CFS Chat: George Daniel on Dynamic Nymphing
We were lucky enough to get some time with George (in between the Green Drake blitz, even!) and had the chance to ask him a few questions about his approach to the book.
It's only May, but George Daniel's Dynamic Nymphing is already our favorite fly fishing book of 2012, and is likely to stay in the top spot. It's the best sort: the kind that not only motivates you to go fishing, but gives you the tools to do the job better.
Daniel, who hails from central Pennsylvania, is one of the most highly lauded fly-fisherman in the country, earning all sorts of accolades competing and coaching internationally over the past decade. It's unlikely the Denver Post's Charlie Myers is exaggerating too highly when he says a compelling case can be made for Daniel as "the best fly-fisherman in the country" in one of the book's blurbs.
Spend a few hours with Dynamic Nymphing and you'll certainly agree, at least, that Daniel is among the sport's most analytic. He delves into all the major elements of subsurface fishing, from rigging to casting to reading water and stocking your boxes. Daniel's a systems thinker, and the book is a compendium of all the things he's tried and tested over the course of his professional career.
This isn't to say the approach is formulaic or dispassionate. Daniel peppers the instruction with anecdotes of his time on the water, of personalities he's learned from, of the international fisherman he's crossed paths with during his time traveling to fish competitively.
The end product is an enduring reference material without parallel, one that an active fisherman can take a few tips from here and there to bolster an existing archive of knowledge, or a newbie can use as a foundation to enter the sport. A number of elements of Daniel's system have already crept into parts of our approach.
We were lucky enough to get some time with George (in between the Green Drake blitz, even!) and had the chance to ask him a few questions about his approach to the book.
