The Little Black Book of Fly Fishing: 201 Tips to Make You a Better AnglerHardcover, 28 June 2022

An Advanced Course in Fly Fishing

The mission of The Little Red Book of Fly Fishing was to demystify and un-complicate the tricks and tips that make a great trout fisher. There are no complicated physics lessons in that book. Rather, The Little Red Book of Fly Fishing offered a simple, digestible primer on the basic elements of fly fishing: the cast, presentation, reading water, and selecting flies.

In this, The Little Black Book of Fly Fishing, authors Kirk Deeter and Chris Hunt take you to the next level, building upon what Deeter and Charlie Meyers did in The Little Red Book. The Little Black Book will helps fly fishers build upon what they learned in the Little Red Book. Read this valuable, thought-provoking guidebook, and you'll be at the point where you'll be catching fish when no one else is, and you'll know exactly why you are. Advanced casting, presentation, reading the water, fly selection, and much more, including proper gear selection, are all covered. The table of contents, below, explains it all.

The Little Black Book of Fly Fishing

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

Part 1: CASTING

1. A double-haul is really important, and not just in the salt

2. Teaching someone new? Start with Tenkara

3. Everybody needs a casting lesson. Everybody.

4. Casting longer leaders

5. 'Casting' nymphs under indicators

6. Get a practice rod

7. How to cast a 15-foot leader (and why you should)

8. Casting at taillights

9. The cast killer

10. Your casting stroke follow joints by size

11. Challenge your cast

12. Great casts are the ones that get bit

13. Score your casts like golf strokes; fewer is better

14. The sand-save cast

15. A reach cast is worth a thousand mends

16. Five feet short on purpose (the linear false cast)

17. Be Lefty in the salt, and Rajeff in the fresh

18. Give yourself a "D"

19. Beating wind

20. Don't out-kick your coverage

Part 2: PRESENTATION

1. Fast strip for saltwater predators

2. A swirl, not a rise

3. Casting streamers upstream

4. Carp: Not just for city kids

5. Step out of your comfort zone

6. What are the birds after?

7. The potato chip fakeout

8. Why natives matter

9. But I still love brown trout best

10. Micro-drag: where you stand matters

11. You'll never beat a fish into submission

12. Take it to the lake

13. Float tubes and garbage cans

14. Food never attacks fish

15. A case for the dry-fly snob

16. Go Deep in the name of fish research

17. Roll fish for fun

18. They're in skinny water for a reason

19. The cafeteria line

20. The escape hatch

Part 3: READING WATER (AND FISH)

1. The stripset

2. Covering water

3. Skate and twitch big flies in low light

4. Rod tip down for streamers

5. Weight an unweighted fly with fly-tying beads instead of split-shot

6. Urban angling

7. Get in shape. Stay in shape.

8. Dry your fly first, apply floatant second

9. Most fish (and some bugs) face upstream--present accordingly

10. Head up, game over

11. Step when you streamer

12. Babysit your flies

13. ID the "player" and get after it

14. Gin clear water

15. Flat calm water

16. Developing "TSP" (trout sensory perception)

17. A fish doesn't see like humans do

18. Walk on

19. The 10 second rule

20. Like a dog on a leash

21. Tip up or tip down?

22. The keys to spotting fish

23. The full-court press usually fails

24. Use the whole spice cabinet

25. River personalities and handshakes

26. What the cloud layers tell you

27. Knowing what they are not doing is equally important as knowing what they are

28. Upwelling v. the straight seam

29. The speed of the strike is proportionate to the depth of the water (in rivers)

30. See this, do that

Part 4: FLIES

1. UV resin in home-tied flies

2. Nymphs on the swing

3. Multi-purpose flies

4. Sparse for saltwater

5. UV parachute posts

6. Tip the fly for tying parachute posts

7. Caddis: the most dishonest fly ever

8. Wire or tinsel for dry flies

9. The "pellet fly" you can feel good about

10. Practice, practice, practice

11. Peacock herl ... and why it works

12. The mystery of the Purple Prince Nymph

13. Profile is everything

14. The Adams family

15. Lethal mice

16. The Mole Fly miracle

17. Bob Behnke on colors

18. Terrestrials are opportunity bugs

19. The end of the duck

20. Colors change with depth

21. Un-matching the hatch

22. The monkey poo fly

Part 5: MISC. (Everything from gear, to fighting fish and angler ethics)

1. Fly reels for trout are just line holders
2. Fly reels matter for saltwater fish
3. Faster rods aren't always better
4. You get what you pay for
5. Pride cometh before the fall
6. Sheet-metal screws
7. Wire for predators
8. Quick-dry attire for the flats
9. ABC. Anything But Cotton
10. Snip your tippet at an angle
11. Rod weight depends on fly types
12. The best loop knot... perfection
13. 7X tippet is BS
14. Colors and camo above the surface
15. Guitars and fly rods
16. Bucket list places
17. Tiger snakes and long hemostats
18. It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock 'n roll
19. Score fishing like cricket
20. It's okay to fail
21. I cheer for the fish