Rather Be Fishing Icon Dies

Ernest Schwiebert, Who’d Rather Be Fishing, Dies at 74

rnest Schwiebert, an architect and planner whose lifelong passion for fishing led him to write influential books on piscatorial matters like how trout perceive insects – all the better to make lures to catch them – died on Saturday at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 74.
Dr. Schwiebert’s most original contribution to angling was his book “Matching the Hatch,” which he published in 1955 while still a student at Ohio State University. To fishermen, hatch refers to insect nymphs that have swum en masse to the surface and broken free of their nymphal shucks and are flexing their muscles before flying away. Dr. Schwiebert was one of the first to link artificial fly imitations to these evanescent adolescent insects.

“He really changed the way America thought about trout fishing,” John Merwin, fishing editor of Field and Stream, said yesterday. Mr. Merwin noted that the book appeared just as the post-World War II generation was turning to fishing and other forms of recreation in great numbers, and said it was gaining new popularity with their children.