes us from a nameless stream on a nameless ranch in Montana to a secret pool off a secret creek where he caught a catfish as a five-year-old, to a brook full of rattlesnakes and a private pond where the trout are all as long as your leg. As Gierach says, 'The secret places are the soul of fishing.' Hearing about a new one never fails to entice us. And so Where the Trout Are All as Long as Your Leg transports the listener to the best of these places, where the fish are always bigger and the hatches last forever. After all, it's these magical places that Gierach so vividly evokes that remind us how precious-and precarious-are the unspoiled havens of the natural world.

John Gierach (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

Audiobook

Dumb Luck and the Kindness of Strangers

In his latest fresh and original collection, Gierach shows us why fly-fishing is the perfect antidote to everything that is wrong with the world. In Dumb Luck and the Kindness of Strangers, Gierach looks back to the long-ago day when he bought his first resident fishing license in Colorado, where the fishing season never ends, and just knew he was in the right place. And he succinctly sums up part of the appeal of his sport when he writes that it is 'an acquired taste that reintroduces the chaos of uncertainty back into our well-regulated lives.' Lifelong fisherman though he is, Gierach can write with self-deprecating humor about his own fishing misadventures, confessing that despite all his experience, he is still capable of blowing a strike by a fish 'in the usual amateur way.' He offers witty, trenchant observations not just about fly-fishing itself but also about how one's love of fly-fishing shapes the world that we choose to make for ourselves.

John Gierach (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

Audiobook