I never met the man either. But from those interviews of him that I’ve read or heard, I’m confident that he’d have a  few sardonic quips about some of the superlatives I’m about to assign to him.

I’ve never reviewed a John Gierach book because they’re the best.

His books are the best in the premiere subgenre of fly fishing books. The quantity of paperbacks comprised of personal anecdotes and reflections is innumerable. They are the natural overflow of the contemplative angler’s experience. And while many do it, most don’t  do it well. For run of the mill authors, chapters have the tendency to be  tired variations on themes. For those who break through, a second book is still a rarity. But Gierach had over twenty follow-up books on fly fishing anecdotes and reflections. That is a telling statistic.

Any used book store bears witness to his position among angling memoirs. Each random assortment of volumes features some of the popular and some of the obscure. But Standing in a River Waving a Stick and Even Brook Trout Get the Blues will inevitably be there. In fact if a secondhand bookseller’s shelf doesn’t have a Gierach book or two, it is safe to assume there is another fly fishing section somewhere.

A more poignant  testimony to the man is his ubiquity. Fly fishers who don’t read have read John Gierach books. His bibliography has the same footprint among anglers as the Gideons do in hotels.

And that is the magic of Gierach’s writing. Often without the hook of a serialized story that tempts readers to push on to the next chapter, he draws people in. While he spoke to the common man in a simple way, there was a refined roughness that typified  a literary skill. He wrote well. One must write well to write the same story hundreds of times and have people still read it with excitement. Experts and beginners; his contemporaries and  teenagers; everyone read and enjoyed his works.

My first exposure to John Gierach was  as a high schooler. A new fly fisher, I voraciously devoured any and every book I could get my hands on. My primary source of material was at the Cascades Library in Sterling, Virginia. Once a week my mother would drop me off at the library. I’d scour the stacks, read selected chapters, and take a pile of various fly fishing books home.  If my memory serves me correctly, I think Where the Trout Are All as Long as Your Leg was  my earliest foray. Out of naivete and an abundance of caution, it took me a few years to finally check out  Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing.  Last year, I ran through All the Time in the World days after it was released.

And although I’ve commented on a significant number of fly fishing books on Casting Across, I’ve never reviewed a John Gierach book. It would be redundant. It would be uninteresting. It would be clichéd. I’m sure I could find things to pick apart (I do think he was a bit curmudgeonly and I have some strong disagreements with his worldview). But his books are so good. They are iconic. No one wants to read 500 words  that effectively say that. You’d be better off saving that time to read him. Or, as I’m sure he’d agree, just go fishing.

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John Gierach | January 21, 1946 – October 3, 2024