World Fly Finder is a fat little book with an ambitious goal - to show you all the flies you need to catch fish in all waters of the world, both salt and fresh. With near to 400 flies described it would be hard to argue that goal hasn't been met.

The first section of the book is a set of tables designed to help you cross reference locations with the species available there, which you can then use to look up suitable fly patterns. This is the "Fly Finder" part of the book. There are three tables, for salmonids, other freshwater species and saltwater species. The listing of fly patterns for each species is hardly exhaustive and is just meant as a starting point. Following each table is a page or two describing the featured fish. I suppose these tables do have a bit of practical value, but I suspect they're more of an aid to visualising dream fishing trips and perhaps a bit of a gimmick to tie together all the flies.

The next part of the book gives an introduction to flytying, starting with a description of tools and hooks. It then moves on to techniques, starting with attaching the thread and then jumping to tying a nymph. A few other techniques are shown, such as tying hackle point wings and spinning deer hair for a muddler head. The photography in this section is not very well presented. The pictures are a bit small and the printing is not especially sharp or clear.

I often wonder why books of this sort bother to have these tying sections, it never seems enough to teach someone how to tie. The fly patterns described only come with recipes and not step-by-steps, so it would take someone unnaturally talented to pick up this book and start tying most of the flies in it.

Following the flytying part we come to the meat of the book, which are the fly descriptions. There are 388 flies in the book, and they cover a wide spectrum. There are a few repetitions. As an example a Baby Doll and Peach Doll are described, essentially the same fly in a different colour. There always seems to be a worthwhile reason for the repetition though, and it doesn't feel like padding. It would be easy, and a bit boring, to have a lot of well known old favourites. Instead I found the range of flies really good, with some old, some new, a wide range of materials and a whole lot of flies I hadn't come across before.

Each fly has a page to itself. There's text variously describing the history of the fly, the materials it's made from, how it might be fished and occasionally an anecdote relating to the fly. There is of course a decent sized image of the fly. Each page has a sidebar detailing where and when the fly might be used, what species it's aimed at, what it imitates and finally a recipe.

The recipes list all the materials needed for the fly, as you might expect, and are usually fairly descriptive. They often have some information on colour variations. Occasionally the recipe given does not quite match the fly picture, for example different colour materials may have been used. I also came across a few recipes where the formatting was a bit messed up, but it isn't a big issue. I have tied a few flies from the book. Some I was able to tie from the recipes and description in the text and some I had to look up on the Internet to get a better idea of how to go about them.

The fly photography is mostly pretty good, large and clear enough to give you a good picture of the fly, which all look nicely tied. However there are some problems. There are more than a few cases where the fly is made of white or pale materials and those materials blend almost completely into the white page, just leaving a coloured body and a set of eyes! There are also cases where the masking of the fly image hasn't been done very well, leaving ugly fringes around the flies or in a couple of places causing, for example, parts of the tail to vanish. These issues do detract from the book.

There is no organisation I can fathom at all for the flies. They aren't grouped by type, they aren't listed alphabetically, they aren't listed by colour. Perhaps they're listed by the zodiac sign of the creator? Essentially it's 388 flies shuffled randomly together, and it's not very easy to find a fly you might be looking for if you can't remember its name. Even if the flies had been divided up into nymphs, dries and streamers it would have been a help.

Following the flies is a pretty decent glossary, as well as an index to all the fly patterns. Try your best to remember the name of any flies you like the look of and you'll be able to find them easily using the index.

World Fly Finder is quite a small format hardcover book. It's 450 pages long and therefore pretty thick. Sometimes this can be a problem if the binding isn't very good, but so far it's holding together well. It has good quality paper and is in colour throughout, although as described above the colour reproduction isn't always of the best quality. Overall it's of an acceptable standard though.

To me this book is more of an entertainment and source of inspiration than a really practical guide. Due to its lack of organisation it's much more suited to picking up and flicking through than as a really solid fly reference. If you can't remember the name of a fly and you can't remember approximately which part of the book it was in it's going to take some time to find it again. That's a little ironic considering the name. On the other hand you can pick a page at random and start imagining using that fly for some species you've never seen in some part of the world you've never been before, or perhaps get an idea for something new to try in places you regularly fish.

Although this book does have some shortcomings, overall it's an interesting and entertaining read and I've tied up a few patterns from it that I'm looking forward to trying out on unsuspecting local denizens. You're bound to come across something you haven't seen before.

Reviewed by Jo Meder
July 08

Book details, as reviewed:
World Fly Finder
Published in 2004 by Collins & Brown
ISBN 1-85585-977-7
RRP $19.95 USD

Jo Meder (jo@sexyloops.com) lives in New Zealand's South Island on the side of a mountain. Since rediscovering fly fishing a few years ago he's become a hopeless addict and can often be found roaming the banks of both rivers and lakes, supporting his habit through work as a software developer. One day he will catch a fish from his kayak. He likes to cast just because and seeks to pass on the enjoyment of casting in his capacity as an FFF Certified Casting Instructor.