One of the most authoritative voices on fly fishing in New England has penned a new book to share his many adventures seeking out the best catches.
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| Windham resident Lou Zambello has authored his fourth book called "I'll Be Home For Dinner, Unless There's A Hatch: Reflections From The Water: Writing, Guiding and Fly Fishing The World." It's available online and will be in local bookstores in March. COURTESY PHOTO |
The 290-page book is a departure from his previous guides, as this one goes into the stories behind Zambello’s many adventures across the world, including exploring the waterways of New England.
“People started asking about the behind-the-scenes stories,” he said, adding that he gives hundreds of presentations and commonly had people asking for the stories from his more than 20 years of being a guide. “They’d ask, ‘tell me those secret guiding stories. How did you go to all those places?’ so this book is stories about my life fly fishing.”
The book begins with Zambello learning to fly fish at 23, after being introduced to fly fishing by other guides when he worked at L.L. Bean in Freeport including his recounting walking small local streams, catching small hand-sized trout, and then expanding into his greater adventures.
The book continues “as I guide and start going to bigger rivers, and then the last third of the book is adventure fishing,” he said. “There is a chapter on New Zealand, Chile. I’ve fished for Atlantic salmon in Northern Russia, for bonefish in the Caribbean, been in Labrador. I’ve hiked the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, dodging bears to fish there. A year ago, I rode on horseback for 18 miles through wilds of California’s Sequoia National Park, hiked 16 miles round trip up 2,000 feet to fish the native golden trout which is only found in two miles of stream way up at 12,000 feet.”
Despite the adventures to far-flung destinations in search of remarkable catches, Zambello includes the Presumpscot River as one of the best fishing spots.
“I have found that the whole Presumpscot River watershed is really a wonderful fishery. You really can catch some amazing fish there,” he said. “People ask where I’ve caught my biggest brown trout, for example. Let’s see – New Zealand, Patagonia and the Presumpscot river below the dams. It’s really an underappreciated fishery.”
The guide and instructor began writing about 15 years ago, when he realized he had a significant knowledge base that would be helpful to share with others before it was lost.
“I was an avid fly angler for years, mostly in Maine and the Rangeley area, and I started writing down the stuff I had learned and determined, guessed about and hypothesized about, so year after year after year, I had these fishing notes,” Zambello said. “At some point, I started forgetting some of the stuff I had learned. I thought to myself, I never want to be that guy who has ‘forgotten more about fly fishing than you’ll ever know.’”
His first book focused on the five different seasons in fly fishing in New England, and how the seasons impact the behavior of the fish.
“Understanding the seasonal behavior of trout in New England is critical,” Zambello explained. “People like that book and would reread it each season” but would soon begin asking for more inside knowledge.
“People kept coming up to me saying ‘yeah, but I need to know where to go. Now I know how to fish better, there’s no real good where-to-go books,’” he added.
Zambello’s publisher then requested that he write a fly-fishing guide to New England, as he had a wealth of knowledge that would be advantageous for such a guide. He spent several years traveling the area to develop the overall resource, “Flyfisher’s Guide to New England,” which includes detailed maps and even GPS coordinates to help anglers find the best spots to cast a line.
After the success of his first offerings, readers began asking about another book to help them find the biggest fish.
“Then people started saying, ‘I know what to do, I know where to go, and I can catch trout, but where do you go to catch the big, trophy trout?’” he said, which became the inspiration for “In Pursuit of Trophy Brook Trout: The Ultimate Handbook for Tactics, Timing and Territory.”
Many guides at the time Zambello began publishing focused solely on the west coast, which had become the center of fly-fishing guidance and innovation. However, what works to attract fish in the stream conditions found on the west coast do not apply to those on the east coast, meaning those guides were of limited use to east-coast anglers.
“Everything was designed for the west. One kind of fly you use under the surface is called a nymph,” he said, explaining how the fly replicates the bubbles and appearance of a fish’s prey, by using beads to mimic the movement of a real nymph. “They were mostly shiny beads because out west, with the high sky, clear water, and a lot of sunlight dancing around, the light bead attracts the fish. In the east, you want black beads, with our beaver bogs and black waters, so black beads work better. Nobody wrote about black beads because they were writing for out west.”
“I started writing because no one was writing about the east,” Zambello added. “Now, there’s an awful lot now of eastern content through social media, where there never was before.”
Zambello also has a website called Mainley Flyfishing (https://www.mainelyflyfishing.com/), which includes a blog and other details on his fly-fishing life, trip planning tips, future appearances, and a place to purchase a personally autographed copy of his books. His fourth book is currently available at online retailers and is expected in stores in March. <
