Fly Fishing Books: Top Books from 1982

One of the more intriguing facts about fly fishing literature is that the good stuff rarely goes out of style. Witness three books reviewed by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times in 1982. Datus Proper’s What The Trout Said is called by some one of the most underrated fly fishing books of all time. And Art Lee’s Fishing Dry Flies for Trout on Rivers and Streams is an acknowledged classic. “Datus C. Proper, an American Foreign Service officer who has fished all over the world, is a bit more sophisticated than Mr. Lee, at least as a writer. But his message is essentially the same: let us forget all the fancy stuff and listen to what the trout says. ‘The trout and I do not share enough knowledge to sustain a good conversation on most subjects,’ Mr. Proper writes in his impish manner.”