Gary LaFontaine - "The Dry Fly: New Angles"

Greycliff Publishing Co., 1990. Hardcover. Book Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket: Good. Signed by author on inside cover. 

From back cover: The author of "Caddisflies" and "Trout Flies: Proven Patterns" presents his vast knowledge about catching trout on dry flies in The Dry Fly: New Angles, an advanced resource for the serious fly-fisher. Combining years of fishing and tying experience with keen observation and lucid prose, LaFontaine organizes his information into several theories about trout behavioral patterns and fishing strategy. He starts with three basic schools of dry fly-fishing: empiricism, generalism, and naturalism. The empiricist relies on remembering which flies worked on certain rivers, regardless of the hatch; the generalist relies on presentation of a few favorite flies, also regardless of the hatch; and the naturalist tries above all to match the hatch with exact imitations. LaFontaine shows why each of these schools is flawed. Basing his ideas on close laboratory study and underwater diving, he argues that a knowledge of primary and secondary strike-triggering characteristics is paramount to catching fish--a school of thought that, in certain conditions, will exaggerate an imitative trait on a fly to attractor-like effect. Beneath all this is the science of when to use imitators and when to use attractors, when to float a fly high on the surface and when to float it low, like an emerger.

If you're tired of reaching for the same flies time after time, despite obviously different river conditions or feeding behavior, read The Dry Fly.