EVEN BROOK TROUT GET THE BLUES

Fine, sweetly written essays on the sport and art of fly- fishing, by a writer who thinks of himself as ``a reporter rather than an expert.'' A Colorado outdoorsman, Gierach (Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing, 1990) views fly-fishing as ``a healthy antisocial sport'' that ``has become a highly refined ritualistic food-gathering technique in which damned little food gets gathered.'' Gierach fishes everything from glamour spots like the Kenosha Trout Club, where aficionados use thousand-dollar, custom-made bamboo rods, to simple farm ponds stocked because ``something in the collective rural American consciousness...abhors a fishless body of water.'' After trout, the author also wets an occasional fly primarily for bluegill, bass, and—sacrilege amongst purists—gar and northern pike. His technical discussions of fly-tying, rods, tippets, hatches, and water temperature flow into the narrative and emphasize that ``simply getting better is probably the ultimate goal of the sport.'' One of his best pieces, ``The Poacher,'' is a delightful portrait of his friend, Harvey, a local legend and ``regulation hippie/redneck hybrid'' who repeatedly cons Gierach into fishing on private property. Harvey totes a .380 automatic pistol and has been known to cut through a farmer's locked fence in pursuit of large brown trout. More law-abiding but no less persistent, Gierach's other fishing pals share the author's passion and skill (``a nebulous thing based largely on seasoned intuition'') on waters in Wyoming, Montana, and numerous spots in Colorado and the Rockies. With great good humor, Gierach casts his words in the tradition of the finest sportswriting. (Line drawings throughout.)