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Rating: 
Summary: All the general info you need
Review: Not sure why this recent book showed up so low on the list of his books. Its an excellent summary of mayflies, and contains a good distillation of the main must-have flies, with tying instructions. The book describes a system for being ready for anything without carrying everything. It is the usual thing: narrowing the flies you carry with careful lifecycle, size, and colour choices. I have been seriously fly fishing for 25 years, and still found lots to consider about his approach.I really only have one quibble about the book (and his others for that mater), and that is that Hughes is not a particularly gifted tier. This is not a good book upon which to base your style. If there is a series of flies in different colours, they sometimes all look different in form also. He never seems to get the same result twice. When tiers have a strong stylistic vision, it speaks to how they see the effectiveness, aesthetics, and structure of a fly, so you just learn more from viewing weel made flies. This limitation would most affect a how to tie flies book, which this isn't. But there are enough patterns that it will doubtless serve that role for some. On the plus side, it is obvious that Hughes must catch trout on these patterns, so one needn't feel intimidated by one's own efforts should they be rough also. Hughes is a hugely prolific writer, and I have several of his books, and don't find them particularly repetitive. But common sense should dictate caution if you have a number of his titles that may cover the same material. An extensive article/extract of this book was carried in one of the fly mags, so you may feel deja vu there also, though I found the book more useful.
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