John Gierach Interview

The Denver Post‘s Scott Willoughby interviews acclaimed author John Gierach and reveals that fly-fishing—while it colors all of Gierach’s writing—isn’t his only passion; he’s also a bird-watcher and bonsai fan and dabbles in phenology.

“There’s this whole phenological deal — Bob Scammell up in Canada wrote a great book on that — where you key the (insect) hatches to the wildflowers. The wildflowers usually depend on temperature, photo period, length of daylight, season — the same thing as the hatches do. You have to work it out in your own area, but you get to the point where you go up to the stream and you start seeing Indian Paintbrush and you tie on a flavolinea because they’ll be on.”