Almost thirty years ago, the late Commander C.F. Walker drew together a team of ten expert
angling writers to produce a compendium volume covering all aspects of fly fishing. Published in 1963, the book was appropriately titled, The Complete Fly-Fisher.
This classic book's lifespan covered a period of dramatic change in the fly fishing world - the reservoir boom of the 1960s and '70s, the replacement of cane with fibreglass and of fibreglass with carbon fibre in the 1970s, and the burgeoning of myriad small stillwaters in the 1970s and '80s are just examples. All these served to date The Complete Fly-Fisher, eventually to the extent that revision became impracticable. So, in 1988, Peter Lapsley was invited to draw together a new team of writers and to start afresh. The result is a most remarkable work.
Each of the contributors is a well known and widely recognized authority on his particular subject. Between them, they have covered every aspect of the sport - from tackle selection and casting, through methods of fishing for salmon, trout, sea trout and grayling, to fly tying and fisheries management.
Happily, it has been possible to keep two delightful links with the past.
Very little has changed in chalk stream fly fishing over the past thirty years. While several modern authors could have provided excellent chapters on the subject, few, if any, could have bettered the late Oliver Kite's contribution to the 1963 work, which has therefore been retained. And Peter Deane, who retired recently after forty years of professional fly dressing, has written an entirely new chapter to replace the one he wrote for the original book.
The new volume is an exciting and worthy successor to its illustrious forebear and one which Commander Walker would undoubtedly have applauded.