Salmon on a Fly: The Essential Wisdom and Lore from a Lifetime of Salmon Fishing

by Lee Wulff, John Merwin (Editor)

A salmon is a large and energetic fish inhabiting untamed places. A fly rod is a wispy featherweight stick of graphite or bamboo. Connect the first thing to the second by a length of line with a #4 White Wulff, and the comprehension of wilderness is immediate. And nobody has captured that magical experience and understands the process better than Lee Wulff--long the acknowledged dean of American fly-fishing in general and salmon fishing in particular. He was an enthusiastic practitioner and a generous teacher. This book--his last--gathers sixty years of experience and wisdom on fly-fishing for salmon
Here are thirty of Lee Wulff's finest essays on narrative accounts of trips to the most tantalizing waters in North America and beyond; ruminations on technique, equipment, and fly selection; spirited appreciations of the natural world (he was an environmentalist long before that word became popularized); advice to beginners and old hands on casting and reading a river. Wulff was the skilled tactician with an uncanny ability to get salmon to rise to his fly patterns, and he candidly explains his methods in these pages.
Like the best books, this one is apparently about one thing (fly-fishing for salmon) while it is really about something else (the love of life itself).

223 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1992

Reviews

[David Vanness]

I enjoy fishing and have my life-time Indiana license. Catching this elusive species is Rewarding but is to much like work for me. The Atlantic Salmon would cost me to much reading time. The book was a good read and a real tribute to Lee Wulff.