What the Trout Said: About the Design of Trout Flies and Other Mysteries

From dust jacket notes: "What the Trout Said is a fishing book in the great tradition, the tradition of Skues and Halford, La Branche and Marinaro. Datus C. Proper, like these acknowledged masters, has something authentically new to say about the art and science of fly-fishing. And like them he has the true writer's ability to say it with such authority and freshness of style that his book will be read for a long time to come. His thesis is this: that trout flies have been too often considered mainly in terms of pattern (meaning color) rather than design (meaning the way component materials are chosen and assembled) 'the difference between the two being', as Proper puts it, 'the difference between painting and architecture'. Design is what controls a fly's behavior on the water, and to a trout 'his food's behavior is more important than its tint.' The best authority on this subject is, obviously, the trout himself. Hence the title, and hence the author's ingenious and wonderfully informed attempt to understand and explain just what a trout (particularly a suspicious and well-educated trout) thinks of the flies the fisherman is trying to delude him with...."