John Gierach

John Gierach is the most popular fly fishing author of his era. A gifted writer and keen observer, his essays are beloved for their wry humor, irreverent wisdom and unapologetic devotion to fly fishing as a way of life.

Born in Illinois and raised in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, Gierach earned a degree in philosophy from Findlay College in Ohio in June of 1969. In July of that year he bought his first Colorado fishing license, and began a life of fishing and travel in the mountain west and around the world that provided the settings, characters and plots for scores of stories over the next five decades. He is the author of 20 books, including two “obscure books of poetry” and 18 collections of fishing essays. His first book, Trout Bum, established him as the spiritual leader of a generation of anglers who longed for the freedom to spend their time wading mountain streams, puzzling out mayfly hatches and using bamboo rods to cast their flies to strong, wild trout.

Gierach’s stories gave readers across the country a feeling of familiarity and affection for his adopted hometown of Lyons, Colorado and its local streams, the Big Thompson and St. Vrain Rivers. His spare but exquisitely crafted depictions of the people he fished with, including A.K. Best, Ed Engle and Mike Lawson, brought them to life in his readers’ minds. He writes about blue-ribbon trout in famous rivers and blue-collar bass in golf course ponds, about bouncing around the Midwest in his Uncle Leonard’s fishing car, the near-folly of salmon fishing in Scotland, and long trips in his pickup truck to the magical streams of Montana.

Gierach is the only fly fishing writer to consistently be published by the one of the world’s premier publishing houses. The back covers of his books include praise not only from the fly fishing press but from such authorities as Publisher’s Weekly and Sports Illustrated, which ranked him in the same league with Mark Twain. The Wall Street Journal has called him “the voice of the common angler.”

Seamlessly entwined with Gierach’s light-hearted, self-deprecating humor is a serious and inspiring conviction that wild creatures and wild places must be preserved. And despite his own commitment to fly fishing, the split-cane-wielding philosopher gently reminds anglers not to take themselves or their sport too seriously. After all, at the end of the day, they are “standing in a river, waving a stick.”