John Gierach, the sage wordsmith of fly fishing, passed away on October 3, 2024. According to Hatch Magazine and a friend of Gierach, Michael Dvorak, the prolific writer of the outdoors suffered a massive heart attack at UC Heath Longs Peak Hospital in Longmont, Colorado, not far from his home in the town of Lyons. Gierach was 78.
Remembering prolific author John Gierach
John Gierach was an author known for a humorous voice that accurately expressed the passionate, absurd, and even agonizing human connection to angling. He published more than 20 titles, including Trout Bum, Even Brook Trout Get The Blues, and All Fisherman Are Liars. Though his essays focus on fly fishing, the sense of his work transcended any specific rod or reel to foster our shared conviction for being on the water chasing fish. As our editor Ric Burnley put it, referring to another of his titles, “We are all standing in a river waving a stick.” Gierach’s last book, All the Time In The World, was published in 2023.
Gierach’s work has also appeared with Gray’s Sporting Journal, Field & Stream and The New York Times. He was born in Glenwood, Illinois on January 21, 1946. After graduating from Findlay College in Ohio with a degree in philosophy, he made the life-altering move to Colorado in 1969. In 2015, he was inducted into the Catskill Fly Fishing Hall of Fame, and his papers currently live in the special collections of Montana State University in Bozeman.
In a tribute published on Fly Fisherman, Gierach’s longtime friend Dvorak expressed, “One of the most endearing things to me about John was his ability to find humor in seemingly serious situations. He’d deliver a zinger matter of factly and then he’d watch your face waiting for you to get it, and laugh with you when you did. He was witty, humble, a true friend, a great fly fisherman and a fantastic writer. I am gutted and sad that I will never sit on the bank of a river with him again. We all are.”
