WHILE PHOTO and essay oriented fly fishing books are hardly an endangered species, many recent efforts have been more 'concept' than actual book; you invent a catchy title, populate it with photographs from one of several leading outdoor photographers, and push it as the ideal gift for fly fishers. If it sells, you turn around and apply the same concept to golf.

That approach sells books, but it can also lead to pretty-but-sterile photography and depressingly unfeeling reading.

Flying in the face of the "concept" book, Ian and Charity Rutter have produced a heartfelt, photo-and-essay effort that's more love letter to an entire region than blockbuster sales concept. Rise Rings & Rhododendron is a 7" x 10" full-color coffee table book that's clearly a labor of love for the couple — a husband and wife team who are among Southern Appalachia's top guides.

Organized by season, with essays and pictures arranged in order from Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter, the Rutters cover Southern Appalachia's tailwaters (mostly Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia), and the smaller freestone streams primarily found in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. While it's the tailwaters that receive the bulk of the attention from the region's fly fishers, Ian Rutter's heart clearly belongs to the region's small streams. Populated with small fish and often exceedingly difficult to fish, Rutter feels at home in their confines, and the book reflects it.

His summer essay about brook trout is especially interesting, delving into the history of the area's brook trout (they were left behind after the last ice age), how they were almost decimated by stocked rainbows, and how recovery efforts are proceeding.

Still, the content is not entirely focused on tiny fish and streamside flora. A lot of space has been devoted to the area's standout tailwater fisheries — where drift boats and paddle-sized brown trout are commonplace — and Rutter even includes an essay about headhunting big fish with streamers. In fact, his essays offer a sizable amount of "how-to" information, though it's unlikely that readers will confuse this effort with the Rutters' previous guide books. He offers no specific tackle recommendations, and instead focuses on describing his experiences in a friendly, conversational style, including this passage in an essay about fishing a remote Brookie stream.

At the end of the day I have to back track several miles and the sunlight diminishes. Past experience tells me to watch each step as the copperheads and timber rattlers begin their nightly hunt. Not once during the day was there any question of what fly to use or a selective trout which could recognize the brand of of tippet tied to the fly. Instead there were plentiful wild trout in the middle of wild country. Innocent fish to restore a childlike enthusiasm in fly fishing.

I had few complaints about this book, which is available in both hardcover and an affordable soft cover. Some of the pictures suffer a bit from washed-out highlights, and a few of the essays are a little uneven in tone.

Overall, the quality of the book is excellent, and few of the pictures exhibit the staged glossiness that afflicts so many fly fishing photographs today (these photos were clearly taken in the act of fishing — not on a photographic field trip). Ian Rutter's unassuming, beguiling essays do their job; they invite the reader to fish the streams and tailwaters of one of the USA's most-overlooked trout fisheries and to do so alongside the Rutters, who clearly love their home waters.