Fly-Fishing California's Great Waters

Rating:
Summary: Great waters, but there are better books
Review: There is certainly some good information in this book but you have to wade through pages of sophmoric prose to sluice the useful tid bits. The author's favorite words, Me, My, I, and Mine, populate every paragraph and frequently inhabit many sentences in a row.

Eleven chapters (each a magazine reprint) describe a different water and the author's experience fishing it. It would be interesting to understand how the author feels the Central Valley impoundment, Lake Nacimiento is one of California's greatest waters, yet he doesn't even mention such internationally reknowned places like the McCloud River, Hot Creek, and the Sacramento.

The 12th and final chapter describes "the best' flies for fishing these "best" waters. Following in the narcistic bent of the whole book, virtually all these flies are the author's own patterns which you can, of course, purchase at the same shop you picked up his book. In no fewer than six places the reader is given the author's address and phone number just in case the reader needs to hire a fishing guide. The entire effect is nothing short of an ill-disguised infommercial.

With so many excellent guide books that truly detail California's fishing opportunities, I can't recommend this book to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Limited value
Review: This "book" is simply a reprint of 11 magazine articles written by Blanton that stretch back 30 years. Much of the information is dated and no longer relevant. A host of pictures were added to flesh out its lean 87 pages. Hardly worth twenty dollars.

Rating:
Summary: Great Waters, Awful Book!
Review: This is one of the worst books I've ever examined on fly fishing, period. The layout and format of this book reminds me of all of the ugliness of the seventies. It is aesthetically godawful!

Furthermore, I don't know if Mr. Blanton knows this, but large parts of his book are based on Oregon, namely Brookings, Oregon, when he writes of the Chetco River. This book is supposed to be about California waters? I know Brookings is pretty close to California, but it isn't California! This is the kind of thickheadedness you get with this book; Blanton isn't open-minded about enough to save that article for another book or publication. But then again, maybe that's the problem: no one really wants to publish his articles.

This book also doesn't have real information about fishing tactics and what to do in given situations. Those items are very poorly written; a reader is better off just hiring a guide. If the book doesn't have information about fishing tactics, what does it have? It's full of chest thumping, self promotion and lousy plugs for his flies, all of which resemble other flies. Yep, these are true originals--whatever.

Getting back to actual great waters--within these pages concerning the Chetco, a place I've fished, I see nothing but pictures of fly fishers mauling and gill-grabbing salmons to their death. These kinds of pictures are especially dated since catch and release is very much an important part of fly fishing culture. They're of the lowest quality as well, looking fuzzy and grainy. Get rid of these pictures of idiotic barbarism.
Also, the author needs to provide maps of these places. It is entirely possible that someone out of state might want to visit these "great waters," especially if they're from Oregon.

Also, I don't know how he failed to mention some of the best trout streams the state has to offer. The only one he's fished is the Fall River. Why not write about the incredible hex hatch that this river is famous for in June. Instead, it has "tactics" to use streamers, which, by the way, once again, resembles barbarism at its best because his "tactics" seem more suitable for gill grabbing, fish killing, beer drinking bait chuckers. Obviously, he hasn't fished these "great waters" other than the Fall River.

But most importantly, as I've already mentioned, there is very little practical information in this book. I can't figure out what flies to use where and when: No hatch charts, no nothing. No wonder he's only published eleven magazine articles in thirty years. what a great writer he is! Where did he get these articles published? Fly Fishing For Posers? Blanton is going to have to promote the hell out of this book to get his stupid lemmings to buy it, and believe me, he will self promote and plug, they will, God knows, buy the book. Spend your hard earned $35.00 on a real book that has real information and is thicker and has more pages than an issue of Fly Fisherman.