I waited awhile before purchasing John Gierach’s latest book, “No Shortage of Good Days”, because when it comes to books, it’s time to pinch some pennies. My patience was rewarded when the book appeared as an available purchase on iBooks – the application (app) that comes with iPads.

And it was the very first book I pulled the trigger on and purchased. Let me just say that if you are hesitating to purchase one of these new “e readers” – don’t. The upside list is long; take your library everywhere (not just a single book or magazine), read easily in low light, enlarged print and saving trees are just the pluses that come off the top of my head. Now, it’s up to you to choose the reader that’s right for you, and there can be huge discrepancies in book pricing, and I don’t know if other readers allow you to read from other services like Apples iPad (I can download Kindle and Amazon books via those apps).

Electronic reading is simply fantastic from a physical perspective if nothing else. Large print, and logical lighting of the page, give me the ability to read at a much faster pace than anything I’ve ever tried on the paper printed page. It’s amazing and energizing to read this new pace.

NOW THE REVIEW

I make no claims of being a literary critic. I have been published, and therefore am a professional writer – on occasion. I am addicted to fly fishing literature just as I am addicted to fly fishing. My library overflows, and if you are ever looking to jump start your paper library, and are near Denton, Texas, be sure to check the most extensive collection of used fly fishing books in North Texas at Recycled Books on the Square in Downtown Denton, Texas.

There are fly fishers who write, and there are writers who fly fish. Both are valuable, and insightful in their own ways. Gierach is a fly fisher who writes, and he’s been writing successfully for quite a while now. Rather than mull over his large volume of work, I’ll just tell you what makes his latest worthwhile. In “No Shortage” Gierach spins more interesting yarns about things that happen off the water, be it travel arrangements for book tours, invitations to cull cutthroat from real estate development ponds, or comment on the human condition ten years in to the new millennium. Gierach, puts it all in a social time capsule with the chapter on a friend that, rather than face the SEC, loaded a new Italian shotgun and killed himself when they came calling. And it’s difficult not to think him a fortune teller when he quotes the Chinese proverb, “When the water is high, the fish eat the ants. When the water is low, the ants eat the fish.” How prescient is that?

I’ve been to Gierach’s bamboo shop in Lyon’s and smelled that rare air, and been on the streets of Lyons before they were “Californicated” like so much within bus range of Boulder, but an insider I’m not. So while Gierach does give some detail of locations he fishes, he is mostly coy like so many fly fishermen are. That’s how it is with fishers who write, and I don’t know how many books he sells, but he probably could cause at least a small stampede if he revealed too much. At some point, book after book, it does get dangerously close to a writing crutch though.

Writers who fish tend to overwhelm their descriptions of fish and locations so much with their peripheral vision, that fishing is often incidental to the writing. That’s not Gierach, and that’s just as good a compliment as being a writer who fishes. You’re not after “that vision thing” if you’re into Gierach, you’re into getting a good soft-core fishing fix, and in this case some more interesting social commentary and insights into the life of a successful fly fishing writer. Get “No Shortage of Good Days”,
and read it during an indoor weekend – you’ll enjoy it. If you are familiar with his waters, you’ll love it.

Last blast of aspen trees – north of Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

Sometimes posts are a blunderbuss of information, and on occasion they are a .223 at about a hundred and fifty yards. Sure, a .223 drops some, but not much at 150.

I have been to Pagosa Springs many times in the last ten years, but by now I am becoming more familiar with where things are, where things were, and where roads lead to. There’s enough general information buried in this target to keep you reading for days, so I took my most recent visit to Pagosa Springs as an opportunity to concentrate on the details that make Pagosa Springs one of my favorite Colorado fly fishing locations.

If I took last week’s journey in chronological, our journey would start near Santa Fe, New Mexico. We had the privilege of staying at a friend’s brother’s house in Cochiti, New Mexico. I’ll be writing only a little about our time in Santa Fe (plugging a couple of restaurants), and there’ll be a lot of photographs of Tent Rocks, a hike we took while there.

However, I have to start with a great fly shop. Let it Fly, in Pagosa Springs since 1997 (a lifetime in mom-and-pop fly shop years), is permanently occupied by one of the nicest individuals I have come across in a long time. I’ll start with Pop, and his view on Pagosa Springs, and what makes him such a great person in a great place.

After the feature on Let it Fly, I will take you to some water, and a few photographs and video of fly fishing in and around Pagosa Springs. There will be as many as four posts on Pagosa Springs and at least one on New Mexico.

Feel free to ride along on this series, and don’t be surprised if you decide you have to head for Pagosa after reading about all the fun and fish to be had in Southwestern Colorado. If you’re really motivated, you can dig into past posts before this series gets underway -
Last Year’s Trip

There’s more in the past somewhere …

Note – We are looking at the new moon phase, and flounder are running on the north Gulf Coast of Texas, so I’ll let you know if fishing gets in the way of this series.

John Gierach must know something we don’t.

If he has no shortage of good days, then he stands out among the majority of Americans today. I can’t wait to hear what he has to say in his continuing monologue of observations about fly fishing. Gierach simply isn’t for everybody, and I have found him a bit difficult at times, but all-in-all he’s a fly fishing writer who shouldn’t be passed up, especially in the desert that is new literature on fly fishing.

I can’t wait to find out what days he’s talking about, but if I took every day of fly fishing in a typical year, say 150, I would have to agree that in those 150 days, there was “No Shortage of Good Days.”

Feel free to order your copy of his new book here -

If you happen to be in the area of Rocky Mountain Anglers, the “nice fly shop” in Boulder Colorado, be sure to attend his book signing this Saturday, May 28th.