A Good Life Wasted: Or Twenty Years as a Fishing Guide

I read David Ames, True Love & the Woolly Bugger, and I think this is much better. Its a very funny, easy read. He doesnt get to romantic about fly fishing or guiding. Some very good qoutes from himself and his clients. Would be a great gift for any one who has ever fished, tried to teach someone else to fish or guided. Well worth the purchase.

I had this book pushed on me by a friend and didn't expect to *love* it, but it was so laugh out loud funny and so very well written that I just couldn't put it down. I read it in 2 days, after work. If you have gone fishing only once in your life, you'll love the fishing stories, but this book packs a lot more than that. As a gift, *any* fisherman or woman (I am female) will really like it a lot, and they'll thank you for the laughs. You couldn't pay me to fly fish, but my pal is one of those nuts and he has good taste in reading material. I'm glad he suggested it.

I got this book a while ago and enjoyed it immensely! One of my favorite flyfishing books. A very entertaining read, and I'll read it again! Pick one up for yourself or for the person who fishs in your life.

Dave Ames connects with the soul of any would-be or wannabe outdoor professional with humor, irony, and a dash of metaphysics, but nothing too heavy. He makes us care about him and his friends through great character development and threads that run through the episodes that take place over the twenty years of his wasted life. I had some laugh-out-loud moments here and there. Next, I'll back up and read his first book, True Love and the Wooly-Bugger. Wasted Life is highly recommended (I save 5 stars for Harper Lee and T.H. White.)

In A Good Life Wasted the author Dave Ames recounts his last twenty years as a fishing guide in the trout fishing capital of the universe, Montana. It is every true fly fisherman's dream to be reincarnated as a Montana fly fishing guide. As Ames aptly puts it in the opening line of the book, "With all my fingers and all my splayed toes I still can't count the number of millionaires who have wished out loud that they could be me." They wouldn't wish it if they read on as Ames describes living in a rat infested trailer, bouncing checks and using a log in the great outdoors as a temporary outhouse until he can buy a toilet. Ames' career begins as a hydrologist for the federal government who one day goes "postal" by punching a clock - literally. He bluffs his way into a job as a fishing guide working for a local Blackfoot Native American known affectionately as Kingfish. He plods his was through his early guiding days and his life becomes entangled in a contradictory world of haves and have nots. The numerous stories Ames recounts meld seamlessly with each other and offer more lessons on life's moral and religious significance than on fishing. Most books lose steam after the first couple of chapters - not this one. It becomes more intriguing and gets better as it goes. It is truly a page turner. The surest sign of a great book for me is when I am done do I tell myself I want more. The answer here is a resounding yes! So, Mr. Ames, during the long Montana winters get cracking and put pen to pad and finger to keyboard and allow us to be temporarily reincarnated as you.