Nymphs, Stoneflies, Caddisflies, and Other Important Insects

Ernest G. Schwiebert published the first edition of Nymphs in 1973 but never ceased working on the project, and over the next thirty years he continued his research into the entomology necessary to successful trout fishing. Fly fishers in the early twenty-first century are accustomed to myriad types of artificial flies and approaches to catch trout, but back when there were still many anglers who populated a rules-bound world of dry flies and traditional wet flies, what Schwiebert said in the first edition of this book was novel and heretical. Vincent Marinaro, author of that touchstone American text, A Modern Dry-Fly Code, and hero to Schwiebert, refused to speak with the younger writer after Nymphs first appeared, as this new book promoted a violation of form that was unacceptable to the gentleman of the Letort Spring Run. Schwiebert, however, stood solidly behind his methods of identifying, tying, and fishing imitations of nymphs, a revolution in the sport. Ultimately, critics hailed his highly original book as a landmark achievement in both the art and science of fly fishing, and thousands of anglers today carry fly boxes crammed with nymphs of various sizes and colors. Now, the classic text has been fully revised and greatly expanded¿in two volumes¿and includes taxonomic details of multitudes of individual nymphs from many different insect genera, hundreds of recipes for imitations, and digitally remastered original illustrations and numerous new illustrations by the author. Schwiebert backs his text with authoritative support from the classic work of numerous entomologists, such as James Needham, Justin Leonard, Jay Traver, and George Edmunds, and colors it with his stories of fishing with legends of the sport, including John Hemingway, Charlie Fox, and Joe Brooks. This new Nymphs calls upon decades of angling experience¿years that connect extraordinarily different eras of fly-fishing¿to present a lasting, highly usable angler¿s entomology for all of North America.