best hatch book?

[salvelinusfontinalis]

i have the book eastern hatches by tom fuller. its pretty informative. what do you guys consider the most well-written and most informitative book on hatches.
not really looking for a pa guide here.....just a book about mayflies.

 

[afishinado]

No doubt - "Hatches II" by Caucci & Nastasi.

"Caddisflies" by LaFountaine. With these two books you will have a vast knowledge of hatches from the two main groups of flies we fish.

 

[Padraic]

I wouldn't consider this "your one guide" to all hatches. But An Anglers Guide to Aquatic Insects and Their Imitations is pretty cool. They help you build a flybox that represents the hatches with the minimum number of patterns. They also cover presentation and how that can be very different for each hatch. Particularly when nymphing.

One complaint is that the identification section is onerous. I would skip that and go to the more "fly fisher-ly" section in the second half of the book.

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

thanks guys! ill probably just pick up each of your suggestions and read them. i do like to read!

 

[ginkyhackle]

The classic is -- Mayflies by Gary LaFontaine. This is an older book which is, i believe, still in print. The had an autographed copy in a local used books store recently, but someone scooped it up before I had a chance. LaFontaine dies of Lou Gehrig's disease recently, and is generally considered the greatest authority on hatches of his era. What a loss! :-(

 

[ginkyhackle]

Ooops, didn't see the above post the book is "Caddisflies" -- There are stories about 'ol Gary sending his black lab into the water to stir up nymphs so that he could study them more effectively.

 

[rrt]

Ted Fauceglia's "Mayflies." I think it is better than "Hatches," and the photography is incredible.

 

[tabasco_joe]

Just got the first volume of Schwiebert's last work, Nymphs. Looks great but it's going to take all winter to digest. The first volume is about 600 pages and it's small type.

 

[fishingspider]

I like McCafferty's "Aquatic Entomology".
It's not exactly the most user-friendly book and some of the groupings are outdated (at least in the copy that I used), but it's still a great reference. After all, I'm a fisherman, not an entomologist.
"Nymphs" looks amazing, but I haven't gotten to page through it yet.