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John Bailey’s Complete Guides to Fly & Freshwater Fishing

Reviewed by Terry Lawton

John Bailey has had a busy few months or more recently as he has two new books published this month, May. His latest books are John Bailey’s Complete Guide to Fly Fishing, The Fish, The Tackle & The Techniques, and John Bailey’s Guide to Freshwater Fishing, The Fish, The Tackle & The Techniques. The latter book follows the same format as the fly fishing one and as it is about coarse fishing, we are not including a full review of it. It would be a good buy for anybody interested in doing some coarse fishing or who knows someone who wants to start coarse fishing.

Like most of John Bailey’s recent books the Complete Guide to Fly Fishing has tremendous visual impact with some very good photographs in it. I have one question to ask of a book that is described as being ‘complete’: could you really learn to fly fish from this book? I am afraid that the honest answer is ‘no’ because, for example, it does not tell you how to put all your tackle together. That’s something that is pretty fundamental.

John Bailey does make some points very well. In the chapter Food, Feeding and Flies he writes: ’This is a rough guide, but its aim is to convince you to use your eyes, have patience and begin to build up a knowledge that will be both satisfying and highly productive.’ The Caring Angler’s Code is a very welcome idea.

I was interested to see some photographs of my local river, a member of my club fishing the same river and the chairman grasping a mighty steelhead in a snowstorm. While on the subject of photographs, there were one or two that caused me to raise an eyebrow and the odd caption was wrong too.

Although the book is only 144 pages long, John Bailey covers fishing stillwaters and rivers and a wide range of fish including trout, grayling, Arctic Char, salmon, pike, sea trout and even bonefish and a quick look at a diverse range of countries too. There is plenty here to whet your appetite!

Both books are published by New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd at £16.99 in hardback.