Dave Hughes Presentation  

  • February 18 (Saturday), 9 AM - 5 PM

  • Great Plaines Nature Center

  •  

Dave is author of more than 20 books about fly fishing. They include the classic Western Hatches with Rick Hafele, American Fly Tying Manual, Handbook of Hatches, Reading Trout Water, Dry Fly Fishing, Nymph Fishing, and the massive reference Trout Flies. His latest book, published in 2009, is Nymphs for Streams and Stillwaters.  

Hi, I am Dave Hughes. I am author of more than 20 books about fly fishing for trout. I have written articles for a wide range of magazines and have fished and visited many places. Your club has invited me to be the guest speaker at your Winter Program which will be on February 18, 2012. Look for more details about me and the programs I wish to share with you in your monthly newsletter.

Winter Program Schedule  

8:00 til 9:00 Registration
9:00 til 10:30 Reading Trout Water
10:30 til 10:45 Break
10:45 til 12:00 Matching Hatches Simplified
12:00 til 1:00 Lunch (not provided)
1:00 til 2:30 Nymph Fishing Simplified
2:30 til 2:45 Break
2:45 til 4:00 Tying wet flies and nymphs
4:00 til 5:00 Questions, Answers, Book Signing

Drawing for the door prize will be at 4:00 pm. Must be present to win. 

 

 

 

 

Dave Hughes bio info.  

Dave is author of more than 20 books about fly fishing. They include the classic Western Hatches with Rick Hafele, American Fly Tying Manual, Handbook of Hatches, Reading Trout Water, Dry Fly Fishing, Nymph Fishing, and the massive reference Trout Flies. His latest book, published in 2009, is Nymphs for Streams and Stillwaters.  

Dave was founding president of Oregon Trout in 1983, and was awarded life membership in the Federation of Flyfishers in 1985. He was awarded the Pete Hidy honorary life membership in the Flyfishers Club of Oregon in 1992 for his literary accomplishments. Dave received the prestigious Letcher Lambuth Angler Craftsman Award in 2008 from the Washington Fly Fishing Club. He is also a life member of his home club, the Rainland Flycasters in Astoria, Oregon.  

Born in Astoria, Oregon on the 4th of July, 1945, Dave worked his way through college at jobs specializing in the Three Ds--Dirty, Difficult, and Dangerous:  mink ranches, tuna canneries, and shrimp boats. He graduated from the University of Oregon in 1967, from Army Infantry Officer Candidate School in 1968. Dave served one-and-a-half years in Viet Nam, 6 months as a communications site commander in the Mekong Delta, and one year as liaison officer to the Commanding General of communications in the Southeast Asia theater.  

Dave is an accomplished amateur aquatic entomologist. His hobbies include collecting, identifying, and photographing the aquatic insects that are fed upon by trout, as well as tying and fishing the flies that match those insects and fool those trout. His articles on fly fishing have appeared in Field & Stream, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, Fly Fisherman magazine, American Angler, and Fly Tyer. Dave served as editor of Flyfishing & Tying Journal for eight years, and is currently Elements of Success columnist for Fly Rod & Reel.  

Dave lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Japanese fly fishing writer Masako Tani, and their daughter Kosumo.    

Stackpole Books is proud to announce publication of Dave Hughes’s latest book,  

Nymphs for Streams and Stillwaters   8-1/2” x 11” Hardbound 372 pages 1,000 color photos of naturals, imitations, tying steps, and fishing situations. $59.95  

“Nymphs for Streams and Stillwaters is destined to become the step-by-step reference to tying and fishing every nymph you’ll ever need. Filled with good advice from a trusted master of the subject, it is the most thorough and enjoyable book about selecting, tying, and fishing nymphs that has ever been written.”  

“As in all of his many other fine books, Hughes takes a subject that has been considered complex and confusing, and makes it easily understood and even enjoyable. He distills out of the muddle just the information that you really need to improve your nymph tying, and your nymph fishing as well. You’ll have fun reading and working with this book. It will increase the number of trout you catch, and the amount of fun you get from your fishing.“  (From the dust jacket.)  

Other Stackpole books by Dave Hughes:  

 

Frank Amato Publications books by Dave Hughes:  

 

About Dave

I got hooked on the world of fly fishing and trout when I was a teenager growing up in Astoria, Oregon, which is where the Columbia River empties into the Pacific Ocean. That area abounded in salmon and steelhead and sea-run cutthroat trout to catch, deer and elk and ducks to hunt, clams to dig, a monstrous river and much larger ocean to explore.

I sampled all those things, but over time narrowed my few free days to bounding up headwater streams, in pursuit of resident cutthroat trout. Something about the environment in which those trout lived--the sun striking through cathedrals of trees, the beautiful streams that plunged swiftly, then abruptly put on their brakes to pool deeply, the predaceous trout that left their lairs to arise suddenly into sunlight and strike my dry flies--pleased me, and kept me coming back. Even in the face of failure.

My first fly rod was a cheap bamboo that snapped a foot from its tip, got handed past two older brothers and down to me. My first fly line was a level D, about the thickness and weight of kite string. Somehow I learned to cast with that line, on that rod, though they were as poor a match as you might imagine.

I practiced continually in the back yard. I caught far more trees and huckleberry bushes than I ever did trout when I got onto water. But the persistent mystery of the streams, winding down out of those hills, and the native cutts, emerging up out of those pools to toss spray in the air, gave me no choice but to be on those waters, after those trout. I still fish them whenever I can.

I commanded a small Army signal detachment on the Mekong River, another monster river, for six months during the dust-up over there. I ordered out an Orvis catalog, and spent hours of spare time studying its pages, closing my eyes, letting those pictures of bamboo rods, reels, lines, and flies escort me in dreams back to my streams. I ordered an entire outfit, glass, not bamboo, for seventy-five dollars, had it waiting for me when I got home. It was a 6-footer, for a 6-weight line. To say it was brisk would be an understatement, but it was the first balanced fly fishing outfit I ever owned. It was perfect for those small streams. I still have that rod, and still fish it on those same streams.

When I got back to the states, I went back to college, audited an aquatic entomology course taught by Professor Norm Anderson, whose lab assistant was a fellow named Rick Hafele. He had all this knowledge about bugs that trout ate, and by then I owned a bamboo fly rod, so I conned Rick into going fishing with me by offering to let him take a few casts with my rod. He bit.

My favorite memory of that first day fishing was when a big golden stone adult descended out of the overhead canopy of alders, lowered its flaps and wheels, and flew lower and lower over the stream, probably on a mission to deposit the eggs of the next golden stone generation. Rick and I were eating lunch on a gravel bar. It was the age of Latex waders, and it was a hot day. Rick had his waders peeled down over his Levis, to cool off, while we ate. He saw that golden stone descending, grabbed his bug net with one hand, held up his waders with the other, and tore off down the middle of a long, shallow pool after it. I'll never forget the sight of Rick running and jumping in a shower of spray, flailing at the insect with his long-handled net, holding his waders up, trying to keep from tripping, and yelling "Holy s___! Holy s___!" He caught the poor bug, embalmed it, probably still has it in his extensive collection. We've been fishing together ever since, and something still always happens that makes the fishing a lot of fun.

Rick and I began teaching a workshop with the unwieldy name Entomology and the Artificial Fly. He did the insects. I did their imitations. We went all over the West with it. We noticed that our early students would spend the entire two-day seminar with their heads down, furiously writing notes, and would rarely look up at the slides we worked so hard to get. We wrote a 30-page booklet, handed it out to each attendee, so they could relax and enjoy the workshop. The great Don Roberts, then editor of "Flyfishing the West," got ahold of a copy of the booklet, told us to flesh it out and add photos and we'd have a book. We did, and it became Western Hatches.

That led to a life of going fishing, writing articles for all the fine fly fishing magazines that arose in the subsequent years, even for Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, and Field & Stream, the magazines I'd read when I was a kid. It also led to a long string of books--I've never figured out if I'm a fly fisherman who loves to write, or a writer who loves to fly fish, but I suspect behind it all I'm a reader who loves to write and loves to fly fish.

If that life seems simple--going fishing, coming home to write stories about what happened out there--think back to that first outfit of mine, the broken rod on which I tried to cast kite string. A life of writing is about like trying to cast that poorly-balanced outfit. I spend my average day now, in the studio I had built behind our house in Portland, fighting technology, which generally seems to win. I'm best to just set it all aside and go fishing.

That's what I'm going to do right now.

See you out there!