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friends, mentored and inspired a legion of fly fishing writers, and left a rich legacy in the form of his own contributions to the sport's literature. He was the first editorial director of the Federation of Fly Fishers' magazine, The Flyfisher, and a strong supporter of the organization from the outset. The FFF's Arnold Gingrich Memorial Award honors his memory and recognizes individuals who make major contributions to the literature of the sport. As a side note, one of the high points of my career was being named recipient of that award in 1988. Most of important of all though, from the perspective of the sporting bibliophile, are Gingrich's own books. B y the late 1950s, already an accomplished fly fisherman as well as a well-known collector of rods and tackle, Gingrich was ready to branch out into literary evocations of the sport. In The Joys of Trout (1973), he wrote: "Some of the world's best fishing is in the library, where it's open to everybody to enjoy vicariously, whereas in actuality some of it is preserved for poops who wouldn't know enough to miss it if they never had it." Based on this logic, he set out to do his part to add to the sport's literature. Gingrich was already a serious bibliophile and collector of sporting books, and in due course a series of works of lasting importance heralded his arrival on the scene as an angling writer of the first order. His background as an editor served him well as a writer, and before he ever turned his full attention to writing on his beloved sport he had overseen the compilation of a number of anthologies and had written a novel, Cast Down the Laurel (1935). Among Gingrich's first significant contributions to fly fishing were several articles for Field & Stream along with carefully researched, well-written essays, including "Angling Literature," "Izaak Walton," "Iceland" and other subjects for A. J. McClane's Standard Fishing Encyclopedia. These served as preludes to Gingrich's three major books: The Well-Tempered Angler (1965), The Joys of Trout (1973) and The Fishing in Print (1974). Little gems of angling wisdom can be found throughout each of these books. The Well-tempered Angler was comprised of 21 essays, including impressive biographical vignettes of Preston Jennings, Edward Hewitt, A. J. McClane and Lee Wulff. In The Joys of Trout, we get a potpourri of material that reflects the author's personality and myriad interests. It is comprised of one short and one quite lengthy essay, an alphabetized collection of entries called "The Angler's Best Companions," and Gingrich's choice of 50 books he considered essential reading for every fly fisherman. His list of "must reading" remains as timely today as it did at publication, although obviously today's reader would want to include titles published in the last four decades. One relatively recent book that would certainly be added was Gingrich's own The Fishing in Print SPOR TIN G CL ASSICS 224