If you’re a golfer, you may have heard of Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book, a popular compilation of golf tips related in an amusing, plainspoken style. Kirk Deeter, an editor-at-large for Field & Stream, is a golfer who benefited from Penick’s advice. So he and Charlie Meyers, the late outdoors editor for the Denver Post, collaborated on a similar book for anglers: The Little Red Book of Fly Fishing.
Like Penick, the authors drew on decades of experience. They have distilled their wisdom into 250 tips, usually just a paragraph or two long. They are divided into five chapters: Casting, Presentation, Reading Water, Bugs, and Miscellaneous.
Here is tip 198, “The Golden Rule,” written by Deeter: “Under no circumstances should a man ever try to teach his wife or girlfriend, and a woman her husband or boyfriend, the mechanics of golf and fly fishing. That’s what pros and guides are for. You can take my word for it, or you can learn the hard way.”