Fishing Book Review: ‘What a Trout Sees’ is a Must-Have for Fly Fishermen

The “Going Deep” features I wrote for Field & Stream are some of my favorite stories I’ve ever written. I started with trout and that eventually led to bass and other species like pike and walleye. The premise was simple: To truly understand fish, you have to “be the fish.” So I put on scuba gear, went below the surface, and watched what fish did as anglers were casting at them. The reason I like these stories so much is because I learned tons as I was producing them. We’d boil the information down into magazine feature packages, but there was always enough information to make a book…

Which is what my friend Geoff Mueller did in “What a Trout Sees: A Fly-Fishing Guide to Life Underwater.” And I’d be jealous of Mueller for producing a book I wish I had done, but he did so in a way that I’m not sure I could have pulled off.
The lessons are clean and concise. The logic is plain. He answers questions I had never thought to ask. Mueller is a fantastic writer, and the descriptions in this book are easy to track. I’d describe it as a “text book” because the layout and format do indeed look very “instructional” (and I mean that as a compliment), but it’s far more engaging than any text book I’ve ever read.

And oh, by the way, the bulk of the photographs were taken by some guy named Tim Romano. As you all know, Tim is one of the best in the business, and he worked wonders with the underwater housing for his cameras. I am very proud of my partner’s work in this project.

If you want to climb the trout fishing learning curve quickly, you should buy this book. With a list price of $24.95, it’s about 10 times less expensive, and 100 times more valuable, than the average guide trip.