Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: John Gierach
    -INDEX: Gierach (Fly Fisherman)
    -INDEX: Gierach (Midcurrent)
    -INDEX: John Gierach (Trout Unlimited)
    -COLLECTION: John Gierach Papers, 1976-2014 (Archives West)
    -OBIT: Beloved author John Gierach passes away at 78: Gierach was one of fly fishing's most iconic voices (Hatch Magazine - Friday, Oct 4th, 2024)
    -OBIT: Fly-Fishing World Mourns Loss of Beloved Author and Original Trout Bum John Gierach: Tributes pour in for Gierach, who reportedly died Thursday of a heart attack. (Josh Bergan, 10/04/24, Fly-Fisherman)
    -ESSAY: Grizzly Central (John Gierach, 11/07/11, Dave Brown Outfitters)

Last August Dave Brown, A.K. Best, and I were barreling down an old, wet logging road in the mountains of British Columbia, on our way to a cutthroat trout stream, going faster than you’d thing you’d want to through slick mud, standing puddles, and jumbled rocks. We’d been barreling for an hour without seeing another vehicle or even a tire track in the mud, and, as far as I could tell, we were nowhere near a river.

Dave, a fly fishing guide out of Calgary, Alberta, wanted to check out some water he thought he might like to guide clients on, and A.K. and I were along for the ride. Dave would refer to the river only as Grizzly Central, because it flows through a corner of B.C. that has the largest concentration of grizzly bears in the province. (Of course that’s not the river’s real name, but I guess it is your one hint if you care to pursue it.)

About an hour and a half up the old logging road – along which there’d been several opportunities to take a wrong turn and get lost – we pulled over at the forested lip of a steep gorge. It was a cool, windless, drizzly day, so quiet I could hear a single chichadee far down the slope, and from way down there I could just make out the faint hissing of running water.

The route down followed game trails for a while then dropped off into thick brush and slippery mud. After several hundred feet of this, it began to occur to us that in order to get out of there, we’d have to drag ourselves up the same steep slope.

When we finally got to the river we found it was on the small side, but still plenty big enough. There were places where you could ford it easily and other places where one bad step would float your hat. It had that raw, dramatic, flood-blasted look of a glacial river, with polished, chalky-looking rocks. In places the channel and banks were choked with splintered log jams; some old, some from the previous spring runoff still oozing sap and sporting green needles.

The riffles and shallower runs were glass clear, but the deeper pools had the eerie aquamarine cast glacial rivers get. Since the larger trout tend to pod up in the deep holes, you quickly learn to associate that color with fish.

I don’t think the woods there are technically rainforest, but in places they give that impression, right down to carpets of moss and waist-high ferns. One minute you think you could hear a grizzly bear coming for half a mile in this stuff, and the next minute you think you could step on a sleeping bear before you saw it. Whichever way you look at it, you can’t help thinking of bears.

    -ESSAY: The Value of Simplicity (John Gierach, Fly Tyer)
    -ESSAY: On the South Platte, Pushing Our Luck (John Gierach, April 19, 1992, NY Times)
    -ESSAY: Flies or Lures? (John Gierach, May 1986, Fly Fisherman)
    -ESSAY: Matching the Hopper Hatch: They're not the legendary catch-them-on-anything bug (John Gierach, July-September 1980, Fly Fisherman)
    -ESSAY: Blue-winged Olives: From coast to coast, this foul-weather hatch greets the season and bids it adieu (John Gierach, December 1989, Fly Fisherman)
    -EXCERPT: You Can't Eat the Scenery: from A Fly Rod of Your Own (John Gierach, Fly Fisherman)
    -ESSAY: The Quasi-Religious, Damn-Near-Irrational Appeal of Bamboo Fishing Rods: To a select set of anglers, they’re what vinyl records are to music lovers. (John Gierach, 8/08/19, Bloomberg)
    -ESSAY: On Writing and Being Written About (John Gierach, Spring/Summer 2008, Weber State University Journal)
    -VIDEO: Interview with John Gierach (The New Angler)
    -VIDEO: An Evening with John Gierach: Join John and Trout Unlimited’sKirk Deeter for an online evening celebrating the upcoming release of John’s new book. (Trout Unlimited, 5/29/2020)
    -PODCAST: Backcast: Fishing Through Climate Change, with John Gierach (Phil Monahan, May 19, 2023, Orvis)
    -PODCAST: Fly Culture With John Gierach (Spencer Durrant, 4/08/23, Midcurrent)
    -PODCAST: Trout Bum John Gierach: Author John Gierach joins the Anglers Journal Book Club to discuss his book Trout Bum (Anglers Journal Podcast, 2/29/24)
    -VIDEO: Orvis - Tom Rosenbauer Interviews Fly-Fishing Author John Gierach (The Orvis Company, Jun 26, 2020)
    -VIDEO John Gierach’s Secret: from the film Turning Tail (Grey Ghost Productions)
    -PODCAST: Remembering John Gierach, All the Time in the World (Ireland on the Fly, 5 October 2024)
    -PODCAST: John Gierach - All the Time in the World (Fly Culture Podcast, 15 March 2023)
    -PODCAST: Ep. 147: A Conversation with John Gierach April Vokey, 8 November 2019, Anchored)
    -PODCAST: Ep. 092: John Gierach (Meateater, 27 November 2017)
    -PODCAST: John Gierach on Dumb Luck and the Kindness of Strangers, McGuane and Hemingway (Wet Fly Swingm, 11 April 2023)
    -PODCAST: John Gierach Dumb Luck and the Kindness of Strangers and Wally Pleasant EP250 (Fish Nerds, 31 May 2020)
    -PROFILE: For author John Gierach, the best fishing stories aren’t really about fishing (Dalton Young, April 29, 2020, Peninsula Press)
    -PROFILE: Book: Lyons’ John Gierach talks about the philosophy of writing fishing books (Kathleen Spring, May 25, 2023, Lyons Recorder)
    -PROFILE: John Gierach (A Writing Life)
    -PROFILE: The Story Tells Itself: Author John Gierach carved out a niche as a trout bum with a knack for storytelling. (Michael Carr, Jun 10, 2024, Anglers’ Journal)
    -PROFILE: Rodholders: John Gierach (Midcurrent, February 19, 2011)
    -INTERVIEW: Interview transcript with John Gierach (Tenkara, December 08, 2017)
    -INTERVIEW: Trout Fishing in America: A Conversation with John Gierach (Lawrence E. Morgan, Spring/Summer 2008, Weber State University Journal)
    -PROFILE: Tenkara with John Gierach and Ed Engle (tenkara, August 11, 2010)
    -PROFILE: Author Spotlight: John Gierach (Wills Donaldson, September 28, 2021, Flylords)
    -ARTICLE: TROUT magazine welcomes John Gierach and Bob White (Brett Prettyman, Jul 24, 2017, Trout)
    -ESSAY: Not Just Anybody’s Saint Vrain (Louis Cahill, 8/14/20, Gink & Gasoline)
    -THESIS: Where science writing and nature writing converge: The writing of John Gierach (Lawrence E.?Morgan , 2006, ?The University of New Mexico)
    -REVIEW INDEX: John Gierach (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW INDEX: John Gierach (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of Trout Bum by John Gierach (Monday Morning Theologian)
    -REVIEW: of Sex, Death and Fly-Fishing By John Gierach & Where the Trout Are All as Long as Your Leg By John Gierach (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of Sex, Death and Fly-Fishing (Monday Morning Theologian)
    -REVIEW: off Sex, Death and Fly-Fishing (New Southern Gentleman)
    -REVIEW: of The View from Rat Lake by John Gierach (Sports Illustrated)
    -REVIEW: of No Shortage of Good Days by John Gierach (Anthony Naples, Casting Around)
    -REVIEW: of All Fishermen are Liars by John Gierach (David Profumo, WSJ)
    -REVIEW: of All Fishermen are Liars (Ed Godfrey, The Oklahoman)
    -REVIEW: of All Fishermen are Liars (Page Lambert: All Things Literary & All Things Natural)
    -REVIEW: of Dumb Luck and the Kindness of Strangers by John Gierach (Kirkus)
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