John Gierach

John Lawrence Gierach (November 24, 1946 – October 3, 2024) was an American author and freelance writer who lived in Larimer County, near Lyons, Colorado.

Biography Gierach was born in Chicago Heights, Illinois, on November 24, 1946, and grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis-Saint Paul. He graduated from the University of Findlay in Ohio, then known as Findlay College, having majored in philosophy and minored in English. He began writing more regularly at this time.

His books are based on his fly fishing excursions all over the world, many of which were undertaken alongside his friend A.K. Best. His book Trout Bum popularized the term "trout bum." Gierach also wrote poetry and authored two books of poems. The collection includes his manuscripts, poetry, photographs, fishing logs, and general correspondence from 1976 to 2014.

Writing career Gierach began writing professionally because he needed money. Starting out, he wrote contributory notes and features for the Fly Fisherman to pay his monthly rent. Prior to selling his work, Gierach had been writing consistently and felt that he could write as well as the angling authors who were getting published at the time.

His work has appeared in Gray's Sporting Journal, Field & Stream, where he was a contributing author, and Fly, Rod, and Reel, where he was an editor at large. In the 1990s, he wrote a column for the "Outdoors" section of The New York Times. Gierach also wrote columns for the Longmont Daily Times-Call, the monthly Redstone Review, and the quarterly publication TROUT for the non-profit Trout Unlimited.

A.K. Best, a close friend of Gierach's, is included in many of the articles due to their relationship built around fly fishing. Best previously owned a fly shop in Colorado where he tied flies at a production level (tying many identical flies for international vendors). He worked for the Orvis Company, creating fly tying tools and advertising flies, and was a signature tyer for Umpqua Feather Merchants. Gierach encouraged Best to start writing about production fly tying and fly fishing as a whole.

After making a name for himself in angling magazines, Gierach's work garnered attention from Sports Illustrated and The Wall Street Journal, with the latter calling him "the voice of the common angler". He is one of the only angling authors to be published by a premier publishing house. Gierach's interest and knowledge of the natural world are detailed in his publications, though he considered himself an "amateur" naturalist.