"True Love and the Woolly Bugger is a thoroughly amusing, manic, and perversely informative book about fishing in several of its most mutant forms." -Tom McGuane "Dave Ames's book . . . is good-natured fun, filled with insight, a passion for what honest fly fishing really is. He has a sharp eye for quirky nuance that makes simple language dance a wild step." -John Holt, author of Knee Deep in Montana's Trout Streams "True Love and the Woolly Bugger is adventurous and funny, and yet also poignant. In short, it's not just a fishing book, but very much like life itself, and well worth reading,...

Told through the eyes of a longtime Montana fishing guide and itinerant fishing bum, A Good Life Wasted offers a unique perspective on an implausible period in the recent history of human civilization. When Dave Ames started guiding, Rocky Mountain locals rode horses and dug camas roots; now they're trading stock options on cell phones. The collision of stone and computer ages was short-lived, but the deep-rooted themes of this book remain. A Good Life Wasted--a chronicle and celebration of the fishing-guide life--is poignant and spiritual; it's Blackfoot Indians and copper miners' daughters;...