the american fly fisher - american museum of fly fishing · the american fly fisher (issn...

SUMMER 2014 VOLUME 40 NUMBER 3

American

Journal of the American Museum of Fly Fishing

The

Fly Fisher

Parks and Recreation

Richard G. TischPresident

Karen KaplanVice President

Gary J. Sherman, DPMVice President

James C. WoodsSecretary

Charles R. EichelClerk

George R. Gibson IIITreasurer

O F F I C E R S

William E. AndersenMichael Bakwin

Foster BamJane Cooke

Peter CorbinDeborah Pratt Dawson

E. Bruce DiDonato, MDPatrick FordRonald Gard

George R. Gibson IIIJames Heckman, MD

Arthur Kaemmer, MDKaren Kaplan

Woods King IIIWilliam P. Leary III

Anthony J. MagardinoChristopher P. Mahan

Walter T. MatiaJohn R. McMahon

William McMaster, MDPeter Millett, MD

Bradford MillsDavid NicholsRobert A. Oden Jr.Erik R. OkenStephen M. PeetLeigh H. PerkinsFrederick S. PolhemusRoger RiccardiKristoph J. RollenhagenPhilip SawyerFranklin D. Schurz Jr.Robert G. ScottNicholas F. SelchGary J. Sherman, DPMRonald B. StuckeyTyler S. ThompsonRichard G. TischDavid H. WalshAndrew WardJames C. WoodsNancy W. Zakon

Charles R. EichelJames HardmanWilliam Herrick

David B. LedlieLeon L. MartuchPaul Schullery

T R U S T E E S E M E R I T I

Parker CorbinBailey HallingbyWoods King IV

Alexander KinseyCasey Knoll

Robert Longsworth

Alexandra Lovett-WoodsumJohn NeukomAlbert NicholsDavid E. Nichols Jr.Ben PastorJason M. Scott

J U N I O R C O M M I T T E E

Catherine E. ComarExecutive Director

Yoshi AkiyamaDeputy Director

Christina ColeCoordinator of Events

Sarah FosterDevelopment Associate

Samantha PitcherProgram Assistant

Patricia RussellAccount Manager

Sara WilcoxDirector of Visual Communication

S T A F F

T R U S T E E S

Delicate Arch; the Needles District in Canyonlands.

Jeff Yates

Kathleen Achor

IRECENTLY RETURNED FROM a vacationin Utah. Dear friends from my Wash -ington, D.C., days retired to Castle

Valley, so deciding which of that state’snational parks to first visit was mademuch easier. To Arches and Canyonlands!

The parks did not disappoint. I tooksome of the loveliest hikes of my life thatweek, immersing myself in landscapesthat could hardly be more different fromwhere I live.

When I visit any national park, I amstruck that it exists and is protected. Imarvel at roads engineered so that meremortals can visit. I respect the park’s past(those who worked to bring it into exis-tence) and its present (those who work tomaintain and continue to protect it).

With my love for national parks and thevery idea of them, you can imagine that Ijumped at the chance to publish whatmight be the earliest documented fishingstory in Yellowstone, this country’s firstnational park. The 1869 Cook-Folsom-Peterson party kept journals that includedaccounts of fishing the region’s waters;those accounts have been previously pub-lished in various forms. Recently, however,the Special Collections Library at MontanaState University–Bozeman became therecipient of David E. Folsom’s papers,which included handwritten notes thatmay be the first documented Yellowstonefishing story—not just a report of fish, buta tale of a fishing experience. In “EarlyFishing Adventures in Yellowstone Park”(page 10), Special Collections Librar ianJames Thull tells us a little about the Cook-Folsom-Peterson adventures and sharesthis new story with us.

It’s summer again. That means it’s timefor another article from Jerry Gibbs in hisseries on saltwater fly fishing. In his thirdand final installment (see Summer 2012

and Summer 2013 for the previous two),Gibbs starts out talking late-twentieth-century history and ends up in the present,discussing record holders, tackle innova-tions, conservation, and demographic andcultural changes in the sport. “SaltwaterFly Fishing: An Endless Frontier” beginson page 2.

According to Andrew Herd andHermann Dietrich-Troeltsch, the goldenpheasant is one of the most influentialcreatures in the development of thesalmon fly. In fact, the Harris collection atthe American Museum of Fly Fishingincludes the oldest known existing fly thatincludes golden pheasant (1791). In “TheBird with the Golden Cape” (page 14),Herd and Dietrich-Troeltsch give us thelowdown on this rare bird and WilliamBlacker’s use of it in his salmon patterns.

We’re happy to include the occasionalbook review in these pages; occasionallythat book review finds itself part of a larg-er essay. Paul Schullery, in his review essayof Peter Hayes’s Fly Fishing Outside the Box:Emerging Heresies (page 20), discussesangling theory and theorists (“those intel-lectual pioneers who seek to analyze the actof convincing a trout to take a fly”), theconversation that anglers have been havingabout these theories over time, and Hayes’sbook about popular misconceptions in flyfishing.

In April, the museum presented itsHeritage Award to former U.S. Secretaryof the Treasury Robert E. Rubin. Coverageof that event can be found on page 24.

And here’s some more big news: backissues of the American Fly Fisher can nowbe accessed online! Executive DirectorCathi Comar will tell you all about it onthe inside back cover.

KATHLEEN ACHOREDITOR

S U M M E R 2 0 1 4 V O L U M E 4 0 N U M B E R 3

the American Museum of Fly FishingJournal of

Saltwater Fly Fishing: An Endless Frontier . . . . . . . . . . 2Jerry Gibbs

Early Fishing Adventures in Yellowstone Park . . . . . . . . 10James Thull

The Bird with the Golden Cape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Andrew Herd and Hermann Dietrich-Troeltsch

Review Essay:Peter Hayes’s Fly Fishing Outsidethe Box: Emerging Heresies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Paul Schullery

Robert E. Rubin Receives 2014 Heritage Award . . . . . . . 24

Museum News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

ON THE COVER: The Parson from Henry Garrett Newland’s The Erne, ItsLegends and Its Fly-Fishing, tied by Alberto Calzolari. Photo by AndrewHerd.

The American Fly Fisher (ISSN 0884-3562) is published four times a year by the museum at P.O. Box 42, Manchester,Vermont 05254. Publication dates are winter, spring, summer, and fall. Membership dues include the cost of thejournal ($50) and are tax deductible as provided for by law. Membership rates are listed in the back of each issue.All letters, manuscripts, photographs, and materials intended for publication in the journal should be sent to themuseum. The museum and journal are not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, drawings, photographic mate-rial, or memorabilia. The museum cannot accept responsibility for statements and interpretations that are whollythe author’s. Unsolicited manuscripts cannot be returned unless postage is provided. Contributions to TheAmerican Fly Fisher are to be considered gratuitous and the property of the museum unless otherwise requested bythe contributor. Copyright © 2014, The American Museum of Fly Fishing, Manchester, Vermont 05254. Originalmaterial appearing may not be reprinted without prior permission. Periodical postage paid at Manchester, Vermont05254; Manchester, Vermont 05255; and additional offices (USPS 057410). The American Fly Fisher (ISSN 0884-3562)EMAIL: [email protected] WEBSITE: www.amff.com

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to:The American Fly FisherP.O. Box 42Manchester, Vermont 05254

We welcome contributions to the American Fly Fisher. Before making a sub-mission, please review our Contrib utor’s Guidelines on our website(www.amff.com), or write to request a copy. The museum cannot acceptresponsibility for statements and interpretations that are wholly the author’s.

Roger AltmanWilliam E. Andersen

Louis BaconE. M. Bakwin

Foster Bam and Sallie BaldwinJon and Deborah Pratt Dawson

Eric DobkinTim Hixon

Peter Kellogg

Dan LufkinBradford and Pamela MillsDavid and Margaret NicholsLeigh and Anne PerkinsEric and M. C. RobertsRobert and Karen ScottRichard G. TischPaul VolckerDavid and Jade Walsh

P R E S I D E N T’S C O U N C I L

W. Michael BakwinBessemer Trust Co.David J. Beveridge

Timothy and Andrea CollinsJane Cooke

H. Corbin DayE. Bruce and Denise DiDonato

Ezra FieldDavid Ford

George and Beth GibsonGardner Grant Jr.

Intercontinental ExchangePaul Tudor Jones

Arthur and Martha KaemmerKaren Kaplan

Woods and Wendy King III

Bill and Francesca LearyAnthony and Patricia MagardinoWilliam and Lynn McMasterErik and Jennifer OkenThe Orvis CompanyHenry M. Paulson Jr.William and Candace PlattSteven PriceBobby and Mary RussellFranklin Schurz Jr.Nicholas and Jean SelchRonald and Joan StuckeyTyler and Francis ThompsonAndrew and Elizabeth WardMark and Dorinda WinkelmanSteve Zoric and Sarah Bryant

M U S E U M C O U N C I L

Peter BowdenShannon Brightman

Tom ColicchioMark ComoraTom Davidson

Anthony DavinoPeter Esler

Timothy GeithnerTimothy Grell

James and Susan HeckmanHarold Johnson

Christopher Mahan

Leon and Shirley MartuchGeorge MatelichWalter and Pam MatiaRobert McGrawRobert and Teresa Oden Jr.Rebecca PattersonJoseph R. PerellaJack PittardLewis SachsMatthew and Kerry ScottJason and Deborah SelchJames Wolfensohn

D I R E C T O R’S C O U N C I L

Melvyn HarrisJames Houghton

John Taylor

F R I E N D S O F T H E M U S E U M

Kathleen AchorEditor

Sara WilcoxDesign & Production

Sarah May ClarksonCopy Editor

THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER

space for FSC info

Daniel Ziff

Alan and Nancy Zakon

2 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER

The Summer 2013 issue of the AmericanFly Fisher featured the second article inour series on fly fishing in the marine envi-ronment. “Saltwater Fly Fishing Comes ofAge” detailed the sport’s development fromthe 1920s through the post–World War IIperiod, followed by the unprecedentedgrowth from the 1950s through the 1980s,the so-called explosive years. “SaltwaterFly Fishing: An Endless Frontier” begins inthe late twentieth century and brings us tothe present, with all the twists and turns ofa sport that continues to evolve in ways itsearly champions could not have expected.While we’re at it, we’ll throw out a fewcasts aimed at what is likely saltwater flyfishing’s fascinating future.

THERE ARE GOOD REASONS why salt-water fly fishing experienced riot ousgrowth from the 1960s through the

1980s. Certainly, the sport’s earliest pio-neers had paved the way.1 Their contribu-tions offered creative angler minds of themid- to late twentieth century carte-blanche opportunity to innovate andexperiment without constraint. In tandemwere expanding technologies that foundapplication in rods, reels, fly lines, and flymaterials. Their introduction led to ad -vancements in angling techniques ineverything: from casting and presenta-tions to the ability to catch ever-largerfish.2 But saltwater sport was still the newkid on the block. In fact, even today I amnonplussed by the occasional surprisedquery, “You really can fly fish in salt waters?”

Many trailblazing anglers of thosegolden years between the 1960s and 1980sare no longer with us. Others—pioneer-ing guides, celebrity figures, communi-cators, and educators—are now officiallysenior anglers, most still fishing but con-tent to avoid the larger body-bruisingspecies and other more rugged aspects ofthe sport. There are notable exceptions,of course: those anglers whose passionfires with the dual challenge of refusingto accept limits either in sport or theirown personal performance. Take, forexample, the irrepressible Tom Evans.

PUSHING THE LIMITS

After a poor Atlantic salmon season in1968, Evans jumped fully into saltwater flyfishing—first for tarpon, then billfish—and hasn’t looked back. A check of theInternational Game Fish Association

(IGFA) record book shows that he holdstwo Pacific blue marlin, three black mar-lin, and three striped marlin tippetrecords, along with a shortbill spearfishrecord. In the tarpon category, he holds16-pound and 12-pound tippet records3

(he doesn’t fish tarpon using 20-pound-class tippet, a personally imposed limita-tion). Although Evans will tell you thatblue marlin are the toughest of all bill-fish, it was striped marlin that eludedhim for years, through episodes of failed

Saltwater Fly Fishing: An Endless Frontierby Jerry Gibbs

Master fly fisher Tom Evans Jr. of Vermont and Wyoming set the new 20-pound-tippet class world record for striped marlin on 19 March 2013. The fish

weighed 240 pounds, 15 ounces and was taken out of Whangaroa, New Zealand,aboard Captain Darren Hayden’s Blue Dog. Unlike many southern striped

marlin, the fish never spent much time deep but fought fiercely in the air. Evanswas able to subdue it in only forty-five minutes. Photo Courtesy of IGFA.

SUMMER 2014 3

boat engines, broken leaders, andschools of fish that vanished like ghosts.“Striped marlin are supposed to jump alot like they do everywhere else,” saysEvans, referring to his New Zealandrecord fish. “We learned the hard waythat the thermocline in the South Pacificis at 400 feet. After being hooked, stripedmarlin cruise down there, rest up, don’tjump and oxygenate themselves so theyget stronger as the battle goes on.”4 Aftera forty-five-minute fight on 19 March2013, Evans took his record striped mar-lin, the largest IGFA fly-rod record for thespecies. He was seventy-five at the time.His curriculum vitae includes a litany ofback, hip, and knee surgeries, and his ear-liest blue-water quests—following thebreaking of numerous tarpon recordsinshore—began back when the offshorefly-fishing game was in its infancy.

Anglers pursuing the once-seemingly-impossible with legitimate fly tackle con-tinue to give us a potpourri of new rig-ging and fish-fighting techniques for thelargest, most difficult fish species in saltwaters. During years of conducting sail-fish and marlin schools out of Guate -mala’s Casa Vieja Lodge, Captain JakeJordan refined billfish fly-tackle riggingto the point of near-zero failure (lackingangler error), along with a fighting tech-nique praised for its effectiveness. Neverhesitant to demonstrate, Jordan signifi-cantly raised his instructor performanceon 17 January 2011. As his studentslooked on, the blue marlin he hookedtook him through a bit of a beating andsevere leg cramps before he brought theleader into the rod tip for a technicalrelease. The fish then surged 15 feet awaybefore Jordan brought her back andwound the rod tip down to the class tip-pet before the fish was released. He esti-mated the fish at more than 400 pounds.Veteran skipper Mike Sheeder and hisexperienced crew insisted the fish wascloser to 500 pounds.5 Had Jordan evenwanted to authenticate a record, he couldnot have with Guatemala’s catch-and-release mandate in effect.

Since then, a blue marlin estimatedeven larger than Jordan’s was taken outof Casa Vieja on a fly, and during August2013, competitive angler Nick Smith,fishing over two sea mounds well off theCosta Rica coast, racked up what mustbe the highest number of blue marlinever taken on a fly rod. During the finaltwelve days of his two-month-long stint,Smith boated an incredible seventy-twoblues. Smith has now taken more fly-rodmarlin than any other angler.6

Still in extreme mode, but movinginshore and to the West Coast, is ConwayBowman. Not the first fly fisher to takethe notoriously bad-behaving mako

shark on a fly, Bowman refined the tech-nique to exquisite perfection, along withassuring healthy release of his quarry. Heparlayed his growing recognition into asuccessful guide business (now withpartner Dave Trimble), writing assign-ments, and a popular TV show, FlyFishing the World. Bowman launched hismako efforts in a simple 16-foot skiff andcredits ninety percent of his initialknowledge to then-commercial fisher-man Lou Foder (who ultimately turnedto mako fly fishing himself). Tides,moon phases, seasons, and water tem-perature off the San Diego coast were thebuilding blocks for which Bowman givescredit to Foder. This area is fraught withyoung makos in the 50- to 150-poundrange, ideal for the 14-weight fly rodBowman prefers. Periodically, a fish inthe 300-pound range will show and pos-sibly be beaten to the boat. Photographerand writer Pat Ford (an AmericanMuseum of Fly Fishing trustee), who hasfished with and penned a story onBowman, reports that Bowman hashooked into makos of nearly 1,000pounds, beyond the capabilities of eventhe best modern fly tackle and anglers atthe very top of their games. Thus far.7

And then there is Andy Mill, today’sacknowledged “hot stick” of tarpon fish-ing. Mill brought his innate athletic abil-ity as a former Olympic downhill skier toexcellence at the tarpon game. This hehas done on all fronts—hunting, coax-ing, and fighting the fish—proving itwith record numbers of tarpon tourna-

ment wins, but more importantly intro-ducing his own methods to become one ofthe most successful tarpon anglers of alltime. Far from hoarding keys to his suc-cess, Mill has widely shared his decades ofknowledge through multimedia inter-views, television appearances, and hisjustly praised book, A Passion for Tarpon,a storehouse of strategy and techniquethat Lefty Kreh calls “the most technicaland up-to-date book on how to catchgiant tarpon with a fly rod . . . a masterclass with no short cuts.”8

Obviously, these and other high-pro-file celebrity anglers are not alone inpushing the limits of saltwater fly sport.Uncounted younger guides and anglersalong all coasts continue to innovate andare raising the success quotient, especial-ly related to species and conditionsunique to regions they fish. Bellwetherachievements from the late 1990s to thepresent also owe significant debt to tech-nological advancements in material anddesign of rods, reels, lines, and a host ofperipheral equipment.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES

During the past twenty-five years, rodmakers have learned to work with newgenerations of carbon fiber (graphite)material, laid up or woven in differentways, strengthened with ever-betterepoxy-resin formulas that allow reduc-tion of the graphite itself for lighterweight for the same strength. Compositerods using both newer fiberglass material

Former Olympic downhill skier Andy Mill is now considered one of theworld’s finest tarpon fly anglers. A multiple tournament champion, Mill’s

techniques for hunting, coaxing, and fighting the fish continue to bring manyanglers increased success. His widely acclaimed book, A Passion for Tarpon,

includes his finely tuned approach to the sport as well as the insights oftoday’s best-known alpha tarpon hunters. Photo by Pat Ford.


along with graphite are very well suited tothe heaviest (particularly pelagic species)fishing requirements, when casting needsare secondary to strength in fighting. Butwhen casting is key, rod designers con-tinue to weigh the tricky balance betweenspeed, distance, and ease of loading increating their rod actions. A healthy shareof that decision making is based on theplethora of new line designs and the dif-ferent lines that might be cast using a par-ticular rod model. Rod hardware—guidetypes and reel seats—has continued toimprove through use of better metallurgy(REC Components’s nickel titaniumguides and reel seats of aircraft-gradehardened aluminum anodized to militaryspecifications are good examples). Re -search and development that producesstate-of-the-art fly rods does not comewithout spiraling cost. Costs of manytop-end models from major rod makersnow approach $1,000; however, the samecompanies have found ways to producefine, serviceable rod series at far morefriendly prices.

The number of high-performancesaltwater reels has grown along with thenumber of companies producing them.Veteran firms like Orvis, Tibor, Mako(Jack Charlton’s design), Abel, Hardy,and the slightly younger Van Staal con-tinue to offer premium-level, exquisitelydesigned state-of-the-art reels. Newermanufacturers like Nautilus, Colton, andHatch have entered the highly competi-tive reel market with some amazinglyinnovative saltwater mills. Virtually allhigh-end saltwater fly reels today aremachined from aircraft-grade aluminumand are anodized. Features continually influx include frame design, arbor size(larger for faster line pickup), smallerdesign tweaks (e.g., arbor grooves thatallow bottom-backing quicker drying,such as in the Nautilus CCF-X2), bear-ings versus bushings (and types of both),and, of course, drags.

An entire article could be devoted tosaltwater fly-reel drag designs and materi-als, but head butting for first place inüber-drag competition involves two main

elements: design types (open [usuallydraw-bar engineered] or sealed) anddrag materials (cork alone or a variety ofsynthetics). Popular synthetics includevarious plastics (e.g., Rulon) or carbonfiber. Stacked synthetic drag washers areoften used in combination with washersof other materials, including cork orstainless steel. Sealed drags are essential-ly maintenance free but would be morelabor intensive to repair if ever needed.Some sealed-drag units allow for quickchangeover from left- to right-handcranking. The best big-game reels offerextremely high stopping power, andsome can achieve maximum drag withjust one full turn of the adjustmentknob. At least one model offers autowearadjustment of the drag.

Fly-line advancements over the pastdecade may have even surpassed evolv-ing rod and reel innovations. Leon P.Martuch’s 1960 patent for producingtapered PVC coating over level-braidednylon core saw the dawn of modern linemanufacturing.9 Lines have evolved

Abel is one top-end reel maker that continues tobuild its drag system around cork: a large cork diskdressed with neat’s-foot oil. All Abel saltwater reel

bearings are Teflon sealed for extremely low-rollingresistance. Photos courtesy of Abel Reels.

Nautilus’s new CCF-X2 model features adual-drag configuration of both cork andcarbon fiber for –1 percent startup inertiaat all settings. Drag and bearings are fullysealed. Photos courtesy of Nautilus Reels.

SUMMER 2014 5

exponentially in multiple directions.Precision drop rates of sinking lines per-mit anglers to swim their flies from justkissing the undersides of swells to anamazing 25- to 30-foot depth. Coatingsof different materials and hardness inconcert with cores themselves of varyingbraided materials produce lines matchedfor temperature extremes. Tweaks oncoating surfaces have increased cast easeand distance; small marks or bumps actas benchmarks, enabling anglers toquickly locate the proper holding pointfor hauling and then shooting line. Somelines feature markings to break up orcamouflage opaqueness; there are linesthat address clear water and shy fish withclear coatings and clear cores; and manymakers produce opaque lines with clearintermediate tip sections. Although clearlines can be an advantage—by being lessvisible to fish and allowing for a shorter,thus more easily turned leader—theyalso pose what can be an angler disad-vantage. When blind casting (that is, notcasting to a specific fish), anglers easilyhandle most clear lines. For sight castingto visible fish, the use of a full-lengthclear line requires practice. An anglerneeds to concentrate on the outgoingcast fly in relation to the fish, and once ithas landed, the fly as it is retrieved. Clearlines eliminate the visual aid of normal

opaque or colored lines as indicatorspointing to the fly or fish.

Modern fly-line extrusion machinesnow enable manufacturers to adjustcoating hardness in specific areas of theline, which can help reduce line com-pression during a water haul or whilemaking a double haul. The result is tofurther increase line speed, resulting inincreased cast distance. An example isAirflo’s Super-Dri Exceed or Super-DriDistance Pro.

If this were not enough, consider theincredible number of specialty saltwaterfly lines designed not only for specificspecies, but for numerous conditions inwhich a fly must be presented to thosefish. There are heads, tips, and tapersdesigned for short range, fast casts, bigflies, long range, and everything inbetween. Some manufacturers now laudthe use of polyurethane (a thermoplastic)rather than PVC as line coating, and mostpraise their products as far more resistantto contamination by everything fromsunscreen to DEET in insect repellent.

Along with earliest brands such asScientific Anglers and Cortland, we nowhave truly innovative lines from the likesof Rio and Airflo, fine specialty tapersfrom Royal Wulff and Monic, and pri-vate labelers from Orvis to big-boxsporting retailers.

For anglers intent on seeking thelargest and most difficult saltwater fish,one more line innovation has becomevital: the backing type first spooled onthe reel. Today, gel-spun polyethylenebacking has mostly replaced Dacronbacking when ultimate yardage on thereel is desired. The far smaller diameterof gel-spun backing not only increasesthe odds of landing a fish during moreextreme fishing, it also benefits inshoreanglers who want to use smaller, lighterreels but still maintain enough capacityfor species likely to produce long runs,from bonefish to permit.

Saltwater fly tying has also benefitedfrom gel-spun fiber and other synthetictying threads, such as Kevlar and clearnylon monofilament, both of which areespecially favored for larger flies andspinning deer hair. Synthetic hairs anddubbing materials, legs, eyes, heads,body coatings, new adhesives, weightingdesigns, and more ushered in a flood ofcreative saltwater fly tying and manufac-tured flies that continues to this day.Synthetics used imaginatively have pro-duced terrific lifelike patterns that mimica potpourri of baitfish and crustaceanforage. Still, many contemporary fly tierscontinue to use both natural materialsalong with man-made to produce a vari-ety of shapes, in-water movement, sub-tlety of color, sink rate, sound, flash, anddurability in their patterns. A look at anyof the catalogs of the major purveyors offly tackle both here and abroad will showa truly extraordinary variety of saltwaterpatterns designed to fish in the shallow-est waters or deeper in the water column.

Angler performance with these tackleadvancements—in all categories—istruly amazing. This is especially true insaltwater fishing, in which environmen-tal conditions and the strength of manymarine species—and sometimes theirresistance to deception—are arguablytougher than in any other branch of flyfishing. Tackle improvements have madeaverage anglers as good or better thanmany top fly fishers were twenty yearsago. Additionally, using improved tackletechnology in their custom-designedcompetitive equipment has allowed evenour casting champions to better theirprevious records. Take, for instance,national and world casting championSteve Rajeff. Rajeff has held the distance-casting record since 1973, breaking hisown mark for the current standingrecord of 243 feet.10 In August 2013, at theAmerican Casting Association’s 105thNational Casting Championships, Rajeffwon his forty-first Grand All Aroundtitle by taking nine gold medals, three sil-ver medals, and all of the men’s combi-nation awards.11

World and national casting champion Steve Rajeff won the American CastingAssociation’s Grand All Around title—his forty-first—in August 2013 by takingnine gold medals, three silver medals, and all of the men’s combination awards.Rajeff also holds the current fly-casting distance record of a remarkable 243 feet.

And yes, he is also a superior fisherman. Photo by Ray Gralak.


WOMEN IN SALTWATER

FLY FISHING

When one thinks of the young womenfly fishers who have launched their per-sonal saltwater careers since the late1990s, it is easy to draw a parallel withthose talented nonconformists of formerBritish East Africa: author Karen vonBlixen and aviatrix Beryl Markham. Thecommon thread of fierce independence,love of new experience, and a certain dis-dain for mediocrity is obvious. As Blixenwrote of her early life in Africa: “Here atlong last one was in a position not to givea damn for all conventions, here was anew kind of freedom which until thenone had only found in dreams.”12 Manywomen who had done a certain amountof freshwater fly fishing were initiallycurious about the marine side of thesport and determined to obtain moreknowledge of various aspects of thatfishing before jumping into salt water. Iremember at the end of the 1990s, ayoung woman experienced in trout fish-ing in mountain streams and who hadknowledge of southern flats fishingunder serene conditions asked about theoften wild autumn fishing off MontaukPoint during the so-called blitz—thetime when striped bass, little tunny (falsealbacore), and bluefish are on tap, a timewhen wind and seas can be, well, ratherexhilarating. I was tempted to soften thedescription, but she wanted truth. Inessence, I told her that out there at thattime, you need laserlike focus before evencasting. You balance in the wind andswells in the rips in the bow of the boat,and if it’s bad, you jam your legs into thegunwale edges to keep from going over.Knee pads could help. You’ll see fishchurning the surface like an army of foodblenders gone mad. You’ll cast into bloodslicks and trashed baitfish. The albies youcatch will spit anchovies on you, the blue-fish will try to chop off your fingers, andthe big stripers fin-hole your hands whilethey whap you with their tails. Some ofyour flies will be more like half chickensand your fly line will cut grooves acrossyour finger joints. It’s savagery at itsfinest, and big fish own the coast.

She smiled and said something like,“Oh my, I think I’ll try it.”

Women continued to take increasingleadership roles in saltwater fly fishingthrough the 1990s and continue to do sotoday, not only participating in high-profile competitions—winning and set-ting records alike—but in so many otherfacets of the sport. Consider the designof equipment (both hardware and soft-ware) for female anglers; the organizingof schools, events, clubs, travel, and

groups focused on women anglers; and,simply, the increased female participa-tion in the sport. Cataloging all whoshould be acknowledged here is nearlyimpossible, but certainly kudos go toindividuals like Joan Salvato Wulff, whosecontributions across the entire spectrumof fly fishing are innumerable, and FannyKrieger, key in organizing national eventsand organizations as well as travel oppor-tunities for women. More recent passersof the baton include Lori-Ann Murphy,cofounder of Reel Women Fly FishingAdventures and host relations managerof Belize’s El Pescador lodge. AmandaSwitzer, who became the first female fly-fishing guide at Montauk’s East End andthat area’s backcountry, has been one ofthe more intelligent, instinctive, andgutsy captains to fish those demandingwaters. Diana Rudolph, in a still nearlynascent career, has grabbed tournamentwins; broken women’s records for tar-pon, bonefish, and permit; become anexpert fly tier; cohosted and starred intelevision episodes; and become an advi-sor for several tackle companies. For thepast eighteen years, Captain SarahGardner has guided fly anglers to theoutstanding false albacore (little tunny)fishing (along with many other species)at North Carolina’s Cape Lookout andthe state’s Outer Banks country. Herskills make her the go-to guide for manyanglers who refuse to book with anyoneelse. Cathy Beck, who besides her skill asa fly-casting instructor, book author, and

DVD producer, became one of the morerecognizable female angling figuresthrough her high-profile photographyskills, teaming with husband Barry andappearing both in words and photos invirtually every saltwater publication (aswell as fresh). Nancy Zakon, a trustee ofthe American Museum of Fly Fishing,worked with Lori-Ann Murphy andChristy Ball to teach the first women-only Orvis casting classes and design thecompany’s first line of women’s fly-fish-ing clothing and tackle. She foundedwomen’s fly-fishing clubs in New YorkCity and Key Largo.

The American Museum of Fly Fishing’srecent A Graceful Rise exhibit elegantlytraced the evolution of contributions ofwomen in the sport, highlighting otherfemale anglers who have left and are leav-ing their marks in the saltwater arena.Among them are Dotty Ballantyne,Margot Page, and Judy Frances O’Keefe.13

CONSERVATION

As the popularity of all types of salt-water recreational fishing has grown, sohas pressure on the fisheries and theenvironment that support it alongsidepopulation growth and the evermoreefficient extraction industry. It follows,then, that these pressures have been metwith increasing effort to conserve ourmarine resources. Such initiatives are farranging across every spectrum of society.They encompass local, regional, govern-

Captain Sarah Gardner takes a busman’s holiday during a nighttarpon-fighting session. She is known as one of the best fly/light tackle captains

along the North Carolina Outer Banks. Her Fly Girl Charters target stripedbass, little tunny (false albacore), redfish, wahoo, and more. She is a partnerwith her husband Brian (Flat Out Charters) and has placed highly in her

age rankings in the Ironman Triathlon events. Photo by Brian Horsley.

SUMMER 2014 7

mental, and industrial efforts foundedon work by individuals, nonprofit orga-nizations, and companies both alone andin partnership with firms not directlydedicated to fish or fishing but with far-ranging visions of the role that vibrantfisheries will play in the future.

Both donations and substantial cor-porate earnings alone or in matchingfunds are being aimed at every facet ofconservation work. A list of individualsand organizations is too lengthy toinclude here, but an initial look at someforward-thinking efforts is realized inthe American Museum of Fly Fishing’snewest initiatives. In June 2013, themuseum joined a network of more than3,000 nonprofit organizations in sup-porting an alliance of more than 1,200companies financially committed to anetwork of environmental groups world-wide through donating 1 percent of theirsales. Further, the museum has launchedan initiative to document and presentthe history of conservation organiza-tions, their methods, and their projectsfocused on preserving and enhancingboth the fish and environments onwhich they depend. Initial plans include

an annual conservation symposium, aconservation research center, exhibitionsand collections, and continuing articlesin this journal.14

NEW FACE OF SALTWATER

FLY FISHING

A gentle soul like Isaak Walton, whoconcluded his Complete Angler with thecounseling words “Study to be quiet,”15

would be overwhelmed these days. In lit-tle more than a decade, the contrastbetween Walton’s calm and measureddialectical conversations between fishingmaster Piscator and novice Venator andcertain strident aspects of today’s anglingculture has never been more obvious.And yet, how could it be otherwise, par-ticularly on the popular commercialfront? Walton mostly chummed aroundwith elderly clergymen, especially later inlife,16 but today’s highest-profile fly-fish-ing demographic—particularly in saltwater—is young. One needs only toobserve tackle manufacturers’ focus inmarketing and advertising campaigns.Today’s preferred communication meth-

ods among anglers and angling groupsare focused on youthful anglers.

Examining contemporary shifts andcomplexions in the fly-fishing world, wehave seen in media alone the contractionof print publishing while electronic com-munication has grown exponentially.Not only have websites devoted to flyfishing increased, they’ve developedniches and even niche forums. Printmagazines have been forced to developan increasing online presence. Manufac -turers and retailers (large and small)have expanded their online catalogs. Wehave seen the growth of online-onlymagazines—“zines” in the parlance—high in quality (especially the visuals),many at little or no cost to readers.Regular monitoring reveals that saltwa-ter fly fishing enjoys one of the highestprofiles within these provinces.

In still and video marketing efforts,young anglers of both sexes are featured.New and middle-aged manufacturers oftackle, clothing, waders, and accessoriestap into the adventure-excitement themeattractive to younger anglers. A veteranfirm like the Orvis Company has beenfocusing its print and electronic messaging

Pressure on unique environments that support fisheries has been met with efforts to protect and restore as well asinitiate scientific study of our priceless marine resources. Such initiatives encompass local, regional, governmental,and industrial efforts. While individuals and many nonprofit groups are expected in leadership roles, lately morecompanies, alone and in strength-building alliances, are effecting true changes where it most matters. They are

slowly being joined by firms not directly founded on fish or fishing, but which have far-ranging vision of the rolethat strong fisheries will play in their own futures. Photo by Pat Ford.


on the younger fun/adventure crowd.Tom Rosenbauer, marketing director,Orvis rods and tackle, says, “We knew weneeded to brand ourselves more in linewith who we are . . . most of our productdevelopers, shop managers, and guidesare young. . . . The changes are . . . moreabout who we actually are than theimage we projected in the past.”17

Then there is film. How better to cap-ture the beauty, excitement, and fun offly fishing (especially for the youngerdemographic) than through movies?Although the well-known Fly FishingFilm Tour has of late featured morefreshwater fishing, numerous producersare and have been building their reputa-tions around saltwater emphasis. Thinkof major producers such as ConfluenceFilms with their exotic Waypoints, orHoward Films and their Chasing Silvertarpon series, or Waterline Media’s tar-pon-oriented films (Riding High: ASeason on the Fly being noteworthy).There are many smaller production com-panies as well that are producing amaz-ingly beautiful and exciting work; under-standable, considering the passion theseshoestring-budget crews have for thesport. From the start, fly-fishing filmproducers of every ilk stressed quality intheir work for a demanding, well-edu-cated audience. In a recent interviewwith the magazine Fly Fishing in SaltWaters, Graham Morton of WaterlineMedia said, “People want good cine-matography, storytelling, and real people

and situations in their entertainment,not some B-rated TV host.”18

Film, of course, has inspired anglers tofish in new and ever-more exotic places.The fishing travel industry experiencedsteady growth through independentbooking agents and lodges, and as ancil-lary business for fly shops and largerretailers. This was especially true for salt-water venues. Angling travel was hit hardby the 2008 recession, but had beguncoming back strongly by 2010/2011. Newspecies and places never dreamed of arenow on anglers’ radar. While some of themore exotic locations and fishing itself arebest choices for fit individuals, more fish-ing travel agents are intelligently assem-bling angling adventures worldwide thatare suited for entire families.19 Yellow DogFlyfishing Adventures has recentlyweighed in with intent to become a one-stop shop for every traveling angler need.Its newly designed website includes a blogfeaturing the latest fish-travel news and aresearch trip planner that includes infor-mation on moon phases, tides, airlineroutes, insurance, health advisories, andpassport application forms.

A few travel experts have taken thegame to a new level, offering experiencesaimed at truly hardcore adventurers. Takethe agency Angling Destinations and itsDestination X programs to little-exploredand never-advertised venues. Anglerssigning on are asked to keep details tothemselves, and the agency is assuringthat none of its venue choices receives

anything but extremely light pressure.Each trip is unique and rarely repeated.And then there are the more recent offer-ings orchestrated by Grizzly Hackle FlyShop in Montana. Their first was anexploratory trip to Bikini Atoll with littlein the way of infrastructure, no real fish-ing program, and reliance on partici-pants’ creativity to make it all work. Thefish of Bikini destroyed fly rods and lineswith impunity, and the anglers left smil-ing broadly. At this writing (2013), Grizzlyhas another such experience in the plan-ning: fly fishers will probe inshore andoffshore potential in the Red Sea by live-aboard boat out of Port Sudan.

As part of the growing travel compo-nent closer to home, particularly in theBahamas, more anglers are signing on fordo-it-yourself trips (DIY), or those termedassisted DIY, in which fly fishers aredropped off at key spots by boat, equippedwith a radio, then later picked up by aboatman. Vince Tobia’s Cattaraugus CreekOutfitters (http://www.ccoflyfishing.com)offers his own stamp on DIY trips byproviding maps, planning, contacts, andmore. Additionally, saltwater fly fisherswill now have a kind of DIY bible for theBahamas in Rod Hamilton’s new book,Do It Yourself Bonefishing.20

In the same vein as exotic destinationsand fast-action saltwater fly-fishing filmsis a kind of gonzo approach to watercraftfor the sport—specifically kayaks, and toa lesser degree, paddle boards. Back inthe 1980s, Floridians Gary and LisaSinkus were the first anglers I knew whowere serious about attempting to catchlarge fish from kayaks. Although theyused conventional tackle, they succeededin their efforts and became addicted tothe rush of hooking up with creatureslike tarpon and sailfish from kayaks.Today we have oceangoing kayaks specif-ically designed for fishing. Intrepid flyanglers are using them both inshore andeven in blue water. There are dedicatedkayak saltwater fly-fishing trips offeredin the United States and abroad, somecombined with saltwater fly-fishingschools. And fishing schools of all sortshave figured strongly as stand-alones inthe saltwater arena. Whether fishing froma kayak or a larger craft or wading flatsand surf lines, more younger saltwater flyfishers are using modern electronics todocument their adventures and sharethem with others. Forget cell phones. Thetrend is toward high-quality imageryfrom GoPro cameras (and imitators) thattypically are set up using clever bracketaccessories to permit self-photography.

If the results of all this seem a bit overthe top both visually and audibly (con-sidering the soundtracks of some films),a large contingent of saltwater fly fishers

While many manufacturers produce dedicated fishing kayaks, some innovative firmslike Stand-N-Fish build accessory systems to solve the problems of fishing from thesesmall craft—specifically, the inability to stand. With stability produced via pontoons,all that remained was adding such niceties as a leaning bracket, line-stripping basket,

rod holders, quick-deploy stake pole, and anchor system. Saltwater fly fishers areincreasingly pushing the limits of what can be mastered from such small boats, both

inshore and quite some distances off the beach. Photo courtesy of Stand-N-Fish.

SUMMER 2014 9

is still of a mind that would better pleasethe likes of Walton and find welcomeamong fly fishers more disposed to soli-tude along small trout streams. For them,it is pleasing to know that an angler thecaliber of author Tom McGuane is inyour corner, with insight like this in hispursuit of permit on the flats: “What isemphatic in angling is made so by thelong silences—the unproductive periods.For the ardent fisherman, progress istowards the kinds of fishing that arenever productive in the sense of theblood riots of the hunting-and-fishingperiodicals. Their illusions of continuousaction evoke for him, finally, a conditionof utter, mortuary boredom.”21

THE FUTURE

The future of fly fishing may lie in saltwater, given the recruitment of ever-younger anglers. The excitement inher-ent in many saltwater venues has thepotential to initially attract and thencapture the imagination of youths intheir teens to early twenties. While trueyoungsters of single-digit age may findlearning to fly fish easier in freshwaters—especially ponds and lakes—nurturing interest in saltwater environ-ments by targeting marine panfish orcatching baitfish by any angling methodis a first step to developing a segue intofly fishing in the salt. Veteran angler andauthor Collin Ross has a beautifulaccount of introducing his two-year-olddaughter to the world of saltwater fish-ing, boating, and exploring. “Keeping achild fully involved is key, yet tremen-dously difficult,” writes Ross, but then headds: “It was about the two-and-a-half-year mark that my daughter’s desire tohead out on the boat began to rivalmine.”22

Saltwater fly fishing is a work inprogress. The species and size of fish thatare taken with regularity now werebeyond imagining for early pioneers ofthe sport; indeed, some contemporarycatches on the fly were considered unlike-ly even fifteen years ago. If a yellowfintuna in the 50-pound class was a remark-able catch in 1969,23 consider one of 128pounds taken in 201124 or a bluefin tunaof 196 pounds, 9 ounces taken in 2001!25

Advances in fly tackle, as we haveseen, enable such catches as they lead tonew techniques. New techniques at alllevels of saltwater fly sport are taken up,then built upon by thinking anglers. Ifwe can properly manage the fisheries, thefuture of saltwater fly fishing will contin-ue without boundaries and will hold anexcitement that at least equals the amaz-ing history of our sport to date.

!

ENDNOTES

1. Jerry Gibbs, “Pioneers and Pio -neering: The Allure and Early Days ofSaltwater Fly Fishing,” The American FlyFisher (vol. 38, no. 3, Summer 2012), 14–17.

2. Jerry Gibbs, “Saltwater Fly FishingComes of Age,” The American Fly Fisher (vol.39, no. 3, Summer 2013), 3–4, 7–8.

3. IFGA World Record Game Fishes(Dania Beach, Fla.: International Game FishAssociation, 2013), 323.

4. Quoted in Paul Bruun, “The Big OnesTake a Little Longer to Land,” Jackson HoleNews & Guide (24 July 2013), http://m.jhnewsandguide.com/opinion/columnists/outdoors_paul_bruun/the-big-ones-take-a-little-longer-to-land/article_7bd44336-880d-594e-b99b-87cde1c95b7a.html?mode=jq.Accessed 20 December 2013.

5. Jake Jordan, telephone interview withauthor, 23 January 2011.

6. Jake Jordan, telephone interview withauthor, 29 August 2013.

7. Pat Ford, “Fly Fishing for MakoSharks,” Fly Fishing in Salt Waters (vol. 20, no.3, May/June 2013), 54.

8. Lefty Kreh, in the introduction toAndy Mill, A Passion for Tarpon (Bothell,Wash.: Wild River Press, 2010), xv.

9. Gibbs, “Saltwater Fly Fishing Comesof Age,” 8.

10. Ross Purnell, “Greatest Amateur Champ -ion of All Time: Steve Rajeff,” Fly Fisher man,14 August 2013, http://www.flyfisherman.com/2013;08/14/steve-rajeff-greatest-amateur-champion-of-all-time/#ixzz2dCWodze1.Accessed 10 October 2013.

11. “105th ACA National Casting Champ -ionships Results & Wrap-up! August 1–4th—Hosted by the Oakland Casting Club,”http://www.AmericanCastingAssoc.org.Accessed 28 October 2013.

12. Donald Hannah, “Isak Dinesen” andKaren Blixen: The Mask and the Reality (New

York: Random House, 1971), 207.13. Catherine E. Comar, “The Women of

A Graceful Rise,” The American Fly Fisher(vol. 37, no. 4, Fall 2011).

14. Catherine Comar “A Game Fish IsToo Valuable a Resource to Catch Just Once,”The American Fly Fisher (vol. 39, no. 4, Fall2013), 29.

15. Izaak Walton, The Complete Angler(New York: Weathervane Books, 1975), 224.

16. “Izaak Walton,” www.fact-index.com/i/iz/izaak_walton.html (entry originally fromEncyclopedia Britannica, 1911 ed.). Accessed 27January 2014.

17. Geoff Mueller, “Fly Fishing’s Five-Year Facelift,” Angling Trade (June 2013), 50.

18. Graham Morton, “Behind the Sceneswith Waterline Media,” Fly Fishing in SaltWaters (May–June 2013), 39.

19. Don Causey, “A Few Words aboutFamilies & Fly Fishing Trips,” The AnglingReport (February 2013), 13–15, and TheAngling Report (March 2013), 9.

20. Rod Hamilton, Do It Yourself Bone -fishing (Lanham, Md.: The Derrydale Press,2014).

21. Thomas McGuane, The Longest Silence:A Life in Fishing (New York: Knopf, 1999), 1.

22. Collin Ross, “Instilling a Passion forFishing in Younger Generations,” Inter nationalAngler (July/August/September 2013), 22, 26.

23. Mark Sosin, “The Saga of theYellowfin,” in Nick Lyons, ed., The GiganticBook of Fishing Stories (New York: SkyhorsePublishing, 2007), 262–65.

24. Tim Romano, “Record BreakingYellow fin Tuna Caught on the Fly?,” Fly Talk(20 September 2011), www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/flytalk/2011/09/record-breaking-yellowfin-tuna-fly. Accessed 28 October 2013.

25. IGFA World Record Game Fishes(Dania Beach, Fla.: International Game FishAssociation, 2013), 330.

Modern saltwater flies combine both synthetic and natural materialsto produce near replication of crustacean and baitfish forage in bothoutward appearance and action. Judicious use of weighting materials

produces specifically desired sink rates. Photo by Pat Ford.


ONE OF THE earliest accounts ofEuro-American fishing in thewaters of what would soon

become Yellowstone National Park comesto us from the 1869 Cook-Folsom-Peterson expedition journal. The mem-bers of this small party (Charles W. Cook,David E. Folsom, and William Peterson)were not the first group to explore theYellowstone area; we have numerousaccounts of trappers, prospectors, moun-tain men, and, of course, countless gener-ations of Native Ameri cans traversing theland well before the members of theCook-Folsom-Peterson party ever con-sidered doing so. Where the nineteenth-century explorers differ, and what makesthem distinct and important contribu-tors to our knowledge of the park, is thatthey were the first group that set out withthe specific intent to explore and docu-ment the area and were successful indoing so.

In addition to describing the naturalfeatures and other wildlife, the partymentioned seeing, catching, and eatingtrout on multiple occasions. The troutthat they caught would have all been cut-throat varieties, as that was the onlyspecies that existed in the area at thattime. Although grayling and other non-trout species were present, it is unlikely—in my opinion—that they would havebeen mistaken for trout.

The story that will be transcribed herewas only recently brought to light by thegenerosity of one of the participants’name sake and great grandson, David A.Folsom, who wanted to see the informa-tion shared and preserved and so donat-ed the personal papers, expedition notes,and letters collected or written by DavidE. Folsom to the Montana State Uni -versities Special Collections Library. Thecollection provides us with a rare first-hand account of one of the earliest docu-

mented Yellowstone expeditions. This par-ticular story was written in longhand byDavid E. Folsom, most likely as amend-ments after he and Cook published theirtale of adventure. Although it is not theearliest mention of fish in the area, it isarguably one of the most entertaining andmay very well be the first documentedYellowstone fishing story.

Folsom collaborated with Cook in pub-lishing an account of their travels in anarticle titled “The Wonders of Yellow -stone,” which was, through unfortunatecircumstances, credited solely to Cook inthe July 1870 issue of the periodicalWestern Monthly. The article and mostother firsthand accounts of this journeywere largely lost to history through aseries of fires, in three unrelated locations,which kept the information out of thepublic view.1 In his article, “A MissingPiece of a Yellowstone Puzzle: TheTangled Provenance of the Cook-Folsom-

Early Fishing Adventuresin Yellowstone Park

by James Thull

David E. Folsom. Image from Nathaniel Pitt Langford’sThe Discovery of Yellowstone Park: 1870 (Saint Paul,

Minn.: J. E. Haynes, 1905), viii.

SUMMER 2014 1 1

Peterson Yellowstone Expedition Diary,”Kim Allen Scott wrote in 1999, “Thedefinitive exploration of Yellow stone Parkbegan in 1869 with the journey of threefriends, Charles W. Cook, David E.Folsom, and William Peterson.”2

The expedition originally intended toinclude several others and a militaryescort, but all except these three adventur-ous and perseverant individuals droppedout of the party before departure and afterrumors of hostile Indians moving into theYellowstone Valley began to circulate. Intheir 1870 published account, Cook andFolsom stated that the three believed “thatthe dangers to be encountered had beenmagnified and, trusting by vigilance andgood luck to avoid them, resolved toattempt the journey at all hazards.”3 Theyset out on 6 September 1869 and spent thenext thirty-six days traversing and docu-menting their journey through the areaencompassing what would becomeYellow stone National Park. In a 1904 typedmanuscript from his personal papers,Folsom recalled the morning they set off.

Our leave taking from friends who hadassembled to see us off this morning wasimpressive in the highest degree andrather cheerful withal. “Good-by boys,look for your hair”; “If you get back at allit will be on foot”; “Don’t let the Indianssnatch you bald headed”; “If you do getinto a scrape remember I warned you”;“It is the next thing to suicide”, etc., etc.,was the parting salutations that greetedour ears as we put spurs to our horsesand left home and friends behind.4

The group’s first mention of trout fish-ing came on September 11 while on theYellowstone River but still outside of thecurrent park boundaries. After gettingcaught in a heavy rain and starting a fire todry their clothes, Folsom recalled, “Amongother things the Yellowstone is famed forits trout. Towards evening I started out totry my luck at fishing and in a few minutessucceeded in landing four splendid fellowswhose aggregate weight could not be lessthan 10 lbs., and before they were fairlydone flopping we had two of them in thefrying pan cooking for supper.”5

Although they don’t mention catchingthem, in the entry for September 12 Folsomwrote, “We camped close to the river on anarrow bottom, and fared sumptuously onantelope steak and trout fresh from thewater.”6 So it is clear that within the firstweek of their journey, they were relying, bychoice or intent, on trout to supplementtheir diets on a regular basis.

A few days later, on September 15,while camping near Tower Falls, Folsompulled the duty of watching the horseswhile Peterson and Cook were offexploring. He collected some firewood,wrote up his notes, and . . .

. . . thought I would drop a line to thedenizens of a deep pool hard-by and,truly, my lines (a big trout took the firstone) fell in pleasant places. In ten min-utes I had more trout floundering on thebank than I knew what to do with. Withtwo of the largest, some potatoes andbacon, I essayed a chowder with suchsuccess that, after we had completed ourdinner, our camp kettle reminded us ofan effusion of that eminent poetess so

Charles W. Cook and William Peterson.Image courtesy of the National Park Service,

Yellowstone National Park, YELL 36609.

Tower Falls. Image from William Cullen Bryant’s PicturesqueAmerica (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1872), 305.


dear to all juvenile hearts, “Jack Spratcould eat no fat. His wife could eat nolean. So, between them both, they lickedthe platter clean.”7

The party next mentions trout uponarriving at Yellowstone Lake on Septem -ber 24, the entry for which reads, “Theshallow water in some of the coves affordsfeeding ground for thousands of waterfowl and we can take our choice of ducks,geese, trout, pelican or swan.”8 They seemto have needed this abundance, as theday’s entry also notes, “Our supply of pro-visions is getting low, which warns us thatwe must soon turn our steps towardshome and we have concluded to follow upthe west shore to the head of the lake andthen turn to the northwest, cross therange and try to find the Madison and fol-low it down to civilization.”9

This brings us to the occasion de -scribed in the newly discovered Folsommanuscript. The story below took placebetween September 24, when the partyarrived at Yellowstone Lake, and the 28thor 29th, when they departed that area. Theparty had observed that the lake “aboundswith trout.”10 As we shall see, the multi-

tude of fish did not equate to easy fishingand indeed proved a fine example ofPlato’s postulation that necessity is themother of invention. The followingexcerpt from the new Folsom manu-script was likely composed in the late-nineteenth or early-twentieth century,when the author attempted to supple-ment the Western Monthly article textwith additional details regarding the 1869expedition. The bracketed words consid-erable portion are unclear in the manu-script, but otherwise the text is presentedas written with the addition of punctua-tion added for clarity in reading.

Standing on the lake shore we could seeschools of trout but they would notcome within reach of our short tackleso Billy took the ax, went into the tim-ber and cut a lodge pole pine aboutthree inches in diameter at the butt and34 feet long, he then drove a forkedstake in the sand, made a loop of a pieceof rope which he hung on the fork andput his pole through the loop, leavingenough of the base of the pole on theshore side so that he could balance it byputting a [considerable portion] of hisweight on it, he tied a short fish line on

the end of his derrick, baited the hookwith a piece of fresh meat, swung outand dropped the hook which had nosooner touched the water than it wasseized by a lusty trout which wasinstantly raised and swiveled ashore. Ina short time he landed more than weneeded and with these and our lastpotatoes we made and ate the first fishchowder ever concocted in these parts.Billy had one more adventure herewhich gave him a surprise. At one pointquite a large stream of hot water fromthe springs flowed into the lake and asthe water in the lake was very cold, Billythought so much hot water wouldimprove the temperature and make anice place to take a bath. So he strippedoff, ran down the sandy slope and tooka flying leap out into the lake. As hestruck the water he let out a yell andcame ashore with the longest jumps hecould make. He had nice red ringsaround each leg from the hot waterwhich was all on the surface.11

This story is wonderful in its simplicity.What fascinated those early Yellow stonetravelers still fascinates us today: the greatfishing, geothermal features, and beautyon a grand scale.

Two pages from the original David E. Folsom notes, likely written sometime in 1894 after the Langford articleon the expedition was published. They are part of the David E. Folsom Papers held by Montana State

University–Bozeman. Courtesy of Montana State University Special Collections Library.

SUMMER 2014 13

The Cook-Folsom-Peterson party’sdetailed descriptions of the wonders ofthe park and the variety of game andabundance of fish were known to mem-bers of the later Washburn-Langford-Doane expedition in 1870 and the Haydenscientific expeditions of 1871 and 1872.These accounts of the multitude of uniquefeatures, diversity of plants and animals,and pristine waters were important factorsin the eventual establishment of Yellow -stone as the first national park in 1872.Both of these later expeditions also men-tion fishing and the abundance of trout inthe area. The Washburn-Langford-Doanereport mentions fishing for trout fromnearly the first day. Washburn also docu-mented the first recorded use of a fly inpark waters in two articles he wrote for theHelena Daily Herald published on 27 and28 September 1871, in which he described afishing party trying their luck on Yellow -stone Lake: “The fishing which had beengood all the way up the river provedremarkably so in the lake. Trout from 2 to 4pounds were to be had for the taking. Fliesproved useless as they had not been educat-ed up to that point.”12 Earlier Washburn-Langford-Doane ac counts of the effective-ness of fishing with grasshoppers lead oneto believe that very likely it was through theuse of live bait they landed their bounty ofYellowstone cutthroat trout on that day.

Folsom’s account of catching cutthroattrout in Yellowstone Lake adds to our nat-ural history of the park and is a testamentto anglers always being able to find a waywhen there is a will. Folsom is creditedwith being one of the first to suggest the

idea of creating a park to preserve thearea, thus providing the momentum forthe establishment of Yellowstone NationalPark. He was thirty-one at the time of theexpedition and was already an establishedsurveyor. In April 1873, he was appointedassistant superintendent of the newly cre-ated park and went on to become aMontana state senator and a nominee forgovernor in 1900.13 In 1895, the U.S. Geo -logical Survey was ordered to create a newmap of Yellowstone Park and namedFolsom Peak (elevation 9,334 feet) in theWashburn Range of Yellowstone NationalPark in his honor.

The story told here represents only asmall portion of the primary sourceinformation provided to us through therecently acquired Folsom papers held byMontana State University. That some-thing as fragile as loose, handwrittennotes survived the 100-plus years sincethey were written is a rare and amazingthing, and those who love Yellowstonehistory are richer for it. These storiesillustrate the impact that Yellowstone hashad on everyone who has seen it, fromthe earliest Native Americans to theupcoming crop of summer tourists andanglers. The place itself is a part of ournational identity, and we should all workto ensure that it is preserved for visitorsfor countless generations to come.

!

ENDNOTES

1. The 1870 Chicago fire destroyed allbut a small number of copies that had already

been mailed of the Western Monthly editionwith the printed story. Folsom donated hiscopy of the magazine to the MontanaHistorical Society, which burned in an 1874fire in Helena. Cook’s notes and copy of theprinted article were in the possession ofVictor Chesnut and lost in 1916 when theMontana State University chemistry buildingwas destroyed in a fire.

2. Kim Allen Scott, “A Missing Piece of aYellowstone Puzzle: The Tangled Provenanceof the Cook-Folsom-Peterson YellowstoneExpedition Diary,” Yellowstone Science (1999,vol. 7, no. 1), 12.

3. Charles W. Cook, “The Wonders ofYellowstone,” Western Monthly (July 1870, vol.4), 60.

4. David E. Folsom, 1904 typescript,David E. Folsom Papers 1869–1904 (Col lection2570, Merrill G. Burlingame Special Col -lections, Montana State University Library,Bozeman, Montana), 3.

5. Ibid., 9.6. Ibid., 11.7. Ibid., 14–15.8. Ibid., 25.9. Ibid.10. Cook, “The Wonders of Yellowstone,”

60.11. David E. Folsom, 1894 handwritten

notes, David E. Folsom Papers 1869–1904(Collection 2570, Merrill G. BurlingameSpecial Collections, Montana State UniversityLibrary, Bozeman, Montana).

12. Quoted in Louis C. Cramton, EarlyHistory of Yellowstone National Park and ItsRelation to National Park Policies (Wash ing ton,D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1932), 94.

13. Aubrey L. Haines, The YellowstoneStory: A History of Our First National Park(Yellowstone National Park, Wyo.: Yellow stoneLibrary and Museum Association, 1977), 444.

Yellowstone Lake. Image from William Cullen Bryant’s PicturesqueAmerica (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1872), 306.


FEW CREATURES CAN claim to havehad more influence over the devel-opment of the salmon fly than the

golden pheasant—aka faisan doré, gold-fasan, faisán dorado, or Chrysolophuspictus, depending on where in the worldor science you happen to hang your hat.This spectacular bird was first seen inEngland in John Spencer’s collection inWindsor Park in about 1725. EleazarAlbin was invited to draw it for his three-volume hand-colored work, A NaturalHistory of Birds, thereby producing thefirst known illustration of the species. Atthe time, the bird was so rare outside itsnatural range that even Spencer had noidea what to call it, and Albin ended upsettling for the prosaic “red pheasant cock

from China.”1 Another male golden pheas-ant was given to the Swedish PrincessLouise Ulrika in the mid-1740s. This birdwas kept on her estate near Stockholmuntil it died, whereupon it was presentedto Carl Linnaeus, who classified it asPhasianus pictus.2

The native range of the golden pheas-ant is in central China, including south-east Qinghai and southern Gansu, as wellas the territory east through southernShaanxi to western Henan and westernHubei, and south through Sichuan andGuizhou to northern Guangxi. Its natur-al habitat is the thick undergrowth ofmountains and valleys; appropriatelyenough, wherever bamboo grows, thereis a chance of finding golden pheasants.The female is as dowdy as any hen pheas-ant can be, but the male is an absolute riotof rich reds, greens, blues, and browns,with a striking cape of black-striped gold-en feathers and a crest of deep gold feath-ers, which in some cases are tipped with

blood red. This eye-catching livery nodoubt accounts for the cock’s life-pre-serving habit of skulking in the darkestrecesses of the undergrowth, where itdivides its time between being remark-ably territorial and flying badly.

The golden pheasant’s only rival is theLady Amherst’s pheasant (Chrysolophusamherstiae), although we would put in avote for the green pheasant (Phasianusversicolor), but whatever the merits ofthe other two species might be, ’twas thegolden pheasant that caught salmon flydressers’ attention, and the first salmonpattern to use its feathers was noted in1800.3 Although Samuel Taylor was thefirst to publish a pattern containing gold-en pheasant, it seems exceedingly unlike-ly that he was the first to use the materialin a salmon fly. The man was no greatinnovator anyway, which raises the ques-tion of who did, and when, and whetherhe was Irish, or British, or what. We donot have anything approaching a pat

This article is an edited excerpt from Volume 1 ofBlacker, Andrew Herd and Hermann Dietrich-Troeltsch’s forthcoming trilogy about WilliamBlacker, which will be published by the MedlarPress in spring 2016.

The Bird with the Golden Capeby Andrew Herd and Hermann Dietrich-Troeltsch

A cock golden pheasant. Photo by Richard Taylor.

SUMMER 2014 15

answer to this, but some general discus-sion might be in order.

The golden pheasant wasn’t classifieduntil 17584 because it was astonishinglyrare and eye-wateringly expensive inBritain before that date, which meansthat the chances of a fly dresser gettinghis hands on one without running therisk of having his fingers chopped offwould have been somewhat limited. Thebird was represented in several collec-tions in the 1740s, but it remained a veryunusual sight in the 1750s and 1760s.5

The species wasn’t even bred in Englanduntil the early nineteenth century,6

which made individuals even more pre-cious, this scarcity resulting in less than adozen patterns using the material beingpublished before 1842.7 However, we aresure that the potential of the goldenpheasant was appreciated the very firsttime an angler laid eyes on one, butallowing a bit of time for breeding andimports to ramp up, it is reasonable toassume that fly dressers would have beenlucky to get hold of usable amounts ofmaterial before about 1780; even then,those concerned would have countedthemselves among a select few. If onetakes this scenario into account, then itseems logical that the rarity of this fabledmaterial and other species like it mightactually have been the catalyst for thedevelopment of the new way of wingingsalmon flies that came into fashion atabout this time called the mixed wing.

Before the mixed wing’s appearance,the majority of salmon flies were wingedwith strips or bunches of a single mater-ial, very often turkey, mallard, teal,heron, or bittern, and occasionally pea-

cock, but in every case, a material thatcame relatively easily to hand. Carefulchoice of body material and hackleresulted in patterns that could be quitebright, but the appearance of the wingappears to have been a secondary consid-eration, and flies of this type were veryoften listed with two or three alternativematerials for this part of the dressing. Ifyou didn’t have a particular feather type,then you could use another without fearof contradiction. Splashes of color weresometimes added, but it was rare for more

than a few feather types to be mixedtogether in the wing. The most exoticmaterial in use was parrot, unless youcount Richard Franck’s “paraketa” and“phlimingo,”8 which must have beenalmost as hard to find as golden pheasant.

Then, at some point in the late eigh-teenth century, fly dressers struck out ina completely new direction and beganbuilding salmon fly wings out of mix-tures of fibers (known to scientists asbarbs) taken from the feathers of half adozen or more different species, layingthree or four barbs of each type ingroups to build up an attractive layeredeffect. We should stress that the ends ofthe fibers were left loose and that theywere not married together, the resultbeing an incredibly mobile and attractivewing. An oft-missed detail about thisstyle of tying is that such early instruc-tions as survive rarely state the need tomake mixed wings out of paired feath-ers—in other words, early salmon flies ofthis type can be tied with a mix of right-and left-sided fibers in each wing. Thismight seem hard to credit, but based ona close examination of surviving earlysalmon patterns, this is the method thateven William Blacker chose to follow.Needless to say, there were exceptions,the obvious examples being the case of amixed wing built around a central pair offeathers, or where strips of feathers areused to bulk up a wing, but Blacker, forinstance, very often dealt with the lattercase by “turning” the strips on one sideof the fly, the telltale sign being that thetips of the barbs of the turned strip point

We think nothing of using golden pheasant feathers today, but at one timethey were beyond reach because of price. Photo by Andrew Herd.

Left to right: Jack the Giant Killer from Newland; the Shannon, a Blacker pattern;and the Parson from Newland, all tied by Alberto Calzolari. Photo by Andrew Herd.


up instead of down. There is no questionthat Blacker used this method from timeto time throughout his career, and if anyreaders doubt this, we would refer themto the image of the Ballyshannon, oppo-site page 145 of the 1855 edition of hisbook, which shows this feature veryclearly indeed.9

Staying with Blacker, an even moreinteresting detail is that the left- andright-hand sides of his early (i.e., 1842-era) patterns sometimes show completelydifferent combinations of materials. Thisappears to be the result of his having fol-lowed an even older method: to mix all ofthe fibers used to build the wings togeth-er before dividing them into two, whichdidn’t always result in an even distribu-tion of the individual barbs. Apart from

being the accepted style of the time, therationale for using this method wasalmost certainly that the gaudy feathersused in mixed wings were disproportion-ately expensive in the 1840s comparedwith even twenty years later.

By contrast, married wings, some-times referred to as built wings, whichwere developed in the second half of thenineteenth century, after Blacker’s death,must be built with paired fibers and takeadvantage of tiny hooks, called barbules,which are found on the sides of everyfeather fiber. If barbules didn’t exist,birds would be unable to fly, because thebarbs in their feathers would flex inde-pendently instead of forming a singleaerodynamic unit (known as a vane on aflight feather). Marrying a wing involves

zipping the barbules on each of thewing’s component fibers together, for-tune having decreed that this can bedone even if the barbs come from com-pletely different species. The reason forthe mandatory use of paired, or handed,fibers in married wings is that if, say, theleft-hand wing isn’t built entirely fromleft-handed barbs, the barbs won’t ziptogether neatly.

Married wings are much less mobilethan mixed wings, and building wingsthis way completely alters the behaviorof the fly, let alone its appearance. Themotivation for using the method is thestrong belief among the late Victoriansthat salmon flies should have theslimmest possible vertical cross sectionto make them behave predictably under

One of Blacker’s variations on hisShannon fly No. 12 (1843 series), tied,

by Sebastián Letelier, without anysubstitution of materials and using

hackles dyed to Blacker’s specifications.Blacker’s style was very different from

the late-nineteenth-century norm: notethe very long tail and the free fibers in

the wing. Photo by Andrew Herd.

Blacker’s Shannon No. 3, tied inthe hand by Sebastián Letelier.Photo by Andrew Herd.

SUMMER 2014 17

water. The married wing is the offspringof the mixed wing, but—largely becauseno one has ever really sat down and triedto disentangle the situation once and forall—married wings are very frequentlyreferred to as mixed wings, which causesendless confusion. The married wing isthe work of the late-nineteenth-centuryheretics, about whom readers should notconcern themselves (in our opinion),other than to hope that their moderndisciples will one day find the true pathto mixed-wing righteousness.

At the risk of appearing to make a fur-ther and even more dangerous diversionaway from our subject, one point that isworth clearing up here is GeorgeKelson’s oft-repeated claim to have

invented the mixed wing. This particularimbroglio is complicated by the wayKelson gives an excellent definition of thedifference between married and mixedwings on page 23 of The Salmon Flybefore proceeding to ignore it completelyon page 93, which is where he makes hisunfounded claim.10

The mixed wing was in use forty yearsbefore Kelson was born. It came along atexactly the right moment for the Irish flydressers who did so much to develop it,for the entirely understandable reasonthat the method provided the perfectframework for showcasing small quanti-ties of very rare and expensive featherswithout driving the price of the finishedpattern completely out of sight. Built like

this, an early mixed wing might have asfew as six or eight fibers of tippet in it,together with perhaps a single topping,the remainder of the barbs coming frommore common species, allowing thedresser to make scores of flies from a sin-gle skin and a satisfyingly large numberfrom a single feather. The method wasextremely flexible, because it made iteasy to modify a particular fly dressing tosuit a range of pockets: if your customerwas inclined to economize, less goldenpheasant went into the wing; if he was awealthy man, more. This rationale is oneof the reasons why the early-nineteenth-century Irish fly dressers adopted such alaissez-faire attitude about the composi-tion of mixed wings—they were used to

The Britannia, dressing as given byKelson, who attributed it to JohnBernard, although it is a Blacker

pattern. Tied by Alberto Calzolari.Photo by Andrew Herd.

A later pattern showing the use of goldenpheasant, this is Major John Traherne’sFra Diavolo, which has a married wingelement built in. Tied by AlbertoCalzolari. Photo by Andrew Herd.


making them up as they went along,based on the materials they had availableand an estimate of their customer’s abil-ity to pay. But the most important pointis that the technique was well developedby the early nineteenth century and istherefore most definitely not the intellec-tual property of George Kelson.

You will doubtless have noticed thatwe have skated very carefully around thedates here. This is because we are talkingabout Ireland, a land where the majorityof early fly tiers were illiterate and wherethe British exercised complete control ofprinting, a situation that leaves us woe-fully short of written evidence. The oneray of light we have here lies in the Harriscollection, held at the American Museumof Fly Fishing, which contains some of

the oldest flies known to exist. Thanks tohistorian Ken Cameron and museumDeputy Director Yoshi Akiyama, we canconfirm that golden pheasant cape was inuse in Ireland by 1791, because the Harriscollection includes a salmon fly knownby the rather unromantic identifier1991.020.015, and this has a mixed wingbuilt around paired tippet feathers. As faras we are aware, this is the oldest existingfly that includes golden pheasant, buteven with the very early date of this col-lection, 1991.020.015 is unique among itsfellows for its use of the material; apartfrom a scattering of macaw, the mostexotic feather used among the remainderof the patterns is peacock. One wonderswhere the dresser of this pattern foundhis materials, because the last thing any-

one who owned a golden pheasantwould have done would have been to lethis pet out of the aviary for fear of all thefly dressers camped out in the shrubbery.Of course, Galway, Limerick, and theShannon ports would all have seen livebirds pass through their docks, but thosewould have been well beyond the pocketof all but the wealthiest individuals,given that the cost of golden pheasantfeathers was astronomical in the 1790s.We know that there were quite a fewdeaths on the long sea journeys involvedin importing the species, and it is morethan probable that the skins of thesebirds would have been preserved, buteven then, fly dressers would have beenup against the milliners, and the compe-tition would have been fierce.

1991.020.15 from the Harris collection at the American Museum of Fly Fishing. Asfar as we are aware, this is the oldest existing fly that includes golden pheasant.

Sara Wilcox

SUMMER 2014 19

Another possibility, though, is thatthe sort of man who could afford exoticasuch as golden pheasants would havebeen quite likely to have been a salmonfisherman, and it doesn’t take much of astretch of the imagination to conjure upwhat such an individual might havedone with the feathers had one of hisprize birds expired. This situation wasbeginning to ease up a little by beginningof the second quarter of the nineteenthcentury, with a breeder in Bath, for exam-ple, offering twenty-five brace of two-and three-year-old birds in full plumageat three guineas a pair,11 which in 1838money was at least twice the weekly payof a London artisan.12 By that time, agreat deal of experimentation was begin-ning to occur, and a few wealthy menwere lucky to get their hands on flies likethe Parson shown here, which has beentied according to the directions given inHenry Garrett Newland’s book on theErne—and yes, they really did put thetoppings on upside down, this being backin the day when salmon flies were fun.13

The moral of this long detour into thehistory of ornamental garden birds isthat golden pheasant topping and tippetfeather were in such shockingly shortsupply in the early nineteenth centurythat very few patterns used either. Earlyexperiments with the use of golden

pheasant seem to have taken place inboth Britain and Ireland, with dressers inthe Irish west and southwest the primemovers, but tippet and topping were veryrare items before 1840, and that is one ofthe many reasons why Blacker made sucha splash. Everybody in the London trademust have been aware of the sensationalpotential of golden pheasant, but layingyour hands on a useful quantity of itsfeathers was another thing entirely; yet allof a sudden, here was a man who notonly was sitting on a stockpile of thissecret weapon, but was selling patternsthat flaunted it to anyone who was pre-pared to pay. We have a three-volumebook in preparation about Blacker. Staywith us, because there is a lot more enter-tainment to be had before we are done.

!

ENDNOTES

1. Eleazar Albin, A Natural History ofBirds, vol. 3 (London: printed for the author,1731), 34–35.

2. Ingvar Svanberg, “Golden Pheasant(Chr y solophus pictus) in Sweden in the 1740s,”Der Zoologische Garten (2007, vol. 77, no. 1),24–28.

3. Samuel Taylor, Angling in All ItsBranches (London: Longmans, 1800), 249.

4. J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, and J. Sargatal(eds.), Handbook of Birds of the World, Vol. 2:New World Vultures to Guineafowl (Barcelona:Lynx Edicions, 1994), 543.

5. George Edwards, A Natural History ofUncommon Birds, Vol. 2 (London: 1743–1764), 68.

6. A. Brown, “One Hundred Years ofNo ta ble Avian Events in British Birds,” BritishBirds (vol. 100, no. 4), 214–43. Brown gives thedate of first breeding in the U.K. as 1870, butthis is unlikely to be correct, as breeders wereadvertising birds long before this.

7. Andrew Herd, The History of FlyFishing, Vol. 3: Salmon Fly Patterns 1766–1914(Shrop shire, England: The Medlar Press, 2013).

8. Richard Franck, Northern Memoirs,Calculated for the Meridian of Scotland: ToWhich Is Added, the Contemplative and Prac -tical Angler (Edinburgh: Archibald Constableand Co., 1821), 303. Note that this is a reprintof the 1694 first edition.

9. William Blacker, Blacker’s Art of FlyMaking (London: William Blacker, 1855), facingpage 145.

10. George Kelson, The Salmon Fly (Lon -don: George Kelson, 1895), 23, 93.

11. Advertisement, Bell’s Life in Londonand Sporting Chronicle (4 March 1838), 1.

12. Arthur Bowley, Wages in the UnitedKingdom in the Nineteenth Century: Notes forthe Use of Students of Social and EconomicQuestions (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer sityPress, 1900), 23.

13. Henry Garrett Newland, The Erne, ItsLegends and Its Fly-Fishing (London: Chap -man and Hall, 1851), frontis.

The Parson from Henry Garrett Newland’s The Erne, Its Legendsand Its Fly-Fishing, tied by Alberto Calzolari. Photo by Andrew Herd.


SINCE THE PUBLICATION of fishingbooks began, thoughtful anglershave referred back to their predeces-

sors—back to what even the author ofthe Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle(1496) called “bokes of credence.” We stilldon’t know what those books were, andsome commentators have questionedwhether there even were such books. Butthe very reference to them by theTreatyse’s author reveals how deep in ourliterary culture is the need to relate one’sthinking to the thinking of our ances-tors—even if our only reason for doingso is to show how much smarter we arethan they were.

In the sport of fly-fishing, the study ofhistory provides authority that we rou-tinely honor, but it also provides a base-line against which to question thatauthority. Our constant reconsideration,generation after generation, of every-thing to do with our sport—the evolu-tion of rods, reels, lines, flies, and the con-current reconsideration of our methodsand values—is surely one of its moststimulating aspects. There is always someold idea to wonder about, some new ideato try.

Nowhere is this process more clearlyilluminated than in what might generallybe called fly-fishing theory. The theoreti-cians—those intellectual pioneers whoseek to analyze the act of convincing atrout to take a fly—are honored as a spe-cial breed of angler: penetrating, insight-ful, and stimulating even when their bestguesses turn out to be a little off the mark.It is almost impossible to write, even dis-approvingly, about the fly-pattern theoriesand fishing techniques of, say, FredericHalford or G. E. M. Skues a century andmore ago without a bow toward thecharms and excitements of their times.

Likewise, any consideration of Vin centMarinaro’s achievements as a mid-twen-tieth-century fly theorist can hardly avoidinvoking that now almost mythic imageof him stretched out on his belly with hisface inches from the surface of one of hisfavorite trout streams, marveling for thefirst time at the rich diversity of tiny

aquatic life that had been drifting unno-ticed past the view of generations.

No matter how coldly objective wemay imagine ourselves to be, a storybookquality creeps into our evocation of thefishing discoveries of our predecessors.

This is a good thing, especially if it keepsus mindful that some day we too will belooked back upon with some combina-tion of appreciation for our accomplish-ments and amusement at our erroneousthinking and quaint behavior. Eventually,

R E V I E W E S S A Y

Peter Hayes’s Fly Fishing Outsidethe Box: Emerging Heresies

by Paul Schullery

SUMMER 2014 21

today’s best theorists may become asshrouded in folklore as Halford, Skues,Marinaro, and many other earlier anglers.

At its best, the quest for a better under-standing of the trout and its response tothe flies we cast to it is not only an adven-ture but a “romance” in the traditional,even medieval, sense of that word. Ourquest is a humble version of the tradition-al heroic tale of far-flung adventure inmysterious realms. As long as we don’t letthis sort of lofty talk go to our heads—and we often have—theorizing abouttrout behavior and fly pattern effective-ness is one of the most compelling andenriching attractions of fly fishing. Welove the intellectual exercise of trying tofigure out the trout, but somewhere inour heads we never forget that the wholeenterprise has a quixotic side.

THE ANGLING CONVERSATION

In the first two decades of the twenti-eth century, the famous and often-described conflict between British dry-fly expert Frederic Halford and nymph-fishing expert G. E. M. Skues exemplifiedthe complexity and occasional heat ofangling theory at its most intensely con-sidered. For most of us now, especially inAmerica—where we are well removedfrom the cultural and biological consid-erations that prevailed on the south-of-England chalk streams where Halford,Skues, and their many admirers anddetractors fished—it may be hard toimagine how fly fishers could become soexercised over something as seeminglytrivial as whether it was “better” to fish afly on or under the surface of the water.

But it is important to keep in mindthat similar theoretical and even ethicaldisputes had probably always been a partof the sport, and that they had occurrednot only among contemporaries butbetween generations. The importance ofa historical consciousness among thought-ful anglers has in good part been reflectedin their disagreements not only over howto fish, but also over how to think aboutfishing. We fish under a steadily accumu-lating load of ideas, techniques, and values,and we constantly reconsider the pet theo-ries of our predecessors.

It was for good reason that VincentMarinaro, in his dramatically original AModern Dry Fly Code (1950), not onlyinvoked a host of early British theorists(and a modest number of American writ-ers), he considered their ideas respectful-ly and at some length in his text. ForMarinaro, the works of Ronalds, Halford,Skues, Ward, Mottram, Dunne, and mostespecially Harding were the foundationfor his thinking and the advances he pro-posed in fly-pattern design. But hisAmerican predecessors, by contrast, hadrelatively little of use to offer him, espe-cially in his distinctive setting: the diffi-cult limestone streams of southeasternPennsylvania.

The “conversation” between Marinaroand these earlier writers may have goneonly one way, in that these earlier writersdid not have a chance to respond to hisnew theories. The conversation goes onnonetheless, and despite its slow multi-generational pace, it is exciting and stim-ulating to read. Marinaro’s turn was fol-lowed in subsequent notable books byothers (and even by Marinaro himself in

his second book In the Ring of the Rise,1976), such as Datus Proper’s consistent-ly thoughtful and insightful What theTrout Said (1982). Indeed, if we are con-cerned with enduring intellectual threadshere, we could easily assert that Properwas Marinaro’s direct theoretical heir. Itwas almost poetically appropriate thatMarinaro wrote the foreword to Proper’sbook, declaring, “How I would havecherished a book like this in my own for-mative years” (page xii).

It was ironic and revealing that someAmerican reviewers of Proper’s book crit-icized him (naively, I thought) for neglect-ing the works of modern American fly-fishing writers in his theoretical discus-sions. Proper had a much broader andmore cosmopolitan experience thanmost fly-fishing theoreticians (includingMarinaro), thanks to a career in the for-eign service that enabled him to live andfish extensively in some of trout fishing’smost interesting and instructive land-scapes on other continents. I can stillremember that as I read these criticalreviews of his book thirty years ago, Irealized the extent to which many mod-ern American fly-fishing writers had littleidea how many of the theories and tech-niques they believed they had originatedwere merely reinventions of similarthings whose real history Proper wasaware of because of the depth of his read-ing and the breadth of his experience.American fishing writers tended, andstill tend, to be dismally unfamiliar withthe British fishing literature foundationupon which so much of modernAmerican fly fishing is built.

A host of modern fishing books haveignored the historical conversationsentirely. By contrast, my book The Rise:Streamside Observations on Trout, Flies,and Fly Fishing (2006) was imagined andwritten in almost abject homage tothem. The Rise is throughout a rumina-tion on the ways that centuries of anglersbefore us had perceived such fundamen-tal matters as the physiology and func-tion of the trout rise, the nature of riseforms, and the complexities and myster-ies of fly design. My goal was, first, toexplore the thinking that led to ourmodern beliefs about fly fishing and, sec-ond, to see what I might add to the con-versation based on some rare opportuni-ties I had lucked into that allowed me tophotograph rising trout and to study thewealth of historical lore and evidence mypredecessors left behind. Researchingand writing The Rise at the very least pre-pared me to recognize milestone contri-butions to fly fishing’s continuing theo-retical evolution when they came along.

And I am happy to say that one has,indeed, come along.

Datus Proper, fishing his home water on ThompsonSpring Creek, Gallatin Valley, Montana, in 1986.

Paul Schullery


PERPETUALLY EMERGING

HERESIES

Early in 2012, British angling historianand good friend Andrew Herd introducedme, by e-mail, to a British friend of his,Peter Hayes, who Andrew said was “doinga book on popular misconceptions in flyfishing.” Peter and I struck up an e-mailexchange, and he asked me to read themanuscript of his book, Fly Fishing Out -side the Box: Emerging Heresies, which hasnow been published and is a great treat forthoughtful fly fishers. The combination ofa deep acquaintance with the sport’s theo-retical heritage, a good humored andopen-ended spirit of in quiry, and arespectful yet far-reaching iconoclasmputs the book in the front row of thosethat stand a chance of redirecting or refo-cusing our personal angling conversationsonto new and fruitful topics. Fly FishingOutside the Box offers an almost over-whelming array of fresh, critical, andentertaining ideas on flies, trout, presen-tation, and pretty much anything else thatthe thoughtful, inquiring fly fisher mightcare about, and offers it with a well-informed historical perspective on howwe have thought about all those things inthe past.

“Heresy” is strong language, and I sup-pose we are being a little affected whenwe apply it to something as unlikely tochange the world as a new fly-fishing the-ory. But we anglers have never beenknown for modesty, and the word doessuit our purposes. That said, it would befun to know when, exactly, someone firstwrote a fly-fishing book that was per-ceived as heretical.

We can safely assume that there havealways been disagreements among anglersand angling writers on the finer points ofthe sport. As far back as 1676, CharlesCotton, an ardent advocate of slim-bod-ied flies, famously ridiculed the thick-bodied fly style of London anglers. But Isuppose that it wasn’t until the nineteenthcentury that literary rivalries amongangling authorities really flourished.Several of these quarrels became anglingliterature’s equivalent of national news,either in the U.S. or in the U.K. They wereoften quite heated, even nasty. CertainlySkues’s promotion of the use of nymphson the British chalk streams that Halfordand his colleagues had designated as sole-ly the domain of dry-fly fishermen consti-tuted a fly-fishing heresy (and in someplaces still does). Skues spent the rest ofhis life rhetorically fending off an assort-ment of indignant dry-fly enthusiastswho regarded his ideas as hostile to thepurity of their sport.

And, to return to another great writerwhose name I have already invoked,Marinaro’s thorax-style dry flies werecertainly a direct and, if you were a die-hard traditional dry-fly fisher, hereticalresponse to what he and others saw as thefailures of the Catskill-style dry fly. Againand again since Marinaro’s time, anincreasing number of thoughtful anglershave prided themselves on revisionistapproaches that built upon or evenreplaced earlier ideas. Some people are bynature inclined to enjoy being thought ofas heretics, or at least as iconoclasts.Ironically, heresy itself has become in itsown odd way a kind of tradition amongfly fishers, and it is in that tradition thatPeter Hayes’s new book stands out.

He begins by taking on one of fly fish-ing’s great and slow-to-die myths: that astandard dry fly will “cock” on the tips ofits hackles and float that way as long asyou use it. We’ve all seen photographs ofdry flies doing this, but, as Hayes pointsout, “the reality is very different from thetheory” (page 25), and traditional pat-terns such as the Adams, the QuillGordon, and so on, though they mayfloat well on the first cast or two, quicklysettle halfway into the water, where theirbodies rest on or in the surface film.Those sharply pointed hackles, whichevery dry-fly expert since Halford hasinsisted are essential for dry flies, are infact the worst possible choice if your goalis to keep the whole fly out of the waterbecause they poke right through the sur-face film. This was one of Marinaro’sobjections to Catskill-style dry flies, thushis thorax-style oblique wrapping ofhackles, which caused the hackles to layalong the surface film rather than pene-trate it. But debunking the myth is notHayes’s sole goal; he proceeds to consid-er how early dry-fly authorities werefooled into making this mistake, whatthe fish actually take these half-sunk fliesfor, and what sort of alternative patternswe might offer to trout instead.

The entire book is rich in these con-siderations, each with invaluable andlively introductions to each topic’s histo-ry and literary foundations. There aredelightful discussions of the all-too-rarely considered overlapping questionsof (1) Which way do freshly emergedadult insects face as they float down-stream?, (2) Do our imitations face thesame way?, and (3) If not, what can wedo about it? I was especially attracted by

From F. M. Halford, Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice(London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1889), facing page 176.

SUMMER 2014 23

the material on the subtle details of howa trout takes a fly, which acknowledgesand builds on the particularly rich con-versation that has been going on relatingto that subject for a century or so now. Butno matter what your special interest maybe—stream management, nymph fishing,Tenkara, leader theory, on and on—you’relikely to find treatments of it here that willat the least give you things to think aboutand at most may reshape your thinking.

It says something very special about FlyFishing Outside the Box that it is not onlyfull of fresh thinking, but it is simultane-ously an excellent primer on the best ofthe historic literature. For those readerswho were so emotionally scarred by high-school history classes that they just can’tface reading a straightforward history offly fishing, this book is a painless way ofgetting at least an outline of the importantelements of the story.

It has always been true that neitherBritish nor American angling books nec-essarily “travel” well to the opposite sideof the Atlantic Ocean. We are too easilyput off by unfamiliar brand names, byjargon startlingly different from our jar-gon, by fly patterns with names no sillierthan ours but no less strange soundingfor that, and by references to streams,lakes, and other places we’ve never heardof and will never fish. What can all thispossibly have to do with us? It’s no won-der that the newcomer who first encoun-ters a fly-fishing book from the otherside of the ocean will immediately bereminded of the old saw about theBritish and Americans being two peoplesdivided by a common language. Butdon’t let these differences discourage youin the slightest.

For one thing, that problem has dimin-ished substantially as fly fishers have allbecome more and more one globalangling community.

For another, all those slightly exotic-sounding things are worth knowing andreading about for their own sake. Justbecause you’ve never fished the placesHayes describes is no reason to doubttheir relevance to your fishing. Just lookat the pictures; you’ll recognize the water.

For another, Hayes is adept at speak-ing clearly to all of us. Even if he wasn’t,he has such interesting things to say thatyou’d keep reading just to find out what’snext. Any fishing writer who can make aseffective use of quotes from Johnny Cashand Arnold Schwarzenegger as fromGary LaFontaine and Roderick Haig-Brown is a writer worth reading.

Our modern production of emergingfly-fishing heresies has benefited incal-culably from the accelerating pace ofemerging technologies. I was especiallystruck by this while writing The Rise, in

which I made use of the findings of somerecent and elegantly complex scientificstudies of fish behavior and surface films,among other things. But perhaps themost significant change from the times ofHalford, Skues, and even early Marinarohas involved photography. The heart ofThe Rise was my series of photographs ofrising trout, in which my fairly inexpen-sive camera effectively froze the motionof rising trout at every stage in theprocess, capturing telling details not onlyin the fish but in the fly it was rising to, inthe surface film and deeper water aroundthe fish, and in the surprisingly revealingshadow of the fish on the stream bottom.And modern publishing technologyallowed the clear, bright reproduction ofthose images to a degree that earlier writ-ers could only dream of.

Hayes’s book takes those advantages astep further. The profusion of gloriousand revealing color photography inHayes’s book is a testament to how muchwe today can learn that was simply unap-proachable by angling thinkers even halfa century ago. There are single pictures inthis book that have brought double takesfrom every person I’ve shown them to(the split image of the baby duck ridingon the water on page 91, shown above,

will almost certainly reshape your idea ofhow surface films work and why our fliesbehave the way they do on them). Andthe reproduction of many historic colorimages, especially hand-tinted engrav-ings of fly patterns from centuries ago, isequally fine and helpful.

I don’t mean to suggest that I agreewith everything Hayes says in this verysatisfying book. But even the things Idoubt or disagree with are presented in away that makes the process of doubtingand disagreeing fun. What I admire mostis the book’s power to stimulate thinkingwithout insisting you think the way theauthor does. I can’t improve on AndrewHerd’s description of the book. I quotefrom Herd’s blurb on the book’s jacket:“I am sure that anyone who reads it islikely to be left with a good idea thatthere isn’t a single true path to enlight-enment in fly fishing and that half thefun is choosing your own way.”

!

Fly Fishing Outside the Box: Emerging Heresiesby Peter HayesCoch-y-Bonddu Books Ltd., 2013£25.00272 pages, full color illustrations throughout,bibliography, indexwww.anglebooks.com

A duckling rides the surface of the water. From Peter Hayes, Fly Fishing Outsidethe Box: Emerging Heresies (Machynlleth, Powys, Wales: Coch-y-Bonddu Books

Ltd., 2013), 91. Image courtesy of Coch-y-Bonddu Books Ltd.

THE AMERICAN MUSEUM of Fly Fishing honored RobertE. Rubin with the museum’s 2014 Heritage Award at theHarmonie Club in New York City on April 24. The award

honors and celebrates individuals and organizations whosecommitment to the museum, the sport of fly fishing, and theconservation of our natural resources set standards to whichwe all should aspire.

Robert E. Rubin is an American economist and author. Heserved as the seventieth U.S. secretary of the treasury under bothterms of the Clinton administration and wrote In an UncertainWorld: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington (RandomHouse, 2003). Aside from being a business leader, Rubin has alsobeen a fly-fishing enthusiast and supporter of conservationorganizations for decades. In an interview with author ChrisSantella (Why I Fly Fish: Passionate Anglers on the Pastime’sAppeal and How It Has Shaped Their Lives [Stewart, Tabori &Chang, 2013]), he said, “What’s struck me is that when I go intoa meeting and find that someone on the other side of the tablefly fishes, there’s a camaraderie that’s quickly established. Yourealize that you both care enormously about something outsideof the room. It may not have anything to do with the issue you’remeeting about, but it connects you.” The museum was pleasedto honor Rubin for his commitment to the sport of fly fishingand natural resource conservation.

This successful Heritage Award celebration would not havebeen possible without the support of Honorary Event ChairRobert G. Scott and Dinner Committee members William E.

Andersen, Louis Bacon, Tom Davidson, Karen Kaplan, DavidNichols, Jason Scott, Richard Tisch, David Walsh, and MartinZimmerman. Additionally, many thanks to Nick Dawes fordonating auction services, Richard Tisch for being master ofceremonies, and Timothy Geithner for being a guest speaker.

We would also like to thank the Leadership Circle: LouisBacon, Roger Altman, Day Family Foundation, Eric Dobkin,Peter Kellogg, Timothy Geithner, Lee Sachs, Robert G. Scott,William E. Andersen, Bessemer Trust, Michael Bakwin, DavidWalsh, Timothy Collins, Brad and Pamela Mills, Wendy andHenry Paulson, Nick Selch, Mark and Dorinda Winkleman,Martin Zimmerman, Shannon Brightman, Tom Davidson, TimHixon, Paul Tudor Jones, Karen Kaplan, David Nichols, MatthewScott, Gary Sherman, Richard Tisch, James Wolfensohn, andNancy and Alan Zakon.

We also appreciate those who supported and donated itemsfor the live and silent auction: Richard Tisch, Three ForksRanch, Skyhorse Publishing, Carmine Lisella of Jordan Mills,David Nichols, George Van Hook, Fishpond Inc., Simms FishingProducts, Crocodile Bay Resort & Marina, Tibor Reel, Dr. GarySherman and Dr. Mark Sherman, Galvan Fly Reels, Inc., PaulVolcker, Mark Susinno, Pat Ford, Curtis K. Johnson, Ande Inc.,Luther Hall, Walter Matia, Urban Angler, Jacques Torres, JohnSwan, Nervous Waters, Paul Dixon, David Nichols, GloriaJordan, Cecilia “Pudge” Kleinkauf, Maven Fly, Rio Products,Robert Cochrane, Wendy Krag O’Neil, Vermont PaddleboardOutfitters, South Holston River Lodge, Jackson Fork Ranch,Robert G. Scott, Ocean Reef Club, Tight Lines Jewelry, ThomasDavidson, LaPrele Fly Fishing & Hunting Preserve, Buzz Eichel,David B. Tibbetts, Rancho Los Gallas, E & J Gallo Winery,Hollenbuck Club, Jim Heckman, Sara Low, Bert Darrow, DonBastian, Dave Morse, Eric Gass of GSoutfitting, Alan Gnann ofREC Components, and Jack Pittard of Bone Ami.

!


Robert E. Rubin Receives2014 Heritage Award

Robert E. Rubin holds a brown trout in thisundated photo. Courtesy of Robert E. Rubin.

Master fly tier Roger Plourde created this specialfly, the Americana, in honor of Robert E. Rubin.

Its colors resemble those of the American flag.

Sara Wilcox

SUMMER 2014 25

Event photos by Azat “Danny” Gilfanov

The highlight of the evening was an interview between twoformer U.S. secretaries of the treasury: Heritage Award

recipient Robert E. Rubin (right) and Timothy Geithner.

Honorary Event Chair Robert G. Scott accompanied bymuseum Trustee Jane Cooke, Karen Scott, and Jon Fisher.

The Heritage Award is made successfulby supporters and attendees.

Associate Director of Development for American Rivers SteveWhite and American Rivers board member Ned Whitney.

AMFF President Richard Tisch with previousHeritage Award recipient Joan Wulff.

Nick Dawes donated his auctioneering services for the live auction.


Orvis Gift CardThe museum is excited to announce that all new members

in 2014 will receive a $10 Orvis gift card. Dues start at $50 andare a great way to show your support. Members are deeply val-ued and critical to the programming success of AMFF. Alreadya member? Encourage your fellow anglers to join, or considergiving a gift membership to take advantage of this great offer.Please contact Sam Pitcher at [email protected] or (802) 362-3300, ext. 208, for further details.

Recent Donations to the CollectionFly tier Bruce Corwin of New York City donated a size 12

Wally Wing Peccary fly to the museum. Tier Richard Tillman Jr.of Queenstown, Maryland, gave us a size 6/0 saltwater Squid fly.

Jeff Wyman of Sharon, Massachusetts, donated a two-piece,8-foot, five-strip bamboo fly rod (with extra tip section) builtby Andy Burr of Montreal, Canada. He also sent us a HardyBros., Ltd. Perfect 33⁄8-inch fly reel.

And Charles E. McGowan of West Falmouth, Massa -chusetts, donated two issues of the Boston Herald American (11February 1975 and 22 September 1975), which contain articlesabout Wes Jordan.

On March 15, Vermont Fish & Wildlife fish biologist KenCox came to the museum to update community members

on stream and fish population improvements in theaftermath of Hurricane Irene. The report showed thatthe rebuilt culverts and streams assisted in populations

coming back healthier than before the storm.

Upcoming Events

Events take place on the museum grounds inManchester, Vermont, unless otherwise noted.

Through September 1Blue Star Museums ProgramFree admission for active military personnel

July 1–31Angling & Art Benefit Art Sale

July 20Celebrate National Ice Cream Day!Fly-fishing activities and free ice cream11:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.

August 9Fly-Fishing Festival10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.

September ScreeningsMovie showings every weekend in September

September 6Members-Only Event: Rare Rod Rendezvous1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m.

September 27Smithsonian Magazine Museum Day Live!

October 18Annual Members Meeting

October 23–24Friends of Corbin Benefit ShootHudson Farm in Andover, New JerseyPortion of proceeds to benefit AMFF

December 6Gallery ProgramHooked on the Holidays1:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m.

Always check our website (www.amff.com) for additions,updates, and more information or contact Christina Cole at(802) 362-3300 or [email protected]. “Casting About,” themuseum’s e-mail newsletter, offers up-to-date news and eventinformation. To subscribe, look for the link on our website orcontact the museum.

SUMMER 2014 27

Sara

Wilc

ox

What better way to prepare for the opening of Vermonttrout season than with our annual Spring Training day?On March 29, nearly one hundred community members

came to the museum for a series of family-friendlyactivities for all ages and skill levels of angling. Thanksto Paul Sinicki and Kelly Bedford for teaching fly tying!

BACK I S SU E S !Vol. 21:Vol. 22:Vol. 23:Vol. 24:Vol. 25:Vol. 26:Vol. 27:Vol. 28:Vol. 29:Vol. 30:Vol. 31:Vol. 32:Vol. 33:Vol. 34:Vol. 35:Vol. 36:Vol. 37:Vol. 38:Vol. 39:Vol. 40:

Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 4Nos. 1, 2, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2Nos. 1, 2, 3Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3Nos. 1, 2

Vol. 1:Vol. 2:Vol. 3:Vol. 4:Vol. 5:Vol. 6:Vol. 7:Vol. 8:Vol. 9:

Vol. 10:Vol. 11:Vol. 12:Vol. 13:Vol. 14:Vol. 15:Vol. 16:Vol. 17:Vol. 18:Vol. 19:Vol. 20:

Nos. 1, 3, 4Nos. 2, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3Nos. 2, 3Nos. 1, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3Nos. 1, 2, 3Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2Nos. 1, 2Nos. 1, 2, 3Nos. 1, 2, 3Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4

Back issues are $10 a copy fornonmembers, $5 for members.

To order, please contact Christina Cole at(802)362-3300 or via e-mail at [email protected].

The AMFF is back in Pennsylvania!

Announcing the Izaak Walton Award EventHonoring Ed Jaworowski

Thursday, November 13, 2014Merion Cricket Club, Haverford, PA

Event Chair: Robert Moser

Keep checking www.amff.com for more details!


Jerry Gibbs served as Outdoor Life’s fishing editor for thirty-five years, having filled the positionin 1973, following the death of Joe Brooks. He is the author of several technical fishing books as wellas the award-winning short story collection Steel Barbs. He was recipient of the AmericanSportfishing Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005 and Johnson Outdoors’ FishingJournalist of the Year in 2006. He has presented position papers to federal fisheries agencies and statefish and wildlife agencies. His work has won top honors from the Outdoor Writers Association ofAmerica, including the prestigious Excellence in Craft award in 2008. His stories and photos haveappeared in most of the nation’s salt- and freshwater fishing journals, to which he continues to con-tribute. Gibbs has fished in salt and fresh water across the United States and Canada, and in Europe,the Caribbean, Central and South America, Russia, New Zealand, and Australia. He lives on theMaine coast with his wife Judy and their French Brittany, chasing striped bass and fly rod–manage-able bluefins while scheming ways to head south when the fish do.

Andrew Herd trained to be -come a fishing bum, but made amess of his career path and had tobecome a physician instead, quali-fying at the Middlesex Hospital,London, in 1982 at the age of twen-ty-one. After a varied career inmedicine, which included a spell asthe McIndoe Research Fellow atthe Queen Victoria Hospital, EastGrinstead, he made one of his bestdecisions: to marry Dr. BarbaraHolder and settle in County Dur -

ham, where he works three days a week as a family practitioner.The remainder of the time he fishes, writes about fishing, ortakes photographs of other people fishing, notably for Hardy &Greys in Alnwick, for whom he has worked for several years.

Herd has published many books, including his History of FlyFishing trilogy (Medlar Press), and he is the executive editor ofWaterlog magazine. His most recent work (with Keith Harwoodand Stanley David) is Gear & Gadgets, a lighthearted look atsome of Hardy’s more harebrained products, and next to presswill be The Anglers’ Bible, a detailed examination of the Hardy’sAnglers’ Guides up to 1914, which will include some very uncom-mon material indeed. Right now he is working with HermannDietrich-Troeltsch on another trilogy, this time about theincomparable Mr. William Blacker, which will feature a detailedbiography of its subject, a bibliography including complete pho-tographic surveys of the very rare 1842 and 1843 editions, and acomprehensive pictorial analysis of every Blacker pattern knownto exist, including flies that only appeared in Bell’s Life.

Bar

bara

Her

d, M

D, F

RC

P

Paul Schullery was executivedirector of the American Mu -seum of Fly Fishing from 1977 to1982. He is the author, coauthor,or editor of forty books, includ-ing several relating to fly fishingand fly-fishing history. His mostrecent books include CowboyTrout: Western Fly Fishing as If ItMatters; The Rise: StreamsideObservations on Trout, Flies, andFly Fishing; and If Fish Could

Scream: An Angler’s Search for the Future of Fly Fishing. In 2011,Schullery was named to the “Legends of the Headwaters”honor roll by the Madison-Gallatin Trout Unlimited Chapter,Montana, for his work as a writer and historian of fly fishing.His fly-fishing memoir, The Fishing Life, was published bySkyhorse Publishing in 2013.

Dennis W

elsh

James Thull is the specialcollections librarian at Mon tanaState University in Bozeman,Montana. He is the lead curatorof the MSU Trout and Salmo -nid collection, which includesmore than 10,000 volumes andthe papers of Bud Lilly, RobertBehnke, George Grant, andother prominent anglers andconservationists. James is a life-long fishing enthusiast who has had opportunities to fish onfour continents to date and has a bucket-list goal of fishing theremaining three. Here he is shown with a Mekong catfish taken(and released) in Thai land in 2013. Please contact James [email protected] if you would like more information onthe collection, a tour, or tips on places to get a line in the wateraround Bozeman.

James T

hull

C O N T R I B U T O R S

Hermann Dietrich-Troeltschwas born in 1939 in Freiburg(Breisgau) in southwestern Ger -many. His father, Ernst, was a suc-cessful racing driver who publishedGermany’s first postwar automo-bile magazine; his grandfather,Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923), was aprominent Protestant theologianwhose works remain influentialtoday. After Ernst senior’s earlydeath, Troeltsch’s wife, Martha,married the liberal politicianHermann Dietrich (1879–1954),who became vice chancellor and minister of finance in theBrüning cabinet, the last democratic government before the Naziseizure of power. Dietrich adopted Ernst Jr. and his children andbrought the family to the Black Forest during World War II; it washere that Hermann Dietrich-Troeltsch became acquainted withhunting and fishing from his earliest youth. After graduatingwith a degree in economics, Dietrich-Troeltsch submitted histhesis on the history of economic management and repara-tions in the Weimar republic. When his father died unexpect-edly, Dietrich-Troeltsch, then fifteen years old, took over hisbusiness interests in the Motor Presse Stuttgart group.

Having fished since his earliest youth for trout and salmonin many countries, Dietrich-Troeltsch began a collection ofkey antiquarian fishing books and fly-tying materials, whichforms the foundation of the Blacker project.

Andrew

Herd

Mar

sha

Kar

le

THE YEAR WAS 1974, and the Museum of American FlyFishing (now known as the American Museum of FlyFishing) published its first issue of the American Fly

Fisher. That first issue was full of color on the cover and blackand white inside. There was an article by Marty Keane, “DatingGuide for Vintage Rods,” and a full-page photograph of the leg-endary angler Joe Brooks. Over these many years, our reveredjournal has featured articles by noted writers, including PaulSchullery, Jerry Gibbs, Hoagy B. Carmichael, and GraydonHilyard, as well as noted researchers Clarence Anderson,Gordon Wickstrom, Jerry Karaska, and John Mundt. Therehave been several editors (Kathleen Achor, our current editor,has been working with us since 1995). The style of covers haschanged, as have printers and paper stock. But the one constanthas been the excellent articles submitted and published overthese forty years.

Just in time to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of our pub-lication, we are pleased to announce the completion of oureighteen-month project to scan all issues of the journal and tomake their valuable content available to the public. You mayrecall that in 2012 we received a $21,600 grant from the Instituteof Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a federal agency, toelectronically archive every issue of the American Fly Fisher.Although we have electronically archived and digitally printedthis publication since 2005, all issues published from 1974

through 2004 were printed using plates that are no longer avail-able for reprinting. The only way we could preserve and makethe first thirty years of journals available electronically was tomanually scan each page into a special text-reading program.

You can now go to the museum’s website (www.amff.com)to access and read through all past journal issues. Go to theJournal tab, then to Past Issues. A key-word index is in progressand will be available soon to assist with article and issuesearches. The access is free of charge, and we hope you willhelp us get the word out.

The museum is grateful to IMLS for supporting this project.We must also thank Rod Hill of North Coast Associates(Dallas, Texas) for providing his professional services, as wellas the museum’s Journal Committee members—Jim Heckman(chair), Deborah Dawson, Fred Polhemus, and FrankSchurz—for their guidance throughout the project. And thankyou to staff member Sara Wilcox for keeping the project onschedule, writing the interim reports, working with our web-site host, and designing the website access layout.

The American Fly Fisher, considered a treasure to our mem-bers and others in the fly-fishing community, is now a nationaltreasure to be shared with everyone!

CATHI COMAREXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

A Celebration of Forty Years

The first issue of the American Fly Fisher was published in 1974. Thejournal continues to be an important benefit of AMFF membership.

4070 Main Street • PO Box 42Manchester,Vermont 05254

Tel: (802) 362-3300 • Fax: (802) 362-3308E-MAIL: [email protected]: www.amff.com

M ISSIONTHE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF FLY FISHING isthe steward of the history, traditions, andpractices of the sport of fly fishing and pro-motes the conservation of its waters. Themuseum collects, preserves, exhibits, studies,and interprets the artifacts, art, and literatureof the sport and uses these resources toengage, educate, and benefit all.

The museum provides public programs tofulfill its educational mission, including exhi-bitions, publications, gallery programs, andspecial events. Research services are availablefor members, visiting scholars, students, edu-cational organizations, and writers. ContactYoshi Akiyama at [email protected] toschedule a visit.

VOLUNTEERThroughout the year, the museum needs volun-teers to help with programs, special projects,events, and administrative tasks. You do nothave to be an angler to enjoy working with us!Contact Sarah Foster at [email protected] totell us how we would benefit from your skillsand talents.

SUPPORTThe American Museum of Fly Fishing relies onthe generosity of public-spirited individuals forsubstantial support. Please contact us if youwish to contribute funding to a specific pro-gram, donate an item for fund-raising purposes,or place an advertisement in this journal. Weencourage you to give the museum con -sideration when planning for gifts, be quests,and memorials.

JOINMembership Dues (per annum)

Patron $1,000Sponsor $500Business $250Benefactor $100Associate $50

The museum is an active, member-orientednonprofit institution. Membership duesinclude four issues of the American Fly Fisher;unlimited visits for your entire family tomuseum exhibitions, gallery programs, andspecial events; access to our 7,000-volumeangling reference library; and a discount onall items sold by the museum on its websiteand inside the museum store, the BrooksideAngler. To join, please contact Sarah Foster [email protected].

Scan with your smart-phone to visit ourcollection online!

Catch and Releasethe Spirit of Fly Fishing!

the american fly fisher - american museum of fly fishing · the american fly fisher (issn...

Documents