Not Too Late For Some Great Summer Reading

Books on training retrievers, northern pike, brook trout and fishing in Yellowstone country are among the best outdoor books published this summer:

Retriever Training: A Back to Basics Approach, by Robert Milner, published by Ducks Unlimited, $27.50. Written by a man who has been training dogs professionally for more than 30 years, this 198-page book is one of the best on dog training to be published.

Milner deplores the heavy-handed training methods that have become popular and advocates somewhat gentle training that takes advantage of an intelligent dog’s inclination to bond with its owner, its desire to please him or her and its instincts to retrieve. He emphasizes obedience and steadiness and recommends that an owner keep his dog in the house, warns against throwing countless out-of-control retrieves, shouting at a pup and pleading with a pup when it’s out of reach.

Northern Pike, by Will Ryan, published by The Lyons Press, $35. Both veteran and beginner pike fishers will get a lot of useful information out of Ryan’s book, billed as “a complete guide to pike and pike fishing.

Author of the acclaimed “Smallmouth Strategies for the Fly Rod,” Ryan has fished for northerns much of his life. He includes a lot of what researchers and veteran pike anglers have learned the last 100 or so years.

Most of his book is about the use of lures and bait fishing for the voracious pike. He has included dozens of black and white and color pictures. The color plates show what he considers the most deadly lures and flies.

Early Love and Brook Trout, by James Prosek, published by The Lyons Press, $24.95. If you love brook trout, you’ll love this book by this young artist and fisherman.

Prosek, author of two other books that have become popular, has included 40 of his remarkable paintings of flowers, rivers, anglers, fly patterns, his first girlfriend and, of course, brook trout. His paintings of brook trout, the most colorful of all the trouts, bring out all the colors that make brookies the favorite trout of many fly fishers.

River Safety, by Stan Bradshaw, published by Greycliff Publishing, $14.95. More and more anglers, most of them fly fishers, are floating Northwest trout streams in pontoon boats, canoes, rafts and small boats. Some take chances with their lives by ignoring basic safety rules.

Every person who floats rivers could benefit by reading Bradshaw’s outstanding 138-page book. The author, a 25-year veteran of river running and a certified instructor for flat, moving and whitewater instruction, writes about identifying river hazards, river navigation, proper clothing and equipment and deadly mistakes many floaters make. Maybe some of those who, without wearing life-saving devices, ride fast-moving rivers on tippy boats might get his message.

The Boilerplate Rhino, by David Quammen, published by Scribner, $24. This book of wellwritten essays by a prize-winning writer is not your usual nature book. In fact, Quammen, who travels throughout the world for his often off-beat stories, explores nature with a fertile mind and meditates and speculates on the idiocyncracies of people and animals.

All of the essays were published in Outside Magazine. They are about people and rattlesnakes, rattlesnakes and spiders, dinosaurs and Montanans and even a quirky British homosexual who helped break the Nazis’ secret code. Apparent in many of the essays are his contempt for avaricious, pompous and ignorant people.

Fly Tying with Poly Yarn, by Lee Clark and Joe Warren, published by Frank Amato Publications, $19.95. By now, most fly tiers use polypropylene to tie flies that imitate everything from chironomid pupae to big salmonflies. The 56-page book by two Northwest professional fly tiers includes excellent color photos that illustrate the use of poly yarn for tying numerous patterns created by Clark and a few other tiers.

The Waters of Yellowstone with Rod and Fly, by Howard Back, published by The Lyons Press, $24.95. First published in 1938, this memoir of the Yellowstone country has been out of print for many years. Considered a classic, it was one of the first books to bring to fly fishers’ attention the attractions of fishing the Yellowstone and other streams - and the lakes - of southeast Montana.

In his forward to the new edition, Craig Mathews of West Yellowstone, a trout fishing guide and author of books on fly fishing the region, says that what much of what Back wrote about more than 62 years ago is the same today. The edition should be popular with serious fly fishers interested in the early days of fly fishing the Yellowstone region.