A Mother Club, a Mystery, and Best of the Worsts

Man's life is but vain; For 'tis subject to pain, And sorrow, and short as a bubble; 'Tis a hodge-podge of business and money and care, and care and money and trouble.

But we'll take no care when the weather proves fair; Nor will we vex now though it rain; We'll banish all sorrow and sing to tomorrow, and angle and angle again.

Thus singeth Walton and friends as recorded in The Compleat Angler. Groups of anglers bonding over com-mon experience and common water is as old as . .. well,

at least as old as Walton, with Thatcht-House being dubbed the Mother Club by author Richard G. Bell. In "Common Threads among the Gold: A Brief Discourse Regarding Common Characteristics of Fishing Clubs and Their Members," Bell begins with the Bible and Berners for stories of fishermen, angling, and att itude. But, he claims, it is Walton who gives us "clubness." Bell's article, originally a presentation to the Lime-stone Club of East Canaan, Connecticut, is filled with stories and songs of anglers banding together for the sake of tradition to fish, eat, drink, be merry, exaggerate, and complain. This rather lively piece begins on page 2.

About ten years ago, Frederick Buller found a collection of flies at a rummage sale in a box marked "Unusual Salmon Flies (circa 188o) ." Since then, he's been researching these flies and asking the opinions of others. The flies are, in fact, still a bit of a mystery. Buller recently sent some of these flies to John Betts, a frequent contributor to this journal, for his consideration as well. Betts's additional commentary can be found at the end of Buller's article, "A Hoard of Mysterious Salmon Flies;' which begins on page 13.

We live in a culture that loves lists and that regularly issues lists of"best" and "worst" of almost anything. Given that, as well as the tendency of anglers to love anything written about their sport, Paul Schullery set out to create a list of bad fishing books, of "Fly Fishing's Greatest Dogs." It turned out to be a tougher task than he imagined, even after eliminating all living writers from this criticism. He quickly discovered that among his well-read friends, there is little consensus out there as to which books are bad or why they are. "Crazy Coots and Mere Farragos;' therefore, is Schullery's list, and by the end, you'll be wanting to read the bad books too. This survey begins on page 17.

Never in the years that I've worked on the journal has an article received such positive and eloquent comment as Robert H. Boyle's "'Flies Do Your Float': Fishing in Finnegans Wake," which appeared in the Spring 2004 issue. We include two let-ters, beginning on page 29. Yes, there is praise for the journal, which perhaps I shouldn't so boldly publish without searching

From Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler, 7th ed. (London: Henry Kent, circa 1802), facing page So.

out an opposing voice for balance; but these readers found Boyle's article not only praiseworthy, but challenging and inspiring. Read these letters, and write to us when you have comments.

Of course, the progress on the new building is always the big story here. See Sara Wilcox's report, "Into the Homestretch," beginning on page 30 for the latest update. And fear not-there's still time to buy a brick and be part of it all (see page 26).

KATHLEEN ACHOR EDITOR

THE AMERICAN MusEUM OF FLY FISHING

Preserving the Heritage of Fly Fishing TRUSTEES

E. M. Bakwin Michael Bakwin

Foster Bam Pamela Bates

Steven Benardete Paul Bolinger

Duke Buchan Ill Mickey Callanen

Peter Corbin Blake Drexler

William j. Dreyer Christopher Garcia

George R. Gibson III Gardner L. Grant

Chris Gruseke )ames Hardman

Lynn L. Hitschler Arthur Kaemmer, M.D.

Woods King III Carl R. Kuehner TIT james E. Lutton III Nancy Mackinnon

TRUSTEES Charles R. Eichel

G. Dick Finlay W. Michael Fitzgerald

William Herrick Robert N. johnson

Walter T. Matia William C. McMaster, M.D. james Mirenda john Mundt David Nichols Wayne Nordberg Michael B. Osborne Raymond C. Pecor Stephen M. Peet Leigh H. Perkins Allan K. Poole john Rano Roger Riccardi Kristoph j. Rollenhagen Wil liam Salladin Ernest Schwiebert Robert G. Scott james A. Spend iff john Swan Richard G. Tisch David H. Walsh )ames C. Woods

EMERITI David B. Ledlie Leon L. Martuch Keith C. Russell Paul Schullery Stephen Sloan

OFFICERS Chairman of the Board Robert G. Scott

President David H. Walsh Vice Presidents Lynn L. Hitschler

Michael B. Osborne james A. Spendiff

Treasurer james Mirenda Secretary james C. Woods

STAFF Interim Executive Director Yoshi Akiyama

Events & Membership Diana Siebold Special Projects Sara Wilcox

Administrative Assistant Linda McWain Art Director john Price

THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER Editor Kathleen Achor

Design & Production Copy Editor

john Price Sarah May Clarkson

Time Amm (CCffiiiTl

FALL 2004 VOLUME 30 NUMBER 4

Common Threads among the Gold: A Brief Discourse Regarding Common Characteristics of Fishing Clubs and Their Members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Richard G. Bell

A Hoard of Mysterious Salmon Flies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Frederick Buller

Some Notes and Comment .................... 16 John Betts

Crazy Coots and Mere Farragos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 17 Paul Schullery

Museum News.

Contributors

Letters ......... .

Into the Homestretch Sara Wilcox

24

28

29

30

ON THE covER: "Jack Fishing- Lea Bridge" by artist Henry Heath Jr. (c. 1850) shows an angler playing a fish or "giving it the butt." The Victorians used long rods with enough whip in the top joint to allow them to point the

rod back over the shoulder while playing a big fish. Frederick Buller references this practice in ''A Hoard of Mysterious Salmon Flies," which begins on page

13. Buller included this illustration in his book, Pike and the Pike Angler (London: Stanley Paul, 1981, p. 187), courtesy of Walter Spencer.

'J'he American J-<'ly Fisher ( ISSN 0884-3562) is published four times a year by the Museum at P.O. J3ox 42, Ma nchester, Vermont 05254.

Publication dates are winter, spring, summer, and fall. Membership dues include the cost of the journal ($15) and are tax deductible as provided for hy law. Membership rates arc listed in the back of each issue. AI! letters, manuscripts, photographs, and materials intended for publication in the journal should be sent to the Museum. The Museum and journal are not responsible for uniiolicited manuscripts, drawings, photographic material, or memorabilia . The Museum cannot accept responsibility for statements and interpretations that are wholly the author's. Unso licited manuscripts cannot be returned unless postage is provided. Contributions to The American Fly Fisher are to be considered gratuitous and the property of the Museum unless otherwise requested by the contributor. Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life. Copyright © 2004, the American Museum of Ply Fishing, Manchester, Vermont 05254. Original material appearing may not be reprinted without prior permission. Periodical postage paid at Manchester, Vermont 05254 and additional offices (USPS 057410). The American Fly Fisher (ISSN 0884-3562)

EMAIL: amff@together.net WEBSITE: www.amff.com

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

We welcome contributions to The American Fly Fisher. Before making a submission, please review our Contributor's Guidelines on our website (www.amff.com), or write to request a copy. The Museum cannot accept responsibility for statements and interpretations that are wholly the author's.

Collllllon Threads an1ong the Gold: A Brief Discourse Regarding Collllllon Characteristics of Fishing Clubs and

Their Men1bers by Richard G. Bell

"E'uening firelight stories ."

This friendly image appears in The Speckled Brook Trout by Louis Rhead (New York: R.H. Russell, 1902, facing page 30 ).

Because I'm a very amateur historian, and because I was markedly influenced by a statement made by the late Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes when I first read it many

years ago in law school, it seemed important to me to get at the subject of fishing clubs from a particular perspective. The Holmes statement to which I refer is this:

The life of the law has not been logic; it has been history.'

What Holmes was saying in this wonderful phrase was that the law is not the way it is because that's what makes sense, and it's not because that's how it's supposed to be, and God knows it's not because it's the best way to do it. No. The law is what it is because it has been shaped that way by historical forces, and to understand it, you need to understand its history. I find this true of a great many things besides the law-even fishing clubs. And so, to understand commonalities, I'm drawn to explore history-that is, the generic history of fishing clubs.

This essay is based on remarks to the Limestone Club, Eas t Canaan, Connecticut, at its annual meet ing, 3 April2004.

2 THE AMERICAN FLY FIS H E R

BACK TO THE BEGINNING

Where to start? Well, there is no shortage of material. I have been told that the volume of fishing literature alone exceeds the combined volume of the literature of all other sports . If this was last year, I would have had a different beginning. But now, with Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ playing at every local theater, giving voice to a powerful religious reex-amination, maybe-to be safe- we ought to start with the Bible. Just to be able to say we've done so. I recommend it. You sometimes come up with surprising results.

There are, in fact, forty-five references in the King James Version of the Bible to "boats" and to "fishing." Forty-five. None, however, to fishing clubs specifically. But that's all right. Remember, clubs are just clumps of fishermen; we can get at things indirectly by exploring commonalities among fisher-men.

You might expect the Book of Job to be full of source mate-rial, but what's there is surprisingly thin and quite rudimenta-

Biblical image of Christ and the miracle of the fish. Courtesy of St. Mina Coptic Orthodox Church, Holmdel, New Jersey.

ry. Job was a loner-you would be too if you had his bad luck- and his sense of fishing tactics was quite primitive.

Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? Or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?

Canst thou put a hook into his nose? Or bore his jaw through with a thorn?

Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? Or his head with fish spears?2

I confess that all I find there is that men have been trying to jig big fish for more than two thousand years.

Habakkuk, a lesser-known prophet, gives a hint of a fishing industry, but tells us nothing of the fisher persons.

They take up all of them with the angle, they catch them in their net, and gather them in their drag, therefore they rejoice and are glad.3

The "angle"-which we understand to mean "hook"-the "net," and the "drag" represent a sophisticated array of tools, indicating the importance of the business of fishing. But what of the sport? What of the fishermen?

Maybe Peter will help. He was, after all, one of us. In John 21, beginning with verse 3, he announces with great glee:

I go a fishing. 4

The other disciples decide to join him for a short cruise on the Sea of Galilee.

They went forth and entered into a ship immediately; and that night-they caught nothing.s

Well, that shows that night fishing is not all it's cracked up to be. But there's always tomorrow.

But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore: but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. 6

They thought he was just some guy come down to watch. And if you have been fishing for a long time and haven't caught anything, there is always some guy who comes down to watch. And he always asks the same question.

Then Jesus saith unto them: "Children, have you any meat?" They answered him, "no."7 And he said unto them, "cast a net on the right side of the ship and ye shall find."S

These guys who come down to watch always have free advice. But in this case, it worked.

They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it [the net] for the multitude of fishes.9

This is the first clear demonstration in our literature that, for some places, you simply have to have a good Guide.

None of this, however, has led me into the heart of the mat-ter. But I did find one heretofore unrecognized gem. In the Book of Isaiah at chapter 19, Isaiah is describing what vengeance the Lord will wreck upon Egypt: it is awesome, and extends destruction to every corner of the land and even to every occupation .

And they shall be broken in the purposes thereof, all that make sluices and ponds for fish .10

Thus, even fish farming will be destroyed. But wait . The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle into the brooks shall lament .. .U

There's-that word again: angle. A hook. And the description of the fisher as one who "casts"- gospel word-into "brooks."

F A LL 2004 3

Above is the frontispiece from A Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle by Dame Juliana Berners, first published in 1496. The Dame Juliana Anglers, a women's angling

club, meets monthly in Phoenix, Arizona.

Think about that: the words angle, cast, and brooks are not words you associate with jigging for gigantic Nile perch; rather, we associate them with the trout streams of England. This text in Isaiah was pretty much confirmed by one of the Dead Sea scrolls; the original Hebrew has been translated to Greek and then to Latin and eventually into the towering cadence of Stuart England in the King James Version. The monk responsible for the line above, who chose the words fish-ers, angle, cast, and brooks, knew just what they meant. He was moved toward them by the base translation from whence he worked, but he selected words of contemporary experience. Without doubt, he had read-for it was his kind who did most of the reading-a little book by Dame Juliana Berners, her A Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle,U which gave these words meaning to him. Were there trout in Egypt? I don't think so, and even James Prosek has yet to find one. But were there fish -ers who pursued fish for sport? On some small branch of a tributary of the Nile? The conclusion has to be yes. So, here we find the germ of a progenitor as far back as Isaiah in the Old Testament, albeit one resurrected in the seventeenth century by a nameless monk who was a disciple of the prioress of the Sopewell Nunnery near St. Albans, England. Juliana Berners had been, after all, a colleague working for the same company.

By the way, the word angle gives us, of course, the appella-tion angler, applied universally to fishermen and fisherwomen. I suppose we're lucky. If you think about it, we could have been called hookers.

4 THE AMER I CAN FLY FISHER

THE DAWN OF LEARNING

So, let's take a look at Dame Juliana's little book. It was pub-lished in 1496, 115 years before the King James Version of the Bible and 157 years before the publication of Isaac Walton's The Compleat Angler. Henry VII, Henry Tudor, was King of England. Only eleven years earlier, Richard III was defeated at Bosworth Field. That's quite a while ago. What was Dame Juliana trying to do? Easy. Her book was a health and fitness pitch, like so many you can find at any retail bookstore today.

Being the CEO of a nunnery, Dame Juliana had a particular slant. She set out to prove a proverb of Solomon.

A fine spirit causes a flourishing age.13

Surely, if it were as simple as that, we would all want this "fine spirit." Where do we get it? Today, someone would flash a tele-phone number on the TV screen and urge you to call with your credit card handy for some magic elixir or sophisticated machine. But Dame Juliana did not promise instant gratifica-tion: she required you to work for it. How? By the physical pursuit of what she called "pleasing amusements and proper sports."14 She examines four of these, the most popular of her day: hunting, hawking, fowling, and fishing. She quickly deter-mines that:

The finest sport is fishing with a rod, line and hook.'5

Her conclusion is that fishing is the superior means to gain a

Isaac Walton is best known as author ofThe Compleat Angler (1653), one of the three most published books in English literature

(the other two are the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare). The Compleat Angler has run to more than 300

editions. From The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation by Isaac Walton and Charles Cotton

(New York: Ward, Lock and Co., 1891).

"fine spirit;' which will lead eventually to longevity. In the process, she makes two startling conclusions. First, she recog-nizes that one doesn't always catch fish.

Or he may catch nothing, but this is not a serious matter.'6

Not a serious matter! What in the world is she talking about? She tries to explain:

. . . [T] he angler has had a healthy and easy walk, good air, the scent of meadow flowers and an appetite whetted. He has enjoyed the melodious singing of birds, he sees the Cygnet, Herons, Ducks, Coots and many other fowls with their broods.'7

Here, at the literary inception of our sport, is a statement that there is more to fishing than fish. That is the context in which our sport must be seen, and profound and far-reaching dimensions of sensitivity and awareness flow from this. John Gierach once said that he didn't know what fly fishing teaches us, but he knew it was importanus That's pretty much where I would leave it, except to emphasize the significance of what Dame Juliana recognized. Our sport is not just a hobby. To call fly fishing a hobby is like calling brain surgery a job. No. It's far more than that, and because that's so, there is room for groups of anglers to come into existence and share the sport cooper-atively, but not quite yet.

I cannot pass over another statement by Dame Juliana that really puzzled me.

... [S]ince angling seems to augment his worldly goods, it causes a man to become wealthy.'9

Dame Juliana has surely got something backward here. We all know that fishing costs. It takes a lot of money even to buy what you need, and "need" has never been an effective limita-tion on the acquisition of rods, reels, and other equipment. But don't worry: you won't regret any of the money that you spend on good fishing tackle .

THE CONTEMPLATIVE ANGLER

The next great source is, of course, Isaac Walton. He was born in Stafford, England, in 1593, five years after the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Elizabeth I was still queen and would remain so for ten more years. Walton began "in trade" as a linen draper and had half a shop on Fleet Street, corner of Chancery Lane, in London. By 1640, however, he was devoting himself full-time to writing, beginning a series of biographies, with one on the poet John Donne. Walton lived for the most part in London, but he had to leave for a while in 1643. The civil war had broken out, and Walton was at some risk as a conventional royalist. Charles I lost his head, you will recall, in 1649. Walton published The Compleat Angler in 1653. The fifth edition, in 1676, was the first to include the second part, by Charles Cotton, Walton's intimate friend and adopted son.20

Walton knew everyone worth knowing; indeed, he made it a

FALL 2004 5

Charles Cotton collaborated with Isaac Walton on The Compleat Angler and was also the author of some poetry that was considered bawdy in its time. From The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation by Isaac Walton and Charles Cotton

(New York: Ward, Lock and Co., 1891) .

point to do so. He was familiar and comfortable with people of all stations and seems to have had a knack for finding some-thing good in everyone. John Major, one of his early nine-teenth-century publishers, descr ibed him as a cultivated and cultured man, " ... with the soundest judgment, possessed of a sweetness of disposition ever inclining toward the bright side of things, a veracity not to be questioned, and a felicity of expression peculiarly his own."2 1 Jam es Prosek, writing almost two centuries later, describes him as" ... a gentle and humble man of pious demeanor and [a] propensity for m aking friends."22

He sounds almost too good to be true. Here's a man who buried eight of his children, including two named Isaac, and who had to hide for his life from a band of Cromwell's Roundheads equally divided between hanging and burning him. Yet he maintained all of his long life a genial, rosy outlook on human nature. He is, after all, the one who has impressed upon our sport a gentle, pastoral, and contemplative overtone. Indeed, the subtitle of his book is The Contemplative Man's Recreation. However, although there is great merit in the bliss-ful innocence of these Waltonian characteristics, we've learned that the common attributes of fishermen run a far grimier gamut. Nick Lyons, himself a Waltonesque figure, has it right. The life of a trout fish erman is not all an idyllic fluttering of mayflies; it is a rat race.

It rains. You fall in, freeze, boil, hook yourself, hook your partner, lose your equipment, catch the weeds, catch pneumonia, snarl your line, get bitten by flies you ca n't see, miss the big one and hear, inevitably, that you should have been here yesterday or last week or next month . If you return alive and sane, no one believes a word you tell them; if you stay out too long or too often, you lose your family or your job. If you don't stay out long enough, he who did will taunt you unto death that "they began to bite like mad 10 min-utes after you left."23

6 T H E AMERICAN FLY FISHER

The great Michigan judge and sage of Frenchman's Pond, John Voelker, aka Robert Traver, also discarded his rose-colored Waltonian glasses.

The truth is that trout fish ermen scheme and lie and toss in their sleep. They dream of great dripping trout, shapely and elusive as mermaids, and arise cranky and haggard from their fantasies. They are moody and neglectful and all of them are a little daft. Moreover, they are inclined to drink too much.24

Okay. So what does Isaac Walton bring to the historical table? Well, he gives us "clubness." And maybe the mother of all clubs. Listen to this. Does it sound familiar? Do they talk like this at your club?

VI A TOR: ... look you, sir, here are three brace of trouts, one of them the biggest ever I killed with a fly in my life, and yet I lost a bigger than that, and my fly to boot ... 25

We've come to know that the big one always gets away. How about this? Sound familiar? On the fourth day, Piscator, stand-ing outside a public house with Viator, notices Brother Peter and Honest Coridon approaching.

PISCATOR: Well met gentlemen: This is lucky that we meet so just together at this very door. Come Hostess, where are you? Is supper ready? Come first give us drink, and be as quick as you can, for I believe we are all very hungry. Well Brother Peter and Coridon, to yo u both! Come, drink, and then tell me what luck of fi sh: we two have caught but ten trouts, of which my Scholar caught three . .. PETER: And Coridon and 1 have not had an unpleasant day, and yet I have caught but five trouts; for indeed we went to a good honest ale house, and there played at shovel board half the day; all the time it rained we were there, and as merry as they that fished. 26

A line like the following could come from m any fishing clubs today:

Come now for your song, for we have fed heartily. Come, Hostess, lay a few more sticks on the fire, and now sing when you wilJ.27

The above letter was written by General Lafayette. In it he accepts an honorary membership to the Schuylkill Fishing Club. From A History of the Schuylkill Fishing

Company (Philadelphia: The Members of the State of Schuylkill, 1889, facing page 92).

Now, where was all this drinking, tale telling, and singing taking place? We know where it was not. It was not that little house on the Dove River, Walton's favorite river, built for him by Charles Cotton. That little house of stone suits merely two, and barely so, for intimate conversation. It is not our mother club. Nonetheless, it is our shrine. James Prosek describes approaching it in these words.

As an angler entering these sacred grounds where sports fishing as a recreation had its popular genesis and resurrection, I felt as those on pilgrimages must, when they enter the Old City of Jerusalem through Jaffa Gate and walk the stone alleys through the Christian Quarter to the Holy Sepulchre-through the Arab markets hung with rugs and sheep heads to the Dome of the Rock or through the Jewish Quarter to the Wailing Wall .. . There it was, the shrine to all fishermen and the object of my pilgrimage. To its stone facade I clambered, and touched it, and through its small glass panes I saw the round marble table where Piscator taught Viator to tie a fly, holding the hook in his hand for a vise .. . I sat at the end of the clearing and watched the door to see if it might open.28

One is reminded of the comment attributed to Red Smith, sports editor of the New York Herald Tribune and later the New York Times, about trout fishing's opening day. Smith was a fish-erman of wide repute and a pillar of the Catskill establishment in the Anglers' Club of New York in its heyday, just before and just after World War II. Spending opening day on the Beaverkill, according to Smith, was like spending Christmas in Bethlehem.

But it is not the temple we are after. The building we want is a structure long gone from its original location. It once stood

at the sign of the Buffalo's Head, at the farthest end of Hoddesdon Town, on the left of the road in going toward Ware, about seventeen miles and a half distant from London. But let Viator and Piscator tell you of it.

PTSCATOR: You are well over taken, sir; a good morning to you; I've stretched my legs up Totnam Hill to over take you, hoping your business might occasion you towards Ware, this fine, pleasant, fresh May-day in the morning. VIATOR: Sir, I shall almost answer your hope; for my purpose is to be at Hoddesdon (three miles short of that town) I will not say before I drink but before I break my fast: for I have appointed a friend or two to meet me there at the Thatcht-House, about 9 of the clock this morning, and that made me so early up, and, indeed, to walk so fast. PJSCATOR: Sir, I know the Thatcht-House very well: 1 often make it my resting place, and taste a cup of ale there for which liquor that place is very remarkable . . . 2 9

This is it. This long lost and forgotten Thatcht-House-which heard the tall tales of Walton and his friends, which saw them dine and drink in good fellowship, which heard the music of their voices-is the Mother Club. All things that we share in common as fishing club members, even down the years to the present time, started here.

SING TO TOMORROW

The charm of the songs sung by Isaac Walton and his friends was quite innocent and certainly sentimental. They reflect Walton's personality, and however vulnerable they may

FALL 2004 7

be to the ravages of time, they deserve to be saved. Here are the lyrics to the "Angler's Song."

Man's life is but vain; For 'tis subject to pain, And sorrow, and short as a bubble; 'Tis a hodge-podge of business and money and care, and care and money and trouble.

But we'll take no care when the weather proves fair; Nor will we vex now though it rain; We'll banish all sorrow and sing to tomorrow, and angle and angle again.3o

I can tell you that singing was an integral part of the Edinburgh Angling Club during the nineteenth century. This was a prestigious group of Scots with salmon water on the Tweed. Most members came from Edinburgh, but not all. I am the proud owner of copy number 79 of their book, Songs of the Edinburgh Angling Club, published in 1879. It contains exqui-site engravings and the complete text of fifty-six songs written by members. All are written to be sung to the tunes of songs of the day. Some had as many as twelve verses. The brief histori-cal note at the beginning of the book recites that the club was founded in 1847. It occupied a modest place called Betty's Cottage at first, then moved to Colvenford's House, and then, in 1849, took out a long-term lease on a cottage simply called the "Nest!' This much-loved place is the subject of many of their songs, as is the terrible event of 1869 when they were unable to renew its lease. They moved once more, but one has the feeling that it would never be the same again.

[A] cottage larger if not so snug as the "Nest" was built. It had not the honeysuckle covered porch of the "Nest"-it is not yet shaded pleasantly by trees as the "Nest" was; but the murmur of the river sounds as pleasantly to its indwellers, and every year makes the growing shade more grateful. There, as of old, pleasant evenings crown days well spent by the river, and song and jest and cheerful conversation sweep away the cobwebs which are apt to gather when the world is too much with usY

Typical of their songs is one titled "A Bonnie Stream's the Tweed;' written by William Graham. The following chorus is to be sung after each verse:

A Bonnie Stream, A Bonnie Stream A Bonnie stream's the Tweed; A far frae strife I'll end my life, A-fishing on the Tweed.

The last verse of the song is equally sentimental: Then bring the Rod, the Reel, the Gaff, A merry time we'll lead; And lengthen out the pirn o life, A-fishing on the Tweed.32

I was pleasantly surprised to find a direct contemporary musical descendent of this spirit at the Limestone Club of East Canaan, Connecticut. The chorus to their song "Old Tight Lines;' sung to the tune of"Auld Lang Syne," is:

And always tight lines, my dear, And always tight lines; We'll take a walk at Limestone, dear, And always tight lines.

The Walton Fishing Club of Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut, has long enjoyed an active group of opening night singers, whose songs tend to favor political satire or just plain bawdi-

8 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER

ness. Nonetheless, singing is singing, and there's much merit to a song that commemorated the political promise of a may-oral candidate to install public lavatories on the New Haven Green.

We'll sing the glories of New Haven New England's pride and pearl; Our Chamber of Commerce and our Railroad Station, Can't be beat in this corner of the World; So join in our paen of adulation, Hearken to the trumpet's call; The Ornamental Comfort Station, Will be on the Green by fall.

We're proud of our City and our neighbors, We're proud of our Mayor, staunch and true; But the inspiration of our labors, Is that we're Yale men through and through; So join in illicit procreation, And don't let the birth rate fall; The Ornamental Comfort Station, Will be on the Green by fall.33

AYE SOMETHING WRANG

The Scots are legendary for two things: fishing and lament-ing. To "lament" means to wail, to cry out in grief. That's exactly what a bagpipe does. They even call some of their songs laments. And they had plenty of reason: they only once really beat the English; everything after Bannockburn turned out the other way. So they are very good at lamenting, and that's only one step short of complaining. They're highly accomplished at that too, and this is an attribute they have passed on to all fishermen and fishing clubs: it's too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too early, too late, too high, too low, too soon, too late, too little, too much. All of this prevaricating dither comes down to us directly from Caledonia.

The Scottish inscription on the wall of an angler's hut on the Spey River says it all.

V\Thiles oer airly, Whiles tae late; Whiles nae water, Whiles in spate; Whiles oer drumly, Whiles tae clair: There's aye something wrang, When I'm feshing here.34

CLUBLIKE ATTRIBUTES

There are some peculiar or m arginal organ izations, of mod-ern origin, which have clublike attributes and deserve mention only to distinguish them. They are like distant relatives at the farthest reaches of the family tree.

One branch of these is the literary group, organizations per-petuated in print-such as in Field & Stream or some such magazine-for the benefit of a national readership. One thinks of Ed Zern and his Beaverkill, Schoharie, Willowemoc & Esopus, Small Mouth Bass, Wall-Eyed Pike, Fall Fish, Red Fin, Mud Puppy, Snapping Turtle, Eel & Chub Club-the only club of which he was ever a member. There is also the Madison Avenue Dry Fly, Bloody Mary and Labrador Retriever Society, and one organization created by author Corey Ford known as the Lower Forty Shooting, Angling and Inside Straight Society. There are surely more. These are of course illusory, but fisher-men have long cherished illusion. I mention them only to make sure you understand they are not forgotten.

So, too, with the broader-gauged professional societies like

The Angler's Club-Weighing In by Louis Wain. From the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (1898).

the Theodore Gordon Fly Fishers, the Izaak Walton League, and even the Anglers' Club of New York. These are less illuso-ry. But they are not fishing clubs, even though their members may be fishermen. The New York Anglers don't have any water of their own, so they announce their periodic visitations en masse to your place.

Similar are the "mission" organizations: these seem to be known as much for the alphabetical abbreviations as anything else: CRSA, CCA, ASF, TU, and the rest. They have some club attributes, pretty well diluted, but the mission drives the agen-da. They can be zealots and at times insufferable. Hear what Howell Raines thought about Trout Unlimited while fishing through his midlife crisis.

You would think that anyone who belonged to an organization with a name as stupid as "Trout Unlimited" would have a sense of humor about it. I certainly felt amused- well, actually embar-rassed-when I sent in $2o.oo for a family membership for me and the boys because Dick Blalock said we had to be members to be invited on the semi-annual fishing trips. It did not take long to dis-cover that if you were going to rename Trout Unlimited, you might go for Nerds, Dweebs and Wonks. It combines the dorkiness of the Audubon Society, the moral indignation of Greenpeace and the political self-congratulati on of the Sierra Club. The social ambiance is a schizoid mix of Woodstock Nation and Skull & Bones.35

Let me hasten to add that I am a life member of TU, having survived my own midlife crisis.

FAITH OF OUR FATHERS

One function served by fishing clubs is the preservation of such things as customs, morality, and tradition. Some go fur-ther than this and seek to preserve an environmental or attitu-dinal status quo: "We have been doing things right for a long time, so why change?" "This is the way it has always been." "If it was good enough for old what's-his-name, it should be good enough for us." Some preserve everything, even their refuse. The model for this, if not the inventor, is the Fly Fishers Club of Brooklyn on the Little Beaverkill in the Catskills. For years- before they finally had to change clubhouses-every empty bottle of liquor consumed at the club, chiefly in the walk-up elevated first floor living room, was neatly stored underneath the porch. I don't know if a count was ever made; the practice started sometime after the turn of the nineteenth century and extended well past World War II. In addition, none of the furnishings, such as they were, were ever changed or ever even cleaned-at all, not one whit or for any reason. That includes the rugs, which were so caked with mud, dust, and assorted riverbed debris as to be positively alive. Alfred W. Miller, writing as Sparse Grey Hackle, describes this in "The Lotus Eaters" from Fishless Days.

Aside from the fire, the sole artificial illumination in the cabin is an old-fashioned kerosene lamp, scroun ged from a country church. Directly beneath it is a small table upon which each member, as he enters, deposits his bottle. Add itionally, there is a pitcher of the icy

FALL 2004 9

Herbert Hoover receiving the 1931 Presidential Salmon from Walter Crossman.

Courtesy of the Penobscot Salmon Club.

spring water that flows perpetually from a pipe in the yard-water that is agony to the teeth and a frigid benediction to the palette. No one can recall clearly how long the lamp and table have been there, but all agree that the lamp has leaked kerosene upon the table- and into the pitcher-ever since it was filched. You may think that the leak might be repaired, or that the table might be moved, or at least that the pitcher might be shifted, but that is because you do not know the Brooklyn Fly Fishers.36

PRESID ENTIAL AMBITIONS

It may be true, as Arnold Gingrich has suggested, that in fly fishing, you will meet, if not a better class of people, a better class of fishY Look at the Penobscot Salmon Club of Bangor, Maine. Historically, the first Atlantic salmon caught in the Bangor Salmon Pool in the Penobscot River became as much a symbol of spring as the melting of snows in that Maine commu-nity. Competition arose between two leading hotels to purchase this fish and offer it to their guests. In 1912, angler Karl Anderson sent the second salmon caught that year to U.S. President

10 TH E AMERICAN FLY FISHER

William Howard Taft as a statement designed to emphasize the city's honor and respect for him. After that, the competition grew and was keenly encouraged among fishermen to catch the first salmon for the purposes of presidential presentation. This fish would be bought from the angler who caught it, at first either by local businessmen or by the Penobscot Salmon Club. It was then shipped to Washington with a delegation of local notables to be appropriately photographed and interviewed. It became the club's tradition to take over this event. Unfortunately, it died out in 1954, but was, along with the club, revived in 1981 and continued through 1992.

President Herbert Hoover, in his charming little book, Fishing for Fun and to Wash Your Soul,38 describes the photo-graphic hoopla that grew up around the event. He especially remembers one fish he received that, before the photo-op arrangements could be made, was decapitated by the chef and cleaned, and the tail chopped off. When advised of his photo-graphic duties, the chef, unfazed, stuffed the carcass with cot-ton and sewed its various parts together. It was carefully held

by President Hoover, and several good pictures were taken before the stuffing began to fall out.39

In 1981, the federal delegation included Maine Governor Joseph C. Brennan. He was having trouble holding the fish for photographers, and one of them asked if he had had much experience as a salmon fisherman. "The only fish I've ever met," replied the governor, "were in poolrooms."4°

The year 1993 should have been the last year. Scott Westphal caught the first fish on May 2. However, it was still in his freez-er in early August. The Clinton administration couldn't get the chief to focus on this event-he had other fish to fry, so to speak-and it got palmed off on Vice President Gore. He and his staff showed no interest. Eventually, the Penobscot Club gave up trying to make arrangements with the White House, and Westphal and his dog Clancy simply ate the presidential fish.41

A BETTER CLASS

Some clubs have things others covet. For instance, the 188o membership list of the Restigouche Salmon Club of Matapedia, Quebec, included these members:

William K. Vanderbilt Chester A. Arthur Hugh Auchinloss Robert Goelet Robert G. Dun William E. Dodge David M. Goodrich

Howard Heinz Thomas Lamont August Belmont Mark Hanna Pierre Lorrillard Percy Chub Sanford White42

Any club treasurer facing a needed assessment can appreci-ate a membership list like that. Sanford White is an interesting guy; he was an architect and designer of country estates in the Adirondacks and in Quebec/New Brunswick for his fellow club members. He was a fly tyer and gave his name to a favorite fly of mine.

One evening, a member of the Restigouche Salmon Club had varnished and doped a collection of flies he intended to use the following day. He put these on a string to dry and hung the string across the club dock on the Restigouche River. During the night, Sanford White couldn't sleep well, got up for a walk, and went out onto the dock. He stumbled into and through the line of flies without knowing what it was. The next morning, the other member was quite upset to discover that his flies were gone. White, without confessing his guilt, immediately sat down and tied the fellow a new fly: black and silver, with a small jungle cock feather on each side, and some red in the head. The other member used it that day and caught a huge salmon. He came back that evening, singing the prais-es of this new fly, and wanted White to tie him an even dozen. He also wanted to give it a proper name; what should he call it? White thought about that for a minute and then said, "Let's call it the 'Nighthawk."'43

Alas, White came to a bad end. He was gunned down in front of Madison Square Garden-part of which he had designed-by Henry K. Thaw, the jealous husband of White's mistress, actress Evelyn Nesbitt. This proves, I guess, that it may be safer to tie a Nighthawk than it is to fly like one.

PISCATORIAL RECTITUDE

Let me say a final word about fishing clubs as the reposito-ries of not only our traditions but our standards of morality as well. This is especially true of honesty. John Burroughs, the great Catskill naturalist, once said, "I come from a race of fish-

ers; trout streams gurgled around the roots of my family tree."44 And in the same vein, Grover Cleveland, twice presi-dent of the United States and the only one to have been elect-ed to two nonconsecutive terms, once observed that "At the outset, the fact should be recognized that the community of fishermen constitute a class or sub-race among the inhabitants of the earth."45

Now that's quite startling, when you think about it. A dis-tinct race. On your next census questionnaire, instead of Caucasian, African American, or Latino, put down fisherman, and see what they do.

I'm not at all surprised, however, because it explains a lot to me about fishermen, and hence fishing clubs. Why is the gen-eral public suspicious about the degree of honesty to be expected from fishermen? It's basic to our nature-in our very genes. There's no malice involved. You see, as John Gierach has observed, the things that happen between anglers and fish have always been open to interpretation. And whenever you have interpretation, your judgment becomes clouded by your expectations.46 That's why fishing club logs have never been required to be under oath.

In his little book, Fishing and Shooting Sketches, first pub-lished in 1901, President Cleveland put it this way.

Of course, the notion must not be for a moment tolerated that deliberate downright lying as to an essential matter is permissible. It must be confessed, however, that inescapable traditions and cer-tain inexorable conditions of our brotherhood tend to a modifica-tion of the standards of truthfulness which have been set up in other corners. Beyond doubt, our members should be as reliable in statement as our tradition and full enjoyment of our fraternity membership will permit.47

This sketch of Grover Cleveland appears in Fishing and Shooting Sketches by Grover Cleveland (New York:

The Outing Publishing Company, 1906, 17).

FALL 2004 11

By

Grover Cleveland

Fishing and Shooting Sketcl:!es

Thu.boal.elc>k ,,,.,j 1<11'

,, ... o ... S..(IQ('t&lll"M•IVJI.

Fishing and Shooting Sketches by Grover Cleveland can be found among the many titles in the Museum's library.

Cleveland recognized certain vagaries in this standard. But he felt justified because at the heart of the matter was the notion that a good faith belief in the correctness of a statement on the part of the maker redeemed a great many minor sins. His presidential conclusion was " .. . the matter seems to have been finally adjusted in a manner expressed in the motto: In essentials-truthfulness; in nonessentials-reciprocal lati-tude."48

One hundred years later, John Gierach has advanced our understanding of the problem. It's probably true, he says, that we understate the bad stuff. If it was raining all day, you acknowledge it with "a little wet"; if you got no fish, they were "few and far between"; one 3-inch infant would come out "just a couple of the usual7-inch natives I always put back."

But on the other side, with the good stuff, we get excited and tend to overstate.49 Nine inches equals 13 inches; 13 inches equals 17 inches; 17 inches equals 21 inches; a couple of trout become six or seven. You get the picture. The point is, the resulting distortion of truth is driven, by a more or less con-stant force adjusted seasonally, in two precisely opposite direc-tions. This should have produced a law of, if not physics, at least public speaking. It could be called, say, the principal of equivocating equilibrium. It provides an elegant and ambidex-trous proof that, in the long run and over time, it all evens out.

This was in fact implicit in President Cleveland's sense of "reciprocity." But his unique early contribution has gone unrecognized. This was his demonstration that as it takes two to tango, so it does to recognize the truth. It does not lie sole-ly in the mouth of the speaker, but must be found also in the ear of the listener. Thus, a commandment of truly biblical pro-portions. Our duty, the president advised, is to follow" ... the golden rule of our craft, which commands us to believe as we would be believed ... "so

ENDNOTES

1. Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Common Law (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1923), 1.

2. The Holy Bible, King James Version (Chicago: john A. Dickson Publishing Company, with license to print to William Collins, Son, and Company, Limited,

12 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER

1939), Job 4I:I, 2, 7. All Biblical references herein are to the King James Version. 3. Habakkuk 1:15. 4. John 21:3. 5· Ibid. 6. John 21:4. 7· john 21:5. 8. John 21:6. 9· Ibid. 10. Isaiall 19:10. 11. Isaiah 19:8. 12. Dame Juliana Berners, A Treatise on Fishing with a Hook (New York:

North River Press, Inc., 1979). Reprint of the ed ition published by Van Reese Press, New York. Originally titled A Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle, it was first printed in the Bake of St. Albans by Wynken de Worde in 1496. It was translated to modern English by William Van Wyck in 1933. References herein will be to the North River Press 1979 edition.

13. Berners, 13. 14. Ibid., 13. 15. Ibid., 17· 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. john Gierach, Sex, Death and Fly Fishing (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1990), 2. 19. Berners, 18. 20. References to Isaac Walton, The Compleat Angler (1653), are from edi-

tor John Major's 1889 edition (London: john C. Nimmo). 21. Walton, 13. 22. james Prosek, The Complete Angler (New York: HarperCollins

Publishers, Ltd., 1999), 78. 23. Nick Lyons, Fishing Widows (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc. , 1974),

17-18. 24. Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Fisherman (Santa Barbara and Salt Lake

City: Perrigrine Smith Inc., 1978), 38. 25. Walton, 305. 26. Ibid., 203. 27. Ibid., 204. 28. Prosek, 124- 25. 29. Walton, 328-29; see note to text on p. 43 regarding the Thatcht House

in Hoddesdon. 30. Ibid., 354-55. 31. Songs of the Edinburgh Angling Club (Edinburgh: privately printed,

1879), xii. 32. Ibid., 7-8. 33. R. G. Bell, Whoops for the Wind (New Haven, Conn.: Tantivy Press,

1999). 53· 34· Bell, iv. 35. Howell Raines, Fly Fishing through the Midlife Crisis (New York:

William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1993), 160. 36. Sparse Grey Hackle [Alfred Miller], Fishless Days, Angling Nights (New

York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1921), 209. 37. Arnold Gingrich, The Well-Tempered Angler (New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, 1959), 7. 38. Herbert Hoover, Fishing for Fun and to Wash Your Soul (New York:

Random House, 1963). 39· Hoover, 79-80. 40. Ed Baum, Maine Atlantic Salmon: A National Treasure (Hebron, Me.:

Atlantic Salmon Unlimited, 1997), 68. 41. Ibid., 68, 70. 42. Sylvain Gingras, A Century of Sport (St.-Raymond, Quebec: Les

Editions Rapides Blancs Inc., 1994), 55- 56. Translated by R. Meredith . 43· Ibid., 56-57. 44. Quoted in John Merwin, Well Cast Lines (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1995), 36. 45. Grover Cleveland, Fishing and Shooting Sketches (New York:

Abercrombie & Fitch Co., 1966), 23. 46. John Gierach, The View from Rat Lake (Boulder, Colo.: Pruett

Publishing Company, 1988), 83, 136. 47· Cleveland, 105. 48. Ibid., 106. 49· John Gierach, Standing in the River Waving a Stick (New York: Simon &

Schuster, 1999), 112. 50. Cleveland, 113.

A Hoard of Mysterious Salin on Flies by Frederick Buller

Figure 1. Samples of flies (a-h) from the eight basic Palmer patterns that were included in the box marked "Unusual Salmon Flies (circa

188o)" together with two lures (i-j), i.e., a grasshopper (i) and a beetle (j) . The one oddity in the hoard is the winged striped fly (k), which is

dressed on a smaller hook. It is probably an imitation wasp. I have subsequently discovered that the items belonged to the late Tom Kenny, who had been a popular member of the Flyfishers' Club.

I n 1994, at a rummage sale at the Flyfishers' Club, I bought a collection of some thirty or so flies (lot 25) in a

box marked "Unusual Salmon Flies (circa 1880) ." Since then, I have shown these flies to many knowledgeable fly tyers and quite a few collectors of anti-quarian tackle without finding anyone who can say with any degree of certain-ty what they are. Indeed, I even sent a few sample flies to David Zincavage, who, I was told, was the most likely per-son in the United States to be able to identify them. Sadly, he too was unable to do so.

In an attempt to classify the contents of the box, I have divided them into a group of eight (Figures 1a-h), which I am bound to call flies because they have hackles or wings, or hackles and wings. Two other items (Figures 1i and 1j), a grasshopper and a beetle, must be classed as lures.

All the items are tied on twisted gut-eyed Limerick japanned hooks of superb quality, some of which are weighted (with lead?). The dressings on nearly all of the flies give them the char-acteristic humpty-backed segmented body that we can readily identify with caterpillars, and I suspect that the users imagined them to be attractive to salmon in an age when most fishermen believed that salmon would take baits or flies in order to assuage their hunger.

Eleven of tlle flies are dressed with pairs of sea-green-colored bead eyes. My first success in finding a likeness to earli-er patterns that might lead me to discov-er their provenance was an illustration of a spinning bait with a segmented caterpil-lar body, called a Devil, which Chris

Sandford reproduced in his The Best of British Baits (1997).1 Sandford's source was an illustration in T. F. Salter's The Anglers Guide (1825). 2 "These Devils, or Artificial Caterpillars, are made of leather, silk, etc., of various striped colours, and laced over with gold or brass, and silver thread or wire .. . the swivels are to enable you to spin the bait ... " (Figure 2).3

The nearest nonspinning lures with a caterpillar look (Figure 3) that I can trace in early published works are illustrated on page 57 in Hewett Wheatley's The Rod and Line published by Longman, Brown, Green & Longman (1849).4 In his book, Wheatley gives very detailed dressings for all the grubs illustrated in Figure 3 and identifies them as follows: 1 is a grasshopper, 2 is a cabbage grub, 3 is a wasp grub, and 4 is a mayfly nymph-or, as he calls it, "a Green Drake in its grub state."S It is the only grub dressed with hackles and therefore bearing a resem-blance to the mysterious salmon flies, so I include Wheatley's dressing here: "The body is made of pale, dirty-yellow silk chenille, ribbed with brown silk, or a fibre from the common cock pheasant's tail. The wing is the usual mallard's feather stained a greenish yellow. Wind on a speckled ginger feather for legs."6

Interestingly, all Wheatley's lures are dressed on normal-eyed hooks, whereas my collection of flies and lures are all tied with gut-eyed hooks. Wheatley was, of course, as David Beazley points out in his introduction to the reprint of the 1849 edition published by the Flyfishers' Classic Library (2002),7 an early user of eyed hooks. Indeed, W. H. Aldham in his Quaint Treatyse (1876)8 readily accepted Wheatley as their inventor.

Figure 1a

As already noted, the lures that Wheatley described were meant to be imitations of mayfly nymphs, cabbage grubs, wasp grubs, cad baits ( stonefly nymphs), and other grubs. One suppos-es that these were about 1s to about 2 inches long. The core of the baits had lead cast onto the shank of each hook (see 5 and 6 in Figure 3) and were vari-ously dressed to provide different finish-es to imitate the above.

Wheatley had a high opinion of "grub" fishing.

... to succeed with these artificial baits, he [the angler] must use as fine tackle and bring to bear quite as much skill as in the successful use of the fly. Fix to the end of a fly line and a half gut. In low water and bright withal, let at least the last two links, next the bait, be of the finest and very lightly coloured, just to take off the bright glare of white gut. A float,9 not much more than an inch long, merely made of a crow's quill, and a bit of the white shaft of any feather that will fit it, must be so adjusted as to be very little below the sur-face of the water when the bait touches the bottom.

And thus is that bait to be managed. Wherever you have reason to suspect

the presence of fish, whether in streams or still water, drop the bait as lightly as may be, and when you feel it touch the bottom, communicate to it, by means of very slight jerks of the wrist, that momentum which will cause it to jump three or four inches at a time. Never allow it to remain still; yet let the jerks, though sharp, be short-pro-ceeding from the wrist, not the whole arm, as the arm would be liable to drive the bait too far at once. Watch the action of the float with the greatest care; and, on the slightest deviation you observe from its direct course, strike, not hard, but with great quickness.10

FALL 2004 13

Figure 1b Figure 1c

Figure 1d Figure 1e

Figure if Figure 1g

Figure 1h Figure 1i

Figure 1j Figure 1k

I4 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER

Wheatley then goes on with a little hom-ily on "striking."

I must put the reader in possession of a fact, which does not appear to be general-ly known to anglers; yet it is of consider-able importance as an auxiliary to success. Most fishermen strike upwards-exactly contrary to what ought to be practised. If the motion of striking be upward, the first play of the top of the rod is downward, which slackens the line, and gives the fish an opportunity of shaking the fly out of his mouth. But in striking downward, the first play of the top of the rod is upward, which clearly, by tightening the line, fixes the hook instantly. I may mention, in proof of this being no mere theory, that I have often killed fish, when others were complaining that they came so short as to be scarcely felt:-a feat I consider attribut-able to this method of striking. In striking upward, watch the point of your rod; you will see its first inclination to be down: strike downward, and you will see it spring up;-a secret worth knowing.U

In his introduction, David Beazley doubts the wisdom of striking down-ward, but before the advent of carbon fiber, the users of long, I4- or Is-foot match rods (usually English competition anglers, or match anglers as we call them) required tile stiffest rods so as to transmit the "strike" at the greatest pos-sible speed. Their rods were made with a Spanish reed butt, a middle joint of reed spliced with Tonkin cane, and a top joint of Tonkin spliced with a built cane tip. They knew all about the down move-ment or "bounce" of a rod and would actively test rods12 before purchase, so as to choose one with minimum bounce. The Victorians, on the other hand, used long rods with enough whip in the top joint to allow them to point the rod back over the shoulder (hence the term "giv-ing it the butt"-Figure 4) while playing a big fish.

Whereas Wheatley used his grubs to catch trout and grayling, and Salter's Devil baits were designed to catch trout, it is interesting to note that these pat-terns, altllough they had the same body shape as the circa I88o "salmon flies," were with one exception bereft of the latter's prominent wings and hackles.

Was the dressing of the well-estab-lished but "naked" grubs and Devils with wings and hackles an attempt to create a more successful series of salmon flies that failed to catch on? I do not know the answer, but in Scotland, the method of salmon fishing with a Is -foot fly rod and fly line fitted to a lightly weighted bouncing paternoster tube-fly rig is still practiced by a few highly skilled anglers, Photos by Frederick Buller

Figure 2. Salter's Devils. From T. F. Salter, The Anglers Guide (1825), facing page 1. "These Devils, or Artificial Caterpillars, are made of leather, silk, etc., of various striped colours, and laced over with gold or brass, and silver thread or wire; and

the tail is the shape of a Fish's tail . .. " (p. 109).

Figure 3. From Hewett Wheatley, The Rod and Line (London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longman, 1849), page 57·

sometimes with spectacular success. On what is probably Scotland's best spring salmon river, the North Esk, Ken Adams, the most successful practitioner of this art and a professional gillie, wanted to call his special tube fly the President, but his friends, much to his chagrin, nick-named it the Bogbrush!

Despite the unending thrust of tech-nology and its effect on angling, those who study angling history realize that there are very few new ways or methods of tricking fish into taking our baits or lures, because in principle, these meth-ods are nearly always as old as the hills.

As we have just witnessed, Wheatley's diminutive bite indicator (he called it a float) has now, after one and one-quarter centuries, been reinvented to assist fly fishers, who prefer to call it a strike indi-cator. And would you believe I have recently discovered that the stringer (that all-American device to keep fish fresh until packing-up time) was first illustrat-ed during the fifteenth centuryN

ENDNOTES

1. Chris Sandford, The Best of British Baits (Esher, Surrey, England: Chris Sandford, 1997).

2. T. F. Salter, The Anglers Guide, 6th ed. (London: Sherwood & Co., 1825).

3· Ibid., 109.

4· Hewett Wheatley, The Rod and Line (London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longman, 1849).

5· Ibid., 57· 6. Ibid., 63. 7- David Beazley, introduction, in Hewett

Wheatley, The Rod and Line (Moretonhampstead, Devon, England: Flyfishers Classic Library, 2002, reprint).

8. W. H. Aldham, Quaint Treatyse (London: John B. Day, 1876).

9. This little sliver of float is not the tradition-al kind of float that supports a bait and is so weighted as to leave its brightly painted upper end vis ible. Wheatley anticipates the modern strike indicator-the beloved gadget of many contempo-rary fly fisher.

10. Wheatley, Rod and Line, 49· 11. Ibid. 12. Testing a rod involved holding it 2 or 3 inch-

es above a shop counter before "striking" to see if it touched the counter as a result of a strike. If it did, the rod would be raised 1 inch at a time, until tlle tip failed to touch the counter, at which point tlle bounce could be measured.

13. In my ten-year quest to document all the images of fish and fishermen in English medieval church wal l paintings, I have discovered a clear image (a detail in a St. Christopher wall painting) of what appears to be a five-limbed stringer com-plete with fishes in the village church at Oaksey in the English county of Wiltshire.

Figure 4· Literally "giving it the butt," from a painting by the Irish painter Francis Walker, Salmon Fishing. Prints of this painting were published by Hildesheimer Co.

Ltd. in London and Manchester in 1896, and printed in Austria.

FALL 2004 15

S 0 ME NOTES AND COMMENT

by John Betts

Frederick Buller sent some of his "Unusual Salmon Flies" to John Betts, a frequent contributor to this journal, for his consideration.

A few of his thoughts and comments follow.

I

The two figures from Milward's 1856 catalogue (above left) closely resemble Frederick Buller's figures 1i and 1j on page 14.

Mil.,..'lrd Catalogue·1856 I n Chris Sandford's book, The Best of Brit-ish Baits, there are

citations that Frederick Buller mentioned in his article. One is from T. F. Salter's The Anglers Guide (1825), and others are from Hewitt Wheatley's The Rod and Line (1849). Both of these men look at fat-bodied flies. Others include tllem but do not explore them in the same detail.

I think these flies are older than the date marked on the box. First, glass-bead eyes were in use in the 1850s. William

Blacker was using blue beads like these on pike flies before 1855. I have even found mention of the use of black and blue beads on pike flies in Samuel Taylor's Angling in All Its Branches (18oo; page 168). Second, in Sandford's book, there is a picture of a page from an 1856 Milward's catalogue (shown above). On the lower part of the page is a grasshopper and beetle tllat are exact-ly like Fred's Figures 1i and 1j (shown at top next to enlargements from Milward's catalogue). He sent me one of each, and there is no doubt. These flies are therefore at least as old 1856. If this Milward catalogue shows these two flies, what about the other flies, and why don't we see more of them? Are they tlle same age, or were they merely in the same box when Fred got them?

16 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER

The "normal" -looking flies are, of the ones I have, tied by someone of considerable ability. Creating a body of that size (diameter) and shape is very hard to do and possibly the rea-son for the use of the leather and not wool or cord. These lat-ter two are hard to work into this shape and size and keep it that way. A similar technique was used by John Harrington Keene in his book, Fly-Fishing and Fly-Making (New York: Forest and Stream Publishing Co., 1898, 3rd edition), to build up tlle body using cotton batting (e.g., see page 91 of that edi-tion).

How could one cast them? Spinning and bait casting were still a long way off, and once soaked, these flies would be even heavier. A possible answer is that they were not cast but trolled. Could it be that Fred's flies are hybrids?

Reasons why these flies weren't more prevalent could include:

They needed a lot of material and skill to tie. • They were hard to cast, and if trolled, it meant that they

were only really useful in this less popular form of fishing. • They may not have worked very well.

Such a heavy body, once it got soaked, would have taken a long time to dry out and eventually rusted the hook.

• At a subjective level, they are impressive, but not really very pretty.

I think that it may be a mistake to lump the "normal" flies with the hopper and beetle. Just because they showed up in the same box doesn't mean they are necessarily related. Even though the workmanship of the hopper and beetle flies is not what it is found on the "normal" ones, they could still be assigned to the same period.

Crazy Coots and Mere Farragos by Paul Schullery

Arnold Gingrich's The Joys of Trout (New York: Crown Publishers, 1973). Within the pages of this book

is Gingrich's take on one of the "bad" books of fly fishing, W. C. Prime's I Go A-Fishing.

I N THE PAST COUPLE YEARS, I've enjoyed reading several articles that summarize this or that list of the best fishing books-the best stories, the best entomological treatises,

that sort of thing. This is a long-honored tradition in fly-fish-ing writing: we've always been fond of praising not only our betters but our pals, and that's one of the many civil things about the sport that attracts me.

Yet even a good thing can be carried too far. We should try to keep our balance amidst all the self-congratulatory preening about our great writers. In fact, we need reminding of how genuinely wretched angling writing can get when it is under-taken by someone with special gifts for the work.

The question we should begin with is this: If angling writing is so great, why hasn't anybody else noticed? Imagine that Walton had not existed, and that about half a dozen other major-league writers (Hemingway, for example) had not hap-pened to go fishing. Where would our self-perceived literary reputation go?

Truth is, we elevate our writers because they write about what we love. We think fly fishing is great, so we are nearly incapable of regarding a book about fly fishing as being much

less than great. That's fine, in fact, it's wonderful, as long as we don't expect the rest of the world to be very impressed.

Here in the western hemisphere, mention of lists of great fishing writers inevitably leads to the late Arnold Gingrich, American fly fishing's congenial toastmaster of the 1970s. Gingrich (I never met him, but so collegial are his books that I always think of him as "Arnold") specialized in such lists, culled from his voluminous reading. He was American angling's foremost guide through the sport's literary labyrinths, even if most of us couldn't afford to buy-or even travel far enough to see-copies of a lot of the books he men-tioned.

I came to fly fishing during Arnold's reign as the sport's principal commentator, and it took me a long time to catch on to the darker side of what he accomplished. Being fundamen-tally well mannered, he avoided offering much in the way of criticism. This might seem to have been an odd position for the founding editor of Esquire, for many years among America's most literate and discriminating magazines. But I suspect that one of the reasons that Arnold enjoyed being part of fly fishing's little world was because it was so undemanding

FALL 2004 17

John Waller Hills's A History of Fly Fishing for Trout (London: P. Allen & Co., 1921). Hills gave

Richard Franck's Northern Memoirs a bad review.

WC. Prime's I Go A-Fishing (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873). This book could have had the subtitle,

But don't expect to read about it here.

that way. In the angling world, he could take it easy and just have fun. Besides, being who he was in the big world of American letters, any judgment he did choose to offer on fly-fishing writing instantly went right to the top among the opin-ion makers, so there was no pressure on him to compete for an audience. Why be unpleasant?

Anyway, in his lists and other commentary, Arnold pretty much limited himself to the happy story of the great books, the ones we could generally agree on as essential if not immortal. This worked well for most of us, but it also meant that he either left out or said too little about some of the most inter-esting stuff, which has, of course, also been some of the worst.

After noticing this, I wondered if we need a list of Fly Fishing's Greatest Dogs-the "classic" (to employ angling writ-ing's most overused literary adjective) worst books. After all, most people enjoy watching other people's failures. Here in the United States, the "Darwin Awards;' given annually to people so erring in their ways that they eliminate themselves from the gene pool, are big news. People conduct that same sort of neg-ative-celebration exercise with cars (Edsel fans aside), fashion (when I look at the pictures of this year's "best-dressed" and "worst-dressed," I can't tell them apart), and all manner of other categories of endeavor. Clearly, it seemed to me, we need a list of these awful angling books.1

18 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER

A BAG OF WIND

But I found it a surprisingly tricky list to compile. Everybody knows that there have been countless undistin-guished fishing books, all perfectly forgettable. But that doesn't make them bad, does it? They provided anglers with lots of useful information, and then they became out of date, or were replaced by better books, or just faded away. Fishing books, like mysteries, economics tracts, travel books, cookbooks, and campaign biographies, naturally tend to have a short life expectancy. Failing to earn their authors immortality is hardly a useful measure of their practical worth. Only one of us gets to be Walton.

No, if you want to write an authentically terrible fishing book, mediocrity isn't good enough. You have to stand out somehow. You have to really stink, and the aroma must remain potent across many generations.

Still, it's a tough list to compile even on those terms. I started poorly, assuming this was a subject on which I

could easily get advice. So I asked some very well-read friends to name a few older angling books that they thought measured up to this high standard and that might be considered gen-uinely deathless junk. Their responses were kind of helpful, but it was also a shock, because they despised a couple of

L

BIBLIOTHECA PISCATORIA A CATALO(;UII:OY

BOOKS ON ANG LI NG, T HE F IS H E RI ES

AND F ISH-CULTURE,

13ibliorrrapbical .®ores ann an Uppenllit

C£tatirms touc/Jing on angling and jisliiug from. old Eng(islt authors.

T . WESTWOOD & T. SATCHELL .

Lo:oiDON

W. S AT CHELL, 19, TAV !STOC K STREET, CQVfo:NT GARDEN

r8ll 3.

.l

3o1 BffiUOTHECA PISCATORIA. [PortiOJU of this wor1c. \\'ere reproduced in " Angling, or how to

angle, and where to go," r8S+) --- The angler's oomplete guide to the and

lakes of England. London, Whittaker, r853; Phil!f, J :fl ; second edition, revised aod enlarged. London, Lpnnted at] Winchester, (859. pp. xviii. 184. SO.

--- The ang;ler's guide to the rivers and lochs of Scotland. London, Bogue, [Qther copies) Murray, 1854. fronL, pp. viii. zos. 12°.; 2nd edit. J859· 12° -

--- H istorical sketches of the angling literature of all nations, to which is added a bibliography of English writers on angling. London, j . Russell Smith! 1856. t zO ...

(A slip-shod and negligent work, or :all re;tl A mere f.1rrogo of m:tUer relevant and uTeleva.nt, O:f s"•eepingll from miscellaneous sources, of quot3tiOTT!I gi\-en anJ of so-c11\ed original p.uuges the 1•agueness and unccrtamty ()f which rob them of all weight and nlue. Namt.'tl and d:stes are seldom gi\'l!n, or are given inMX:Uratelr: thus, ' ' Gowe.!'·s Conmione

1656; Fletc:hcr's "Purple Is\:lnd" and "!'!§Catone 16: 1, for 1633: "Country !,7J.J, for 161_,1;

... by lfay of culmination, Walton's ";\ngler,' 1613 for 1653! .

But the crowning blunder of the book occunat llP·. 101-4 the author dcterihe!t at some length what he coneCi\"t'l tO be the

known,'' and then prQCeeds:to inft1rm U8 that they arc nmt: 1n He gh·cs th e suhjt'ct of each cxtrnCUl, :tt. pp. 179-t8_r

the aubjeets, but, th1s .Mr. Ulake,•'s ,·olumc, it is hut fair to :tdd, is redeemed from utter

b,·thee:tcellent ;, Hibllogrn;phical c:nalogue?£ writen; appended to it by the pubhsher, Mr.

- -- T he angler's 50ng book. London1 Cox; Edinburgh, Ol iver and Boyd, 1855· pp. xv. 276. SO.

( Thirty copies were printed on b.rger sheets of paper, of colour&, and thC."W were mixed in the binding.]

[printed znd edit. London j

Angling ; or, how to angle and to go ... ,Vith illustrations. London, 1854. SO. ; otlter London, Routledge 1855, 1858, J86o, 1865 and r ewn 'IICII [1871). 8°.

Old faces in new masks. London. 1859. 8° . .. " A few wor<h on pike."

I I

•.

Title page to Westwood and Stachell's Bibliotheca Piscatoria, and the page that includes the review of Blakey's Historical Sketches of Angling Literature

of All Nations, which begins: ''A slip-shod and negligent work, devoid of all real utility."

books that I always thought were pretty swell. Rather than try to figure out which of us was the Edsel fan, I backed off and decided to go it on my own, following the trail of some earlier critics who have singled out this or that book for its especial awfulness.

The earliest book to get this kind of attention may have been Richard Franck's Northern Memoirs, written in 1658 but not published until1694 (the delay should be a clue, I suppose; did the rejection letters just take a really long time to get delivered back then?). As angling historian John Waller Hills, writing in A History of Fly Fishing for Trout(1921), put it, Franck was a ter-rible writer.

[P] assessor of the most turgid and pedantic style with which mor-tal was ever afflicted . .. . The style of the book may be judged from its title: Northern Memoirs, Calculated for the Meridian of Scotland. Wherein most or all of the Cities, Citadels, Seaports, Castles, Forts, Fortresses, Rivers and Rivulets are compendiously described. Together with choice Collections of Various Discoveries, Remarkable Observations, Theological Notions, Political Axioms, National Intrigues .... 2

The title goes on like that for a long time. After a while, it even mentions that there's fishing in the book. And, not content with his vile writing style, Franck took time to insult and ridicule Izaak Walton himself, further alienating many readers.

Even the congenial Gingrich (a devout Walton reader), called Franck a "crazy coot."3

On the other hand, Franck contributed some of our earliest expert writing on Atlantic salmon fishing. N. W. Simmonds, in Early Scottish Angling Literature (1997), captured the ambiva-lence we must feel about Franck, when he wrote that "he was a Cromwellian trooper, a religious bigot, a bag of wind and an abominable writer but he was clearly a real angler who fished in Scotland and possessed much knowledge."4 Readers willing to plow through his prose could learn a lot. This sort of authoritative usefulness kind of compromises the classic awfulness of Franck's book. Let's try another.

SLIP-SHOD WORK

And let's skip the 1700s- hastily passing over some writers whose only distinction was that they had the good taste to know whom to plagiarize-to a singularly annoying little book by another British writer, Robert Blakey's Historical Sketches of Angling Literature of All Nations (1856) . This book was so full of mystifying information and apparent lies that Thomas Westwood and Thomas Satchell, in Bibliotheca Piscatoria (1883), delivered against it my all-time favorite literary slam: "A slip-shod and negligent work, devoid of all real utility. A mere

FALL 2004 19

Cover of George M. Kelson's The Salmon Fly (London: Geo. M. Kelson, 1895). Among the rulers of the British salmon scene for many years, Kelson was eventually

done in by his goofy natural history, his passionate devo-tion to absurdly obscure details, and his willingness to take credit for patterns apparently developed by others.

farrago of matter relevant and irrelevant, of indiscriminate sweepings from miscellaneous sources, of quotations incor-rectly given and of so-called original passages the vagueness and uncertainty of which rob them of all weight and value."5

And yet for his day, Blakey wasn't all that bad a writer. As long ago as 1894, Fishing Gazette editor R. B. Marston, while admitting that Blakey "made some very curious blunders in dates, etc.," said that he deserved our "critical indulgence."6

Besides, Blakey produced several other works on angling that were well regarded. Vexing man, but I'm not sure his book measures up to our criteria. Hardly any modern fly-fishing readers have ever heard of it, and that doesn't indicate the Edsel-grade level of immortality we're looking for here.

Some have singled out W. C. Prime's I Go A -Fishing (1873) as a true turd in the literary punchbowl. It was Gingrich who noted that the title itself is something of an error, and indeed, the book could have had a subtitle, But don't expect to read about it here. As Gingrich said in The Joys of Trout (1973), "try-ing to get to the fishing in Prime is like the proverbial attempt to pick flyspecks out of pepper with boxing gloves on."7 So I'm not sure if this makes it a bad fishing book, or just makes it not a fishing book at all. It's easy and enjoyable enough to

20 T H E AMERICAN FLY FISHER

Louis Rhead's American Trout -Stream Insects (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1916).

Rather than being judged merely bad, it has become thought of as the great literary tragedy

of angling en tomology.

read, if you don't care that you're not reading about a guy who actually did go a-fishing.

George Kelson's magnificently produced and encyclopedic The Salmon Fly (1895) has gotten its share of votes, too. Kelson was among the rulers of the British salmon scene for many years, and his big book has experienced occasional reprinting to satisfy the recent need for authoritative information on those grand old patterns. But as Andrew Herd explained in The Fly (2001), Kelson eventually got thoroughly and deservedly crosswise of his fellow anglers, and in a devastating published debate with the same R. B. Marston mentioned above for his kindly defense of Blakey, "Kelson's credibility was shattered."8

His general arrogance (Herd refers to Kelson's "breathtaking chutzpah"), his goofy natural history, his passionate devotion to absurdly obscure details, and his willingness to take credit for patterns apparently developed by others eventually did him in.

But people still cherish his book. I'd love to own a copy myself. Atlantic salmon fly tyers with an interest in the tradi-tional Victorian-era patterns admire it with near-scriptural intensity despite Kelson's ditherings. If a fishing book has this long and hearty a life, even if it does so despite the author's arrogance, can it really be all that bad?

A GLORIOUS FAILURE

Louis Rhead's American Trout Stream Insects (1916) occupies the most peculiar position of all in angling entomology. Rather than being judged merely bad, it has become thought of as the great literary tragedy of that field. Rhead, a gifted, widely hon-ored commercial artist and illustrator who wrote or edited sev-eral other excellent fishing books, studied the stream insects and forage fish in eastern American streams (well, those near New York, anyway) for several seasons. His book contains live-ly and convincing color portraits of them, as well as his often somewhat bizarre fly patterns. But he ignored scientific nomenclature in his hatch catalog and completely abandoned several centuries-worth of existing fly patterns. By thus cutting himself off from the known traditions and wisdom, he com-mitted both literary and commercial suicide. As Gingrich put it, "Rhead's remarkably original work, perceptive almost to the point of divination and augury, was too generally shrugged off as the amateurish fancy of a dilettante, or dismissed as a sales gimmick for specific flies of his own creation .... "9 (There was more to Rhead's failure, by the way. The New York angling establishment of his day apparently had it in for him, and it isn't fully clear why. But it cost him.)

So is this book of Rhead's authentically bad, or just misguid-ed, or the victim of circumstances? His failure was so spectac-ular that it alone has guaranteed a sort of perverse immortali-ty for him, as an object lesson for later writers. But is that enough to make our short list of fly- fishing flops? I'm not sure. Gingrich was right; there was something very like genius at work in Rhead's book, and if it went wrong, it still had things to teach us. It was, as the saying goes, a glorious failure. And his illustrations of angling scenes made him the Dave Whitlock of his time. Rhead's distinctive pen-and-ink portrayals of fly fish -ers on the stream are still among my favorite; I am very pleased to have one on the cover of my history of American fly fishing. (Rhead's career ended in a fittingly quirky way. According to the obituary in the New York Times, 30 July 1926, Rhead died from heart failure some days after a Herculean struggle land-ing a 30-pound turtle with hook and line. The turtle had been "devastating trout ponds on his place.")

NINETEEN - PLUS EDITIONS

One last problematic expert demands our attention. I con-clude my list with a bow toward my personal favorite "bad" book, Minnesota tackle merchandiser George Leonard Herter's nearly monumental Professional Fly Tying, Spinning and Tackle Making Manual and Manufacturer's Guide, first published in 1941 under a slightly different title (see illustration on page 22). My copy is the "revised nineteenth edition;' published in 1971. At 584 pages of small print, it is one of the longest and most infor-mation-packed fishing books by any single author, ever. And I include it here for one reason only: his conspicuous absence from conversations on the subject of angling literature in the sport's more urbane and proper circles. Except for Montana writer Charles Brooks, who mentioned Herter's book fondly a couple of times in his own books (but who would never have characterized himself as urbane or proper), and who, I think, sensed a kindred spirit in Herter's brusque pronouncements, the literary authorities in angling-writing's mainstream seem usual-ly to have pretended that this apparently very briskly selling book didn't exist. Herter or his book apparently somehow so offended Gingrich and the other modern tastemakers that they effectively eliminated him from their consciousness, and, thus, from the consciousnesses of their readers.

Herter was an outsider, of course, a boisterously self-promo-tional, unpolished, and belligerently confident writer from America's uncosmopolitan upper Midwest. He was socially remote from the refined sensitivities of the East Coast centers of angling leadership. He also was inclined to take broad cred-it for a lot of stuff, and to verbally dump all over competing credit-takers whom had long been sainted by the angling establishment. None of this would have helped endear him to the sport's literary chroniclers.10

Whatever Herter's offense may have been, it resulted in a strange professional isolation that seems more mystifying to me as the years pass. It is mystifying because someone-in fact, quite a lot of someones-still managed to find and buy the book. In 1953, for example, Herter claimed that 400,000 copies had already been sold, a fabulous rate for any book in any cat-egory, much less for a book in a field in which the sale of 2o,ooo copies is a pretty big deal even today.

Do I believe Herter that it really sold that many copies? Maybe, maybe not. Having a widely distributed (and equally outspoken) catalog in which to steadily promote a book makes a huge difference for sales, no question about that. I do know that the book had more reprintings than almost all other mod-ern fishing books, and even if the printings were small, it must have sold a lot of copies.

So for all his irritating, opinionated, and sometimes off-track pronouncements, Herter seemed to have a huge reach among anglers, at least before the fly-fishing renaissance that began in the 1970s (the 1974 Herter's catalog included testimo-nials for the book by Herbert Hoover, Ted Trueblood, and oth-ers). His book, like his opinions, was fairly homemade (as were his other books, such singular titles as the Bull Cook Book, in three volumes, and his manual on life, written with his wife Berthe, How to Live with a Bitch) . He displayed the worse traits of many of his predecessors in this little junk-book sweep-stakes I'm running here. He was Franckian in his self-impor-tance. He was Kelsonian in that he claimed to have originated a lot of things that the mainstream writers saw as having other originators. He was Rheadian in his creation of his own name-brand flies, perhaps most notably showcased in his series of laughably unrealistic color drawings of his own streamer pat-terns.

On the other hand, he was, at least by his own account, vast-ly experienced in fly fishing, and he mixed relentless cranki-ness with a startling awareness of environmental issues. And his book is undeniably full of really useful information and advice. Maybe that mixture of combativeness, sensitivity, expertise, and weirdness was just too much for our more gen-teel writers to deal with. But they should have tried.

Enough. Others come to mind and demand their turn. I could exercise my moods on Frank Forester or Charles Southard or several others, but I think a pattern has already emerged. This isn't working very well. Despite the occasional literary outrage in our history, it's hard to make a good list of bad books (and, yes, I've chickened out entirely when it comes to dealing with the books of living writers). We each may recall a few books that we disliked, but as a group we fly fishers just haven't been directed toward systematic disapproval the way some other passionate specialists seem to be. Even the few books that past generations have gone out of their way to revile haven't been without merit and friends.

We seem to cherish our cranks and our crackpots almost as much as we adore our geniuses, and on our more lucid days we have to admit that the line between these types is probably pretty thin .

As a writer, and as a believer in the free speech that is the

FALL 2004 21

George Leonard Herter's Professional Fly Tying and Tackle Making Manual and Manufacturer's

Guide, second edition (Waseca, Minn. : Brown Publishing for Herter's, Inc., 1941).

Illustrated by Le Roy Miller. This is the author's personal favorite "bad" book.

only hope for writers and readers anyway, I have trouble with the very concept of a "bad book." There are books by stupid authors, misguided authors, painfully untalented authors, dis-honest authors, brilliant but twisted authors, pedestrian authors, and authors who are genuinely bad people. But none of that is ever the book's fau lt, is it?

It may not be true that I never met a fishing book I didn't like, but I've only met a few that were irritating enough to get seriously worked up about. As much time as we fly fishers have spent disagreeing about this or that theory or technique, most of us do seem to have maintained a healthy tolerance for our wri ters. They're probably about as good as we deserve, and there seems little question that they're as good as we want them to be.

ENDNOTES

1. Before rea lizing that there were some interesting pat terns to be observed in the histor ica l popularit y or notoriety of angling books, and before organizing thi s essay, I discussed some of these same books a nd authors in previous publications: Anzerica 11 fly Fishing: A 1-/istory (New York: The Lyons Press, 1987) and Royal Coachman: The Lore and Legends of Fly Fishing (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999) .

22 TH E AMER I CAN FLY F ISH E R

2 . jo hn Wall er 1-lills, A History of Fly Fish ing for Trout (Rockv ille Center, N.Y.: Freshett Press, 197 1 rep rint of a book o riginall y published in 1921 ), 57·

3. Arnold Gi ngri ch, The Fishing in Print: A Guided Tour through Five Centuries of Angling Litemture (New York: Winchester Press, 1974), 53·

4· N. W. Simmonds, Early Scottish A11gli11g Literature (Shrewsbur y, England: Swan Hill Press, 1997), 11.

s. Thomas Wes twood and Thomas Sa tchell, Hibliot.h eca Piscatoria (London: W. Sa tchell , 1883), 34·

6. R. B. Marston , Walton and Some Earlier Writers 011 Fishing (London : Ell iot Stock, 1894), 56.

7. Arnold Gingri ch, The Joys of Trout (New Yo rk: Crown Publishers, 1973), 171.

8. Andrew Herd, The Fly (Ellesmere, England: The Medlar Press, 2001),

339· 9. Gingrich, The Joys of Trout, 177. Gingri ch also quotes angling historian

Austin Hogan, who had similar thoughts about what Rhead tried to accom-pli sh: " In retrospect, it seems strange to find that the finger pointed by Louis Rhead , the off-beat designer of curio us imitatio ns, was the finger o f a prophet. Nymph, streamer and bucktai l have kicked the old-fashioned wet fly into the curio cabinet. And th e dry fl y, so ab ly presented by th e ge ntl e T heodore Go rdon, and so full of promise, has beco me just a status symbol" (Joys of Trout; 178) . Gingrich, of course, was writing more than th irty years ago, so he was quoting a n unnamed art icle by Hogan that must have been even older. The "old-fashioned" wet fly has neve r really disappeared, and the dry Oy has gone on to experi ence countless new permutations. But Hogan's points arc still importa nt; Rhead was often on the r ight track.

10. I provide basic background o n Hert er in American Fly Fishing, 183.

PRIVATELY PRINTED FINE LETTERPRESS BOOKS ON SALMON FISHING

Dean Sage, Ten Days' Sport on Salmon Rivers (1997) Intro by David Ledlie. Illus with 7 original etchings by Gordon Allen. Bound and boxed by Gray Parrot. Edition: 55 copies (only 9 still available) $2750

Susan Agnes Macdonald, On a Canadian Salmon River (2003). Intro by Peter Thomas. Available in two editions: Regular, 100 numbered copies on Mohawk Superfine, slipcased, $300. Deluxe large paper, limited to 50 numbered copies on finest quality paper handmade by Katie MacGregor, bound in half morocco, gilt, slipcased, by Gray Parrot. $1200

Stanford White, A letter from Stanford White to Robert Goelet concern-ing Salmon Fishing on the Ristigouche, 19 August. 1897. Printed as a keepsake on the occasion of an evening at the Anglers' Club of New York, 6 May 2004. 7 page pamphlet in wrappers, limited to 25 special large paper numbered and signed copies on a gorgeous paper handmade by Katie MacGregor. $150

Booksellers please inquire about trade discounts on the Sage and Macdonald; the Stanford White pamphlet is net to all.

CHARLES B. WOOD III PO Box 2369 Cambridge, Mass

617-868-1711 cbw@world.std.com

A Treasury of Reels Available once again from the American Museum of Fly

Fishing, A Treasury of Reels chronicles one of the largest and finest public collections of fly reels in the world. Brought together in this richly diverse and popular book, which includes more than 750 reels spanning nearly two centuries of British and American reelmaking, are antique, classic, and modern reels; those owned by presidents, entertain-ers, novelists, angling luminaries, and reels owned and used by everyday anglers.

Accompanied by Bob O'Shaughnessy's expert pho-tography, author Jim Brown details the origins of this fascinating piece of technology, from a 13th century Chinese painting depicting a fisherman using a rod and reel to later craftsmen like Vom Hofe, Billinghurst, and Leonard.

Out of print for almost ten years, A Treasury of Reels is a must-have for collectors and enthusiasts alike. It can be ordered for $29.95, plus postage and handling, either through our website at www.amff.com or by contacting the Museum at (802) 362-3300. Proceeds from the sale of this book directly benefit the Museum.

02238

$29.95 plus shipping

Call (802) 362-3300

FA LL 2004 23

The American Museum of Fly Fishing Box 42, Manchester,Vermont 05254 Tel: (802) 362-3300. Fax: (802) 362-3308 EMAIL: amff@together.net WEBSITE: www.amff.com

}OIN! Membership Dues (per annum)

INDIVIDUAL Associate Sustaining Benefactor Patron

GROUP Club Trade

$35 $60 $125 $250

$50 $50

Membership dues include four issues of the American Fly Fisher. Please send your payment to the Membership Director and include your mailing address. The Museum is a member of the American Association of Museums, the New England Museum Association, and the Vermont Museum and Gallery Alliance. We are a nationally accredited, nonprofit, educational institution chartered under the laws of the state of Vermont.

SUPPORT! As an independent, nonprofit institution, the American Museum of Fly Fishing relies on the generosity of public-spirited individuals for substantial support. We ask that you give our museum serious consideration when planning for gifts and bequests.

BACK ISSUES! Available at $4 per copy:

Volume 6, Numbers 2, 3, 4 Volume 7, Number 3 Volume 8, Number 3 Volume 9, Numbers 1, 2, 3 Volume 10, Number 2 Volume n, Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 Volume 13, Number 3 Volume 15, Number 2 Volume 16, Numbers 1, 2, 3 Volume 17, Numbers 1, 2, 3 Volume 18, Numbers 1, 2, 4 Volume 19, Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 Volume 20, Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 Volume 21, Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 Volume 22, Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 Volume 23, Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 Volume 24, Numbers 1, 2 Volume 25, Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 Volume 26, Numbers 1, 2, 4 Volume 27, Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 Volume 28, Numbers 1, 2, 3 Volume 29, Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 Volume 30, Numbers 1, 2, 3

24 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER

Museum

This year's Manchester Dinner and Sporting Auction was held at Hildene, the historic home of Robert Todd Lincoln.

Manchester Dinner/ Auction On Friday and Saturday, June u and 12,

our trustees gathered in Vermont for their annual meeting, a welcoming cocktail party, and our annual Manchester Dinner and Sporting Auction.

The activities began with a cocktail party on Friday night at Hildene, the his-toric home of Robert Todd Lincoln. It was evident from the gasps I heard as I greeted everyone that we had made the right decision in having our party on the terrace behind the house. The estate is known far and wide for its formal gar-dens and magnificent views of the Manchester valley. The peonies were in full bloom, along with an array of other floral species, and to top it off, it was a perfect summer night in Vermont! The Museum would like to thank Hildene for donating the use of their facilities for our little soiree.

On Saturday evening, our annual Manchester Dinner and Sporting Auc-tion was held at Bromley Mountain's Wildboar Restaurant. About sixty guests

attended this year, and our auctions and raffle did very well. This was our third year at Bromley, and Peter Hand and his staff once again did an excellent job of ensuring that our guests went home full and happy.

Some notable items in the auction this year included guided fishing trips with author and guide Tom Rosenbauer, David Deen of Strictly Trout, and Bill Cairns, known throughout the world as one of the finest fly casters. New Trustee Kris Rollenhagen donated his home on Nantucket for a week. Romi Perkins and cane rod builder Fred Kretchman were each vying for the win, so Kris gracious-ly donated a second week so both parties could enjoy Nantucket. Thank you, Kris!

The Museum wishes to acknowledge our dinner sponsors: Gardner and Ellen Grant, Lawrence and Carolyn Ricca, and Mr. and Mrs. Kristoph Rollenhagen. A thank you also to our donors: Patricia Dupree, Allen Jezouit, and Randall M. Timberdoodle.

We are also grateful to our many auc-tion donors. The Manchester communi-

.. ·-. ··- ' ·• -

THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF FLY FISHING GRAND OPENING May 27, 28, and 29, 2005

Manchester, Vermont Details are in the works for our event!

We will update our members in the next issue of the journal.

Look for us:

October 7 Philadelphia Dinner Auction Merion Cricket Club Haverford, Pennsylvania

October 19-20 Friends of Corbin Shoot Hudson Farm Andover, New Jersey

November 4 Hartford Dinner Auction Avon Old Farms Inn Avon, Connecticut

November 5-6 Trustee Weekend Manchester, Vermont

November 13 Annual Winery Dinner MacMurray Ranch Vineyard Healdsburg, California

November 20-21 International Fly Tyers Symposium Doubletree Hotel/Ballroom Somerset, New Jersey

January 7-9 Denver Fly Fishing Show Denver Merchandise Mart Denver, Colorado

January 21- 23 Marlborough Fly Fishing Show The Royal Plaza Trade Center Marlborough, Massachusetts

January 28- 30 Somerset Fly Fishing Show Garden State Exhibition Center Somerset, New Jersey

February 3 New York Dinner Auction Anglers' Club of New York New York, New York

February 11-13 Seattle Fly Fishing Show Meydenbauer Center Bellevue, Washington

April1- 3 Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo Sheraton Bloomington Hotel Minneapolis, Minnesota

Zl}

FALL 2004 25

DONOR BRICKS

An opportunity to make a difference and become part of the new home of the American Museum of Fly Fishing.

Bricks are $100 each. Bricks may be purchased singly or in a series that can be placed together

to create a larger message.

Purchasers are free to put anything they like on their

bricks (no profanity).

Each brick is 4" x 8" and has room for three lines of text of up to 20 characters per line. That does include spaces and punctuation-for example, putting "fly fishing rules!" on a brick would be 18 characters.

Call (802) 362-3300

26 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER

The peonies were among the flowers in full bloom at Hildene in June.

ty is very generous to us, and along with donors from outside the area, the Museum had a very good night. We raise our glasses to the 1811 House, George Angstadt, Arlington Inn, Barrows House, Basketville, Battenkill Canoe, Battenkill Inn, Battenkill Outfitters, Bistro Henry, Bill Cairns, Claire Murray, Thomas A. Daly, Dansk, Decorative Interiors, David Deen and Strictly Trout, Equinox Valley Nursery, Inn at Ormsby Hill, Inn at Willow Pond, Ira Allen House, Mel Krieger, Robert Lewis, the Lyons Press, Manchester Hot Glass, Manchester View Motel, Mistrals, Motller Myrick's, Mulli-gans of Manchester, Northshire Book-store, tlle Orvis Company, tlle Perfect Wife, Petcetera, Porter House of Fine Crafts, Reluctant Panther, Kristoph Rollenhagen, Tom Rosenbauer, Tom Stoneback, Stonefly Vineyards, Village Florist, and Charles B. Wood.

-DIANA SIEBOLD

A Donation, and New in the Library

G. William Fowler of Odessa, Texas, donated his collection of fly-fishing labels used to illustrate his article "Angling Art: The Winemaker's Label," which appeared in the Spring 2004 issue of the journal.

Thanks to the following publishers and authors for their donations of recent titles that have become part of our col-lection (all titles were published in 2004, unless otherwise noted):

The Overlook Press sent us a copy of

Brian Clarke's The Stream. Viking sent us Mark Kingwell's Catch and Release: Trout Fishing and the Meaning of Life (2003). From Stackpole Books came Cliff Hauptman's How to Fly-Fish.

Countrysport Press sent us copies of Kevin Tracewski's A Fisherman's Guide to Maine and Norm Zeigler's Rivers of Shadow, Rivers of Sun: A Fly-Fisher's European Journal. Frank Amato Publica-tions, Inc. sent us Arthur J. Ingren's Kispiox River.

Upcoming Events October 7 Philadelphia Dinner and Sporting

Auction The Merion Cricket Club Haverford, Pennsylvania October 19-20 The American Museum of Fly

Fishing Friends of Corbin Shoot Short Hills, New Jersey Call for more information November4 Hartford Dinner and Sporting

Auction Avon Old Farms Inn Avon, Connecticut November13 Annual Winery Dinner and Auction MacMurray Ranch Vineyard Healdsburg, California For information, contact Diana

Siebold at (802) 362-3300 or via e-mail at amff2@together.net.

FALL 2004 27

Fishing • Hunting

Specializing in rare and

out-of-print sporting

books with one of the largest

inventories in the U.S .

Fresh and salt water fly fishing • Fly tying

Upland game • Big game Sporting dogs • etc.

Two 72-page catalogs issued each year with no

ti tie repeated for three catalogs. Subscription

price is $5.00 for two years.

We are always interested in buying single books

or entire sporting libraries.

Appraisals done for estate and insurance

purposes.

Judith Bowman Books 98 Pound Ridge Road

Bedford, NY 10506 (914) 234-7543 (phone)

(914) 234-0122 (fax)

"The Uncaged Woman"

28 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER

C ON T R IBUTORS

Dick Bell, a retired Connecticut lawyer, is a member of the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority, vice chair of Yale- New Haven Hospital, vice president of the Connecticut River Salmon Association, and a trustee of the Atlantic Salmon Federa-tion. He has authored law review articles on such disparate topics as "Acid Rain" (1983); poisoned air in the northeast United States and maritime Canada from Ohio Valley power plants in "The Cross of Gold" (1997); an unsuccessful will contest in Connecticut by William Jennings Bryan; and "The Court Martial of Roger Enos" (1999, 2000 ), a serious defection from Benedict Arnold's 1775 march to Quebec. His book, Whoops for the Wind and Other Tales of the Walton Fishing Club, appeared in 1999 through Tantivy Press. He contributed to this journal's Summer 2003 issue with "Mary Orvis Marbury and the Columbian Exposition." He is currently working on another fishing club history for the Potatuck Club in Newtown, Connecticut.

Frederick Buller, a retired London gunmaker, has spent most of his spare time during the last forty years researching angling history. In 2002 he was awarded Country Landowners Associa-tion Lifetime Achievement Award for Services to Angling (and is pictured here immediately afterward at the Game Fair at Romsey on the River Test). He is the author of nine books, the most recent of which-Dame Juliana: The Angling Treatyse and Its Mysteries, coauthored by the late Hugh Falkus-was published in 2001 by the Flyfishers Classic Library. His most recent contribution to this journal was "Fly Fishing for Pike in Britain and Ireland;' which

appeared in the Winter 2003 issue.

Paul Schullery was executive director of the American Museum of Fly Fishing from 1977 to 1982. He is an adjunct professor of American Studies at the University of Wyoming and an affiliate professor of history at Montana State University. His many books include American Fly Fishing: A History (1987), Mountain Time (1984), Searching for Yellowstone: Ecology and Wonder in the Last Wilderness (1997), and Royal Coachman: The Lore and Legends of Fly Fishing (1998). His work as an ecological historian has most recently resulted in Real Alaska: Finding Our Way in the Wild Country (2001), and Lewis and Clark Among the Grizzlies: Legend and Legacy in the American West (2002). For this journal, he most recently con-tributed a "Downstream Dries: Thoughts on Surviving the Historical Process" (Summer 2004).

LETTERS

I read with rapt attention and unabashed envy Robert H. Boyle's essay, '"Flies Do Your Float': Fishing in Finnegans Wake," which appeared in the Spring 2004 issue of the

American Fly Fisher. This is an absolutely stunning, first-rate piece of interpretative textual detective work, and it reminds me why-as a person who wears two hats (lifelong fly fisher-man and English professor)-the American Fly Fisher has become my favorite among all the fifteen or so academic, pro-fessional, and angling journals I regularly receive. To my mind, in its discipline and deportment, your journal weds the meth-ods and substances of both of my vocational and avocational lives, which is to say, it represents nothing less than a pinnacle of glorious crossover achievement. As John Keats might have said, "The American Fly Fisher is a thing of beauty and a joy forever." I don't mean to be high-handed, but I suspect only other angling English professors (Ted Leeson, Nick Lyons, Gordon Wickstrom, and the ghosts ofW. H. Frohock, Norman Maclean, and Louis Owens come to mind) can-or did- fully appreciate the connection, though I am willing to entertain convincing points of view from others who wear two different hats on their noggins.

Speaking as both fly fisher and literature teacher, however, I do have a quibbling footnote (streamnote? mend?) to add to Boyle's estimable work. Initially, though, some background: Boyle writes that American expatriate poet Ezra Pound, James Joyce's Modernist literary peer, "[w]rote about fly fishing in Canto LI, but he botched it by calling the March Brown the 'brown marsh'" (p. 18). In a sense, this statement is true, but it also requires qualification, as I will get to a bit later on in this letter. But first I wonder if I detect here some (perhaps uncon-scious, even unintended) hostility toward poetry, some privi-leging of the work of the novelist over the poet? Surely what is good for the salmon is good for the trout: if Boyle can embrace- even honor-the fact that Joyce's stock-in-trade in Finnegans Wake is experimental word play of every shape, type, and hue, then surely he can accept Pound's own mispri-sions as something more than a "howling blunder," to use Joyce's assessment of Old Ez that Boyle quotes as a kind of deathblow in dismissing Pound's efforts.

Yet there is "the little lower layer," as Herman Melville said in his great fishing book: it isn't my intention to defend Ezra Pound (his politics were execrable), or to be an advocate for High Modernism (which was often too elitist for my taste), but rather to indicate that there is a deeper story behind Canto 51. (For those unfamiliar with Pound's poetry career, the Cantos were, in a sense, his life's work, and he wrote his fragmented epic continuously over a period of forty-five -plus years. Number 51 appeared in The Fifth Dead of Cantos XLII-LI [1937) and was collected in the complete The Cantos of Ezra Pound [1971)). As I say, the story behind the story might be of interest to readers of the American Fly Fisher. The section Robert Boyle refers to is a good deal longer than his brief men-tion leads us to imagine-it is eighteen lines in all and compris-

es a goodly section of a Canto that is itself a total of seventy lines in length. Whether considered stealing, borrowing, recy-cling, or intertextual signifying/sampling, the fact is that thiev-ery was a standard mode of operation for some Modernist poets. In Canto LI, Pound relies heavily on information appro-priated nearly verbatim from Charles Bowlker's The Art of Angling, Greatly Enlarged and Improved, Containing Directions for Fly-Fishing, Trolling, Bottom Fishing, Making Artificial Flies, etc. etc. (Ludlow, England: Proctor and Jones, 1829) . As nearly as can be determined, this was the fourth (or maybe fifth) edi-tion of The Art of Angling (originally published in 1758 by Charles's father, Richard Bowlker, who died in 1779). More than thirty years ago in the treasure-laden Daniel Fearing Angling Collection at Harvard University, I tracked down the 1829 edition Pound had used, and my happy discovery became the basis for an essay, "Ezra Pound and Charles Bowlker-A Note on Canto LI," that appeared in Paideuma: A Journal Devoted to Ezra Pound Scholarship (Winter 1972), an academic journal published at the University of Maine.

Granted, as Boyle claimed, Pound "botched" the transposi-tion of Bowlker's "March Brown" to his own "brown marsh fly." He also mistakenly pegged Bowlker's Blue Dun as a "num-ber 2 in most rivers;' which of course would have made it an absurdly large fly for what I am guessing was supposed to be an Ephemerella or Baetis imitation, when in fact the number 2 came not from Bowlker's printed text but from the frontispiece of numbered colored illustrations of artificial flies, among them the Blue Dun and the Grannom (no. 6, the other fly that figures prominently in Canto LI). I suggest in my antediluvian essay, however, that these errors become less significant or sub-ject to dismissal when we consider that Pound's interest in fly fishing and in the creation of artificial flies summarized in Bowlker reflected his larger intellectual concerns in the Cantos regarding the absolute necessity of embracing positive histori-cal traditions and the importance of meaningful individual, organic craftsmanship that, ideally anyway, resists exploitation and relies on skilled presentation and effective marshaling of abilities. Pound glimpsed the poetry of fly fishing, and in Canto LI it became another example of a creative endeavor that "hath the light of the doer, as it were/a form cleaving to it." In this way, Pound and Joyce may have been closer brothers of the angle than anyone thought.

But readers not tuned into the rarefied world of academic scholarship need not despair-in one of those glorious crossover moments I mentioned earlier, the Paideuma essay was reprinted in the Early Season 1977 issue of Fly Fisherman. Its appearance in that august magazine (one of my other fif-teen or so current periodicals) represented the pinnacle of my professorial career; it is painfully obvious to me that it has been all downhill since then! Anyway, this has become a rather long and circuitous response occasioned by Robert Boyle's excellent article. But I hope it reveals that my enthusiasm and regard are boundless: Viva the American Fly Fisher! Viva Robert Boyle!

RoBERT J. DEMOTT EDWIN AND RUTH KENNEDY DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR

OHIO UNIVERSITY ATHENS, OHIO

I 've read with the greatest delight and profit Robert Boyle's '"Flies Do Your Float: Fishing in Finnegans Wake."' It's top-of-the-line stuff and a great coup for the journal. It proves

conclusively how angling is- and probably always has been-an integral part of our intellectual, moral, and aesthetic life. Angling becomes a vital critical trope for the examination

F ALL 2004 29

of human experience in and out of literature. Seldom does one feel that a writer has exactly the

sensibility or temperament for his subject. Boyle is certainly just the right guy to write about James Joyce and to find that fish-salmonids in particular, their waters, their tackles, and stories-are at the heart of Joyce's grand scheme of things. Boyle's breadth of knowledge of both Joyce and fishing is as stunning as his love of this great work of art, Finnegans Wake, is obvious.

I'd read, I think, all of Joyce except the Wake. I'd even read from Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in public. I'd written about his one play, Exiles. And I'd tried the Wake a couple times and given up after a couple of sessions. I couldn't keep focused, concentrated. I forgave myself for my failure by forget-ting about it. To think about it was to feel guilty as hell for failing the great book.

I think I see a way to wrangle with it, though, now that I have Boyle's compelling model in front of me, showing how, if I have a point of view of my own, if I can find a "destiny" in my reading, then I can do it. I must be pre-prepared as with no other piece of writ-ing.

My wife Betty and I think we'll get two new copies of the book, and every morning after breakfast, one of us will read aloud while the other follows in the text for exactly ten minutes. No stopping to struggle, won-der, or discuss. The reading must go relentlessly ahead, even if it takes a year to get it read. "Stumble ever on!" must be our motto. If one of us notices something par-ticular, we will mark a caret in the margin and maybe gloss it later on our own time or not at all.

On top of all that, I can't help but feel more justi-fied in my own more modest efforts on behalf of angling and Cervantes in Don Quixote and Richard Brautigan in his Waltonian Trout Fishing in America. Angling is itself one of the great tropes.

And now, a story. I was reading away in Boyle's arti-cle, as deeply engrossed as can be, when Betty called to lunch. I was to carry the tray out onto the deck. As I was doing so, I noted that the casserole defied any pos-sible description, and so I casually asked Betty what it was made of. She began to recite the various leftovers in its constituency. But I heard none of the ostensible meanings in what she was saying. Her words became for me, were transformed into, a Joycean riff of purest, dashing language, the rhythms and all. Her recitation of ingredients even took on a strange sort of Joycean "paragraph" structure for me. I was really taken, or rather hearing, aback. I think that what I heard was the truth of Joyce in everything we say all the time, the ori-gins of all discourse in playful, or the play of, words and sounds into which we reach to make meaning. One of Boyle's invaluable lessons for us is that we must keep on "reaching" -as he does-for connection (meaning) all the time. Reach! And reach even farther!

Some article! Some magazine! Some editor! Some Boyle! But even more the man himself, some James Joyce!

GORD ON M. WICKSTRO M A LUMNI PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH B ELLES L ETTRES

AN D LITERAT U RE , EMERITU S FRAN KLIN AN D MARSHALL CoLLEGE

LANCASTER, P ENNSYLVANIA

30 THE AMERI C AN FLY FISH E R

Into the Hoinestretch by Sara Wilcox

"That's quite a building you've got there." Over the summer that comment, or variations thereof, is the one I've heard most frequent-ly from Manchester residents. They're absolutely right. The siding is on and painted, the roof is finished, and the interior walls are in and undergoing their first coat of paint. We also have a beautiful set of steps at our front entrance, and the installation of the hardwood floors is halfway complete. In short, the promise of blueprints, two-by-fours, and plywood is rapidly becoming the reality of a new building and worthy showcase for our extensive collection of art and artifacts. I think I speak for all of the staff when I say the Museum's reopening can't come soon enough.

In mid-May, workers began putting the siding on the gallery exterior.

By the beginning of June, the gallery siding was in place, as was the shingle siding.

Photographs by Sara Wilcox

In early June, stone steps marked where the Museum's front entryway will be.

The future library as it appeared in early June.

The Museum's exterior as of 16 July 2004. The siding is on and painted, as are the doors and trim.

Inside the gallery during June after dry walling was complete.

By mid-June, the front entryway was shaping up nicely.

The library space in mid-July, with the walls primed and the flooring in place.

FALL 2004 31

More people live between Boston and Washington, within an hour's drive of saltwater, than lived in the entire United States when my father was born. It is difficult to digest such velocities of change.

Or their profound impact on us all. The beauty and solitude of trout fishing are still

a welcome antidote to discontent. But solitude itself is difficult to find. Public water is getting crowded. Anglers are forced to share with throngs of other fisherfolk, and with kayakers and float tubers and canoes. Such traffic is perilous and scatters the trout like quail. Many rivers have become a carnival of bad manners.

We are losing our trout streams to unplanned urban sprawl, sewage, industrial effiuents, pesticides, herbicides, dear-cutting, and pavement. Such troubles are not confined to eastern waters. The Au Sable in Michigan is plagued with a daily parade of rented canoes, and the Bois Brule in Wisconsin is not far behind. Popular boat

Preserving private access to over seven miles of blue ribbon limestone

spring creeks in the mountains of Central

Pennsylvania. A limited number of memberships

are still available.

landings in Montana are getting so crowded that traffic cops are needed. The Opening Day celebrations near Denver and Salt Lake City and San Francisco are getting hopelessly crowded too.

Solitude itself is endangered. Fly-fishing still offers moments of quiet felicity,

a sense of serenity and introspection, and the time to sort through things. Fishing is the least important thing about fishing. Solitude is dearly more important.

One can still find such things on the riffiing shallows of Spruce Creek, the still reaches of Warrior's Mark Run, the crystalline headwaters of Penns Creek, and the big sycamore-shaded flats of the Espy Farm. I have come to love these reaches of the Litde Juniata, with the trees like pale-trunked ghosts in the gathering darkness, and the three-star belt of Orion in the twilight sky. Upstream in the gathering darkness, with spent flies pinioned in the film, there are circles in the water.

And solitude.

A Meeting, a Moment

V ermont was in full bloom when twenty-six members of the American Museum of Fly Fishing Board of Trustees met for

an equally fertile meeting June 12 at the Equinox Hotel in Manchester Village. Two new trustees were unanimously elected and wel-comed to the board: Trey Pecor of Charlotte, Vermont, and Kris Rollenhagen of Short Hills, New Jersey.

We discussed many important issues, includ-ing, of course, the Brookside project: construc-tion of the new Museum. A report was made by Building Committee Chair George Gibson and supported by financial reports given by President David Walsh. Things are going very well, and we expect to have a soft opening in late September, with a grand opening next

spring. Other topics of discussion included a capital campaign and future programming.

After the meeting, the group walked through the Museum construction site to observe the progress. We've been thrilled with the commu-nity's response to the look of the building. But just wait until we open: we intend to be even more impressive.

With the completion of our new home, our thoughts will naturally turn toward the future of the Museum as an institution. The possibili-ties are endless, and the future is bright. We hope to soon have a new director in place to add to the energy of our dedicated staff, volun-teers, members, trustees, and friends.

Y OSHI AKIYAMA INTERIM DIRECTOR

THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF PLY FISHING, a nationally accredited, nonprofit, education-al institution dedicated to preserving the rich heritage of fly fishing, was founded in Manchester, Vermont, in 1968. The Museum serves as a repository for, and conservator to, the world's Ia rgest collection of angling and angling-related objects. The Museum's col-lections and exhibits provide the public with thorough documentation of the evolution of fly fishing as a sport, art fo rm, craft, and in-dustry in the United States and abroad from the sixteenth century to the present. Rods, reels, and flies, as well as tackle, art, books, manuscripts, and photographs form the ma-jor components of the Museum's collections.

The Museum has gained recognition as a unique educational institution. It supports a publications program through which its na-tional quarterly journal, The American Fly Fisher, and books, art prints, and catalogs are regularly offered to the public. The Museum's traveling exhibits program has made it possi-ble for educational exhibits to be viewed across the United States and abroad. The Museum also provides in-house exhibits, related interpretive programming, and research services for members, visiting schol-ars, authors, and students.

The Museum is an active, member-orient-ed nonprofit institution. For information please contact: The American Museum of Fly Fishing, P. 0. Box 42, Manchester, Vermont 05254> 802-362-3300.