One of the reasons many fly fishers are so enamored of the sport is that it takes us to such beautiful places. It also brings us into contact with fascinating people.
There is no limit to the breadth of personalities, professions, and opinions among participants in the quiet sport.
This book focuses on famous and highly accomplished fly fishers, many of them household names. Some readers may be surprised by some of the renowned individuals included in this profile collection. Sometimes their world outlook or life's work or hometown may seem incongruent with our concept of how a fly fisher should look, act, or think. But preconceptions can be wildly off base.
Though some of the people in these chapters may be wealthier, more influential, and more peripatetic than many of us, they dream the same dreams - of pursuing big fish in wild places; of making a perfect cast at just the right moment; of holding a brilliant, numinous, evanescent creature for a brief, magical instant before it slips away back into the flow.
You will get to know these people through their own words and maybe surprise yourself by coming to think of them as distant acquaintances you might hope to bump into on the water.
Advance praise for Norm Zeigler's
FAMOUS FLY FISHERS
To some, fly fishing is a way of life defined by a job in the fly-fishing industry, or by a vocation allowing for maximum fishing time. But for others, fly-fishing is a way in life to escape an otherwise demanding career. In Famous Fly Fishers, author, fly shop owner, and avid fly angler Norm Zeigler interviews twenty-one professionals, iconic in their fields, seeking to answer the questions of how and why the sport plays such an important role in their lives.
Jerry Kustich, author of A Wisp in the Wind.
Norm Zeigler has done it again. He has captured the essence of fly fishing by providing a pithy and compelling look at the sport through the eyes of some of this country's most interesting people. This book works and reads well not because the anglers he has chosen to highlight are iconic, but rather because he brings them down to the everyday level we all see on the water.
Tim Linehan, Fly fishing outfitter and Longtime Trout Unlimited TV host.
Norm Zeigler's Famous Fly Fishers is much more than a book about who. It is a book about why -- why take on the challenge of fly fishing. Zeigler explores the quandary with twenty-one men and women unsurpassed in life achievements. From walking on the moon, to running roughshod over NFL defenses, to playing key roles in running the United States, these overachievers have turned to the way of the fly for its never ending challenge and -- all admit -- its healthy doses of humility. In his chapter on Lion Whisperer Kevin Richardson, Zeigler notes there is no such thing as a stretch too large from profession to fly fishing. Indeed, as fly fishers know and readers will find, it's all about the stretch.
Byron Stout, outdoors columnist, Fort Myers (Florida) News-Press
