Each spring, Brian Flechsig of Mad River Outfitters and the Midwest Fly Fishing Schools sits down with the books he has been reading and tells his audience which ones are worth a fly-shop visit and which ones are worth a hunt through the second-hand stack. The spring 2026 edition delivered five titles, and a few of them - in the Mad River Outfitters host's clearly delivered judgement - belong on any serious fly tier or trout fisherman's shelf.
Flechsig led with the title most viewers will likely buy first. "This is one of the most beautiful books I've ever laid my eyes on," he said of A Fishable Feast by Matt Supinski and Kirk Deeter. The subtitle - "fly fishing and eating your way around the world" - is doing a lot of work. Supinski is a long-time collaborator and Ohio State graduate; Flechsig described the book as both a coffee-table piece and a sit-down read. "It is so beautifully done," he said. "There's literally they take you on a trip around the world and fish in all these different countries, all these different regions. And then with Matt being the chef that he is, there's recipes from each region." He had already tried, and recommended, the Belize-style guacamole-and-shrimp-cocktail dish.
Monty Burke's cover endorsement, read on camera, captured the book's pitch: "Deeter and Supinski have taken a really cool concept combining fly fishing and eating adventures from around the world and absolutely nailed it. The spirits of Lefty and Bourdain hover over this book nodding in approval." Mad River Outfitters is now planning an in-person Sunny Brook Trout Club event with Supinski cooking from the book.
The second pick is decades older, but Flechsig has been re-tying its patterns. Bob Popovics' Fly Design is, in his words, "so good and so well done. It's an honour to own this book." Popovics passed away two years ago, but Flechsig argued the patterns - especially the hollow flies - deserve a wider audience. "There's been three men that have changed fly tying forever and in fly shops forever," he said. "That's Kelly Galloup, that's Blane Chocklett and that's Mr. Bob Popovics." The hollow-fly techniques in particular, he added, translate beyond saltwater to almost any baitfish-imitation work.
The Vincent Marinaro pair is the nostalgia card. A Modern Dry Fly Code - the book Flechsig bought as a teenager working at Stream Side Outfitters in the late 1980s - is the title he keeps reaching for during Hendrickson, Sulphur and caddis hatches. In the Ring of the Rise, Marinaro's photographic study of trout rise forms, anchors the same shelf. "If you're into trout fishing and you're into dry fly fishing and rising trout," he said, "this book is absolute must-read." Both, Flechsig warned, are almost certainly out of print and will probably need to be tracked down via second-hand book hunters.
The finale was the recent pick that ate Flechsig's weekend. Steven Sautner's Every Cast: Chronicles of a Deeply Hooked Angler arrived in the mail unsolicited and finished a couple of days before filming. "This guy is so good," Flechsig said. "This guy is deeply hooked. I mean, this guy is obsessed with fishing." The short-story format, he added, is a deliberate plus. "You don't have to invest an hour in a chapter to get through. They're just short little stories."
The two passages Flechsig pulled from Every Cast for the broadcast capture why the book is on his all-time shortlist. The first is Sautner's even-handed take on catch and release: "Putting fish back may be the single most effective act of individual conservation we can take. So it admittedly feels kind of weird when I occasionally land a legal fish, then kill it and take it home for dinner. Ethics, unlike regulations, can be subjective and yours may vary from mine."
The second is Sautner's call for what he calls a slow-fish movement: "Use our technically advanced gear, data and knowledge and collectively not catch so many damn trout. Instead of whacking 50, throttle back a little. Relax. Breathe. Study the poetry of the river. Fish more, but cast less. Let's call it a slow fish movement."
Flechsig's verdict on Sautner himself was direct. "This guy is so good. I've kind of mentioned that somebody's going to fill the shoes of John Gierach. It's David Coggins and it's Steven Sautner. No question." His sign-off doubled as a hatch-season cue. "It's dry fly season around the country and especially here for us in Ohio. We've got Hendrickson hatches. Sulphurs are on the way."