Parks' Fly Shop: Books by and about Our Staff, Shop, and Flies

Parks' Fly Shop: Books by Our Staff

Richard Parks is an avid reader and writer. He has authored or co-authored two books on fly fishing, all focusing at least partially on fly fishing Montana and Yellowstone National Park. The books are listed in order of publication date, oldest to most recent.

In addition to the following books, our shop has been featured in many other books about fly fishing the Yellowstone area, ranging from dedicated angling and fly tying guidebooks to general tourist handbooks.

Tying & Fishing the West's Best Dry Flies

Tying and Fishing the West's Best Dry Flies

Richard coauthored this fly tying and fishing manual with Bob Wilson in the late 1970s. It went through two editions before going out-of-print. It can still be found at reasonable prices in used bookstores, on Amazon, and on ebay.

According to Richard: "I really hadn’t put any thought into becoming an author until my friend Bob Wilson, then a California State Senator, proposed the idea and came to the table with a plan and contacts in the publishing world. It reflects the then state of the art in tying methods, materials, patterns, and fly fishing tackle and in the end became a three way collaboration between Bob, myself, and R. Valentine Atkinson who applied his photographic genius to illustrating the fly tying. It is useful for learning basic and classical tying techniques."

Fishing Yellowstone National Park: Third Edition

Cover of Fishing Yellowstone National Park, Third Edition.

Richard Parks' book Fishing Yellowstone National Park is now in its third edition. Originally published by Falcon Guides, it is now put out by The Lyons Press.

This book serves a somewhat different function than all the other Yellowstone fishing guides out there. Richard is the first to admit that the book is lacking in fly and hatch information, but despite the title it isn't intended as a fishing guide in the sense of many others. Instead, it focuses on describing in precise detail how to access almost every piece of water in the Park that's worth fishing, including both road and trail mileage down to the nearest tenth of a mile and frank discussions of the difficulty of any hiking involved. It also provides accurate descriptions of what kind of fish and what kind of water characters you'll find on a given stream and suggestions on tactics, and doesn't sugercoat things if the fish are small or way too smart for their own good or the crowds of anglers are thick. When combined with the hatch charts and river and stream descriptions in our How To Site, or with Walter's e-book Fly Fishing Yellowstone Country, the book gives a thorough introduction to Yellowstone's fish and fisheries, though you should still call us for current conditions.

You can purchase the book from Amazon, but if you buy it from us for slightly more money you get a personalized autograph from Richard.


Parks' Fly Shop

PO Box 196 or 202 Second Street South

Gardiner, MT 59030

Phone: (406) 848-7314

Current Hours: 9AM - 5PM Daily

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E-Mail Richard

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