Doug Stange, et al - Channel Catfish Fever

Channel Catfish Fever by Doug Stange


My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There's some pretty great stuff here, but some of it needs to be updated and some of it gets repetitive. The authors should have worked more anecdotes into how-to sections of the book.

The system here is pretty basic, and easily grasped. There are some interesting rigs explained, and the discussion about the longer European rods is particularly intriguing. I prefer longer fly rods (particularly for nymphing), but usually use relatively short spinning and casting rods, which I might want to re-think for certain situations.

Anyway, it's a quick read, and useful for novice cat-anglers. I've got no sense of the literature on the subject, but this seems like a reasonable place to start.

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C. Boyd Pfeiffer -- Bug Making

Bug Making by C. Boyd Pfeiffer


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's a pretty great intro to the field (as far as a novice can tell). It's nearly encyclopedic in scope (covering foam, cork, balsa, injection foam, etc. for freshwater, saltwater, trout, bass, billfish, panfish, etc.), but at the same time it's succinct. Pfeiffer's description are clear and easy to follow, which is the main thing you want in a book like this one.

There are plenty of b&w pictures here, and they're useful, but it would be nice to have color plates to go with it. Not so much to see the colors of the bugs (you should know what color to use for your bee pattern), but to make everything a little sharper and more distinct for the trickier techniques.

Some of the info must be a little outdated (the list of suppliers/distributors, for example, and the bibliography), and I'm not sure what advances might have been made in materials since the book was written. Even so, the basic principles are clearly laid-out and very accessible, and the main points probably haven't changed too much.

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