American

Journal of the American Museum of Fly Fishing

The

Fly Fisher

Tackle

Richard G. TischPresident

Karen KaplanVice President

Gary J. Sherman, DPMVice President

James C. WoodsSecretary

Charles R. EichelClerk

George R. Gibson IIITreasurer

William E. AndersenFoster Bam

Peter BowdenJane CookePeter Corbin

Deborah Pratt DawsonE. Bruce DiDonato, MD

Patrick FordRonald Gard

George R. Gibson IIIJames Heckman, MDArthur Kaemmer, MD

Karen KaplanWoods King III

William P. Leary IIIJames Lepage

Anthony J. MagardinoChristopher P. Mahan

Walter T. MatiaJohn R. McMahon

William McMaster, MDPeter Millett, MD

Bradford MillsDavid NicholsRobert A. Oden Jr.Erik R. OkenStephen M. PeetAnne Hollis PerkinsLeigh H. PerkinsFrederick S. PolhemusJohn RedpathRoger RiccardiFranklin D. Schurz Jr.Robert G. ScottNicholas F. SelchGary J. Sherman, DPMRonald B. StuckeyTyler S. ThompsonRichard G. TischDavid H. WalshAndrew WardJames C. WoodsNancy W. ZakonMartin Zimmerman

Charles R. EichelJames HardmanWilliam Herrick

David B. LedlieLeon L. MartuchPaul Schullery

Parker CorbinBailey HallingbyWoods King IV

Alexander KinseyRobert Longsworth

John NeukomAlbert NicholsDavid E. Nichols Jr.Ben PastorJason M. Scott

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Gordon M. Wickstrom at his tying bench at home inBoulder, Colorado. Photo courtesy of the Wickstrom

family and Boulder Flycasters.

A technologyto advance fishing tackle—attempt-ing to give us the best tools with

which to hone actual skill, and possiblyeven affecting the ways that we fish—ourfascination need not lie solely with the endproduct, but also with how it came to be.What drives change? What is the interplaybetween materials and ideas?A couple of articles in this issue touch

on this. In “Forward Thinking” (page ),Hoagy B. Carmichael explores how tour-nament casting and its competitive per-sonalities pushed the development ofweight-forward lines, from spliced silkto—after World War II—synthetics likenylon and PVC. Then, in “Made by Hand:The Books of John Betts” (page ),Andrew Herd reviews the form and sub-stance of Betts’s published works, manyrecently reissued by Reel Lines Press. Bettsis known for having at some point or othermade every bit of tackle by hand: not onlyrods, reels, and flies, but also lines and evenhooks. His books, says Herd, are “nothingif not works of art, written and illustratedby Betts.” Herd claims that each of Betts’sbooks is an attempt to solve a problem—which sounds suspiciously like tackle itself.Of course, wanting to continue to fish

makes us want to tackle certain environ-mental problems. About twenty-five yearsago, Ronald F. Lasko moved to Cape Codand began fishing and studying its rivers.In , he published a book about flyfishing on the Quashnet and Mashpeerivers, and the sea-run brook trout thatare now limited largely to these waters (ATale of Two Rivers, Schiffer PublishingLtd.). A chapter from that book, “TheTrout,” is excerpted here (page ).

What’s winter without a little art forart’s sake? In spring , James D.Heckman discovered an old New Yorkercover sporting a fly fisherman. He wasinspired to collect all seventeen covers onthe subject, and here, in “Fly Fishing onthe Covers of the New Yorker” (page ), hedescribes seven of these and their artists.Heckman has donated his collection tothe museum and is working with staff ona display for the library. Our own coverfeatures a painting from our collection,Late Summer on the Battenkill. Read moreabout the artist in “George Van Hook: ABalance of Form and Light” (page ).It’s been a busy fall. We awarded Ed

Jaworowski the museum’s first IzaakWalton Award (see page ) and congrat-ulated Paul Schullery, trustee emeritusand former executive director, on hisinduction into the Fly Fishing Hall ofFame (page ). We held events at themuseum, traveled to participate in others,and welcomed new staff (see MuseumNews, starting on page ).In September, the fly-fishing commu-

nity lost Gordon M. Wickstrom, one ofthe museum’s most loyal and enthusiasticmembers and among the most frequentcontributors to this journal. We mark hispassing on pages and and includewords from his friends and fellow fly-fish-ing thinkers John Betts and Harry Briscoe.If fly fishing itself is a tool that can help ustackle pain and problems in our lives, letus use it well, and may we honor thoseanglers we miss with every cast.

K AE

Catherine E. ComarExecutive Director

Yoshi AkiyamaDeputy Director

Christina ColeCoordinator of Events

Sarah FosterDevelopment Associate

Peter NardiniCommunications Coordinator

Patricia RussellAccount Manager

Sara WilcoxDirector of Visual Communication

the American Museum of Fly FishingJournal of

Roger AltmanWilliam E. Andersen

Louis BaconE. M. Bakwin

Foster Bam and Sallie BaldwinAustin and Meg Buck

Jon and Deborah Pratt DawsonEric Dobkin

Gardner Grant Jr.Tim Hixon

Karen KaplanPeter KelloggDan Lufkin

Bradford and Pamela MillsDavid and Margaret NicholsThe Orvis CompanyLeigh and Anne PerkinsEric and M. C. RobertsRobert and Karen ScottNicholas and Jean SelchThree Forks RanchRichard G. TischPaul VolckerDavid and Jade WalshAlan and Nancy ZakonLaurie Zimmerman

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W. Michael BakwinBessemer Trust Co.David J. Beveridge

Timothy and Andrea CollinsJane Cooke

Tom DavidsonH. Corbin Day

E. Bruce and Denise DiDonatoEzra FieldDavid Ford

George and Beth GibsonIntercontinental Exchange

Paul Tudor JonesArthur and Martha KaemmerWoods and Wendy King IIIBill and Francesca Leary

Anthony and Patricia MagardinoRobert McGrawWilliam and Lynn McMasterErik and Jennifer OkenHenry M. Paulson Jr.Stephen and Roberta PeetWilliam and Candace PlattSteven PriceJohn RedpathBobby and Mary RussellFranklin Schurz Jr.Ronald and Joan StuckeyTyler and Francis ThompsonAndrew and Elizabeth WardMark and Dorinda WinkelmanDaniel Ziff

Peter BowdenShannon Brightman

Robert and Debbie BruckerTom ColicchioMark Comora

Anthony DavinoPeter Esler

Timothy GeithnerGeorge and Beth Gibson

Jon GibsonTimothy Grell

James and Susan HeckmanHollenbeck ClubHarold Johnson

Fred and Oli KambeitzKharlovka Company Limited

The Lodge at Jackson Fork RanchChristopher MahanLeon and Shirley MartuchGeorge MatelichWalter and Pam MatiaRobert and Teresa Oden Jr.Rebecca PattersonJoseph R. PerellaJack PittardLewis SachsMatthew and Kerry ScottJason and Deborah SelchSouth Holston River LodgeGeorge Van HookPat WelshJames Wolfensohn

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Kathleen AchorEditor

Sara WilcoxDesign & Production

Sarah May ClarksonCopy Editor

space for FSC info

Steve Zoric and Sarah Bryant

George Van Hook: A Balance of Form and Light . . . . . . . Cathi Comar

Forward Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hoagy B. Carmichael

Fly Fishing on the Covers of the New Yorker . . . . . . . . . James D. Heckman

A Tale of Two Rivers: The Trout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ronald F. Lasko

In Memoriam: Gordon M. Wickstrom . . . . . . . . . . . . John Betts and Harry J. Briscoe

Book Review:Made by Hand: The Books of John Betts Andrew Herd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ed Jaworowski Receives Izaak Walton Award. . . . . .

Museum News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

: Late Summer on the Battenkill, an oil painting by GeorgeVan Hook. From the collection of the American Museum of Fly Fishing.

The American Fly Fisher (ISSN -) is published four times a year by the museum at P.O. Box , Manchester,Vermont . Publication dates are winter, spring, summer, and fall. Membership dues include the cost of the journal() and are tax deductible as provided for by law. Membership rates are listed in the back of each issue. All letters, man-uscripts, photographs, and materials intended for publication in the journal should be sent to the museum. The museumand journal are not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, drawings, photographic material, or memorabilia. Themuseum cannot accept responsibility for statements and interpretations that are wholly the author’s. Unsolicited manu-scripts cannot be returned unless postage is provided. Contributions to The American Fly Fisher are to be considered gra-tuitous and the property of the museum unless otherwise requested by the contributor. Copyright © , The AmericanMuseum of Fly Fishing, Manchester, Vermont . Original material appearing may not be reprinted without prior per-mission. Periodical postage paid at Manchester, Vermont ; Manchester, Vermont ; and additional offices (USPS). The American Fly Fisher (ISSN -) : amff@amff.com : www.amff.com

: Send address changes to:The American Fly FisherP.O. Box

Manchester, Vermont

Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation

The American Fly Fisher (publication number -) is published four times per year (Winter, Spring, Summer,Fall). Editor is Kathleen Achor. Complete address for both publisher and editor is The American Museum of FlyFishing, P.O. Box , Manchester, VT . The journal is wholly owned by the American Museum of Fly Fishing.Total number of copies: , (average number of copies of each issue run during the preceding twelve months; ,

actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date). Paid/requested circulations (including adver-tiser’s proof and exchange copies): , (average; , actual). Free distribution by mail: (average; actual). Salesthrough dealers and carriers, street vendors, and counter sales: (average; actual). Free distribution outside the

mail: (average; actual). Total free distribution: (average; actual). Total distribution: , (average; ,

actual). Copies not distributed: (average; actual). Total: , (average; , actual). Percent paid and/orrequested circulation: .% (average; .% actual).

Martin E. Zimmerman

G V H is an avid angler who is passionateabout nature. He is also an accomplished plein airpainter, one who is deeply inspired by his surroundings

and his desire to balance form and light in all of his works.Van Hook grew up in the Philadelphia area and became

interested in art at a young age. Taking full advantage of his homeregion, he studied the masters on display at the PhiladelphiaMuseum of Art, the Pennsylvania Impressionism artists of BucksCounty, and the Brandywine art traditions from the early twen-tieth century. Van Hook attended Oberlin College and graduatedfrom Humboldt State University with a bachelor’s degree in art.He eventually moved to Cambridge, New York, an upstate townthat attracts and inspires artists of every medium.

This artist has accomplished a great deal throughout hisforty-plus-year career. Van Hook has been featured in coverarticles ( and ) of American Artist magazine, has par-ticipated in numerous single- and multiple-artist exhibitionsin the United States and abroad, has received best-of-showawards throughout the country, and is included in many pri-vate and museum collections, including the AmericanMuseum of Fly Fishing. Van Hook has also become an integral

part of the New York/Vermont region and is recognized bymany as they drive past farm fields, streams, and wooded sec-tions along the road; he is often there wearing his paint-stainedapron, focusing on his canvas and his subject.

George Van Hook has been an enthusiastic supporter ofAMFF for many years. Besides donating the beautiful LateSummer on the Battenkill (..) to our permanent col-lection (currently featured above our fireplace in the museumand on the cover of this journal), Van Hook has consistentlyparticipated in our annual Angling & Art benefit art sale, donat-ed and provided paintings for use in our benefit auctions, andvolunteered his time demonstrating plein air painting at ourpublic programs. His arrival at our offices—whether to just sayhi or drop off some artwork—is always positive, upbeat, andaccompanied by his genuine smile.

Thank you, George Van Hook, for supporting AMFF andbringing happiness to those who watch you paint, purchaseyour art, and appreciate your uncontainable enthusiasm!

C CE D

George Van Hook:A Balance of Form and Light

The artist prepares to sign his artwork with his signature red paint.

Van Hook in his home.

J. M. Stringer Gallery

Sara Wilcox

A , our generation isvery spoiled. We have an ever-increasing selection of graphite

rods in a dizzying array of lengths,weights, and colors, most of which candeliver a fly line with little effort. Qualitywaders breathe, stretch, and—if naturebeckons—a waterproof zipper offersmany of us relief without having to dis-mantle jacket, vest, and suspenders.Light weight large-arbor reels, in dime-store colors that look like Swiss cheese,are very efficient and machined frommaterials that, until recently, didn’t exist.Extruded fly lines, made from syntheticpolymers, some with microscopic bumpsthat reduce friction as the lines passthrough the guides, too have made cast-ing for many anglers easier and moreenjoyable. Computer technology isresponsible for much of it, and linestoday are formulated to complement theadvantages gained by new synthetic rodmaterials and designs, none more sothan the ubiquitous weight-forward line. It was not until the fifteenth century

that the author of the Treatyse of Fysshyngewyth an Angle referenced that a line wasused in the growing sport of fishing witha fly. Lines were made from horsehair,usually taken from the tail of a whitestallion, dyed to suit, and then handtwisted with a loop on one end that wasattached to the top of a wooden rod. Onecould taper the line by decreasing theamount of hair used, and the end towhich the fly was attached was often leftin its natural, undyed state. Reels werenot yet in fashion, and if one were luckyenough to hook a nice trout, the rod wasoften thrown into the river so that thetrout “played” the weight of the rod inthe water until the fish tired and bothwere retrieved. Horsehair lines (later acombination of twisted silk and horsehair), or those made of linen, cotton, orhemp did not stay afloat long but,because floating flies were rarely in use,they matched well with the colorful wetfly patterns that tempted trout in manyEnglish streams.By the mid-nineteenth century, sever-

al British companies had developed aprocess that braided strands of silkwormgut that, when coated with oils and var-

nish, had a smooth outer surface (unlikethe broken loose ends of a used horse-hair line, known as “pinking”) that trav-eled through the flop-ring rod guideswith relative ease. Even when dressedcorrectly, silk lines floated well for onlyseveral hours, so anglers usually broughtseveral reels to the river, each loadedwith a dressed, dry silk line. Over time,one could buy level or tapered silk linesof various designs and combinations ofmaterials that were created to moreeffectively load fly rods so that the anglercould pass (shoot) a portion of the flyline through the ring guides on the for-ward cast. H. Cholmondeley-Pennellwrote in that among his favoriteswas the almost indestructible “cable-laid”lines made of fibrous hemp by theManchester Twine Cotton Pinning Com -pany as early as .

The first recorded in-print referenceto a line that was the precursor to theweight-forward line can be attributed toCholmondeley-Pennell, who as early as had given some thought to how toreliably make casts in inclement weather“while his neighbor, less perfectlyequipped, will find his flies ‘blown backinto his face.”’ Cholmondeley-Pennelldesigned a tapered line that, in his words,

“is to ‘swell,’ or double taper, the casting-line—like the thong of a whip—at a pointso near the ‘casting-end,’ that the whole ofthe ‘swelled part shall usually be betweenthe rod and the fly.’” Cholmondeley-Pennell patented the idea under the nameof Whip-Lash Line, and he had themmade and marketed by his agents, Messrs.D. Foster, of Ashbourne, Kent, in England.

THE IMPORTANCE OFCASTING COMPETITIONS

The sport of tournament casting has itsorigins in America in the s. The firstplug-casting tournament for distance andaccuracy, organized by Dr. James Henshall,was held by the National Rod and ReelAssociation in New York in . Not longthereafter, distance fly-casting competi-tions sprung up in other cities, such asChicago and Kalamazoo, Mich igan (homeof the William Shake speare Jr. Co.). As thesport grew, other casting clubs across thecountry were united in by whatbecame the National Association of Sci -entific Angling Clubs. Soon the LincolnMe morial reflecting pool and a lake in theBronx’s Van Cortlandt Park were used forcompetitions.

A version of this article first appeared in theAnglers’ Club Bulletin (/, vol. , no. ).

Forward Thinkingby Hoagy B. Carmichael

Anglers’ Club member I. H. Bellows competing in the Third InternationalChampionship Fly and Bait-Casting Tournament on the Van Cortlandt Park lake

in August , held under the auspices of the Anglers’ Club of New York.

Important fly tackle mak-ers Reuben Leonard, Hiramand Merritt Hawes, andThomas B. Mills were amongthe leading competitors, aswas Edward R. Hewitt,George M. La Branche, andDavid T. Abercrombie. TheAnglers’ Club of New Yorkwas, when originated in ,a group of like-minded menwho organized a casting tour-nament in New York. A cen-trally located platform waserected by the city ParksDepartment in on aCentral Park tributary pondnear West th Street knownas Harlem Mere. It was builtfor the exclusive use of theclub with a fence around it,and each club member had akey. Men stood on the wood-en planks with their silk linescarefully coiled next to them,casting single-handed split-bamboo rods that requiredboth muscle and good tim-ing, all in pursuit of the elu-sive -foot mark. Several men who often

took home the distance-cast-ing cups had been secretlydeveloping line configura-tions that would help them incompetition. While there wasundoubtedly some conceal-ment involved (one hears ofmen holding their lines insacks until just momentsbefore the contest), by ,Aber crombie & Fitch’s ReadeStreet emporium offered “tournamentcasting lines” under their Imperatrixlabel of imported English braided-silk flylines. Early Anglers’ Club of New Yorkmember Lou S. Darling is credited withdesigning the lengths and dimensions ofthese lines. In their catalog (page), A&F introduced another enameledsilk tournament line, the Touradif,known as the Mansfield (finished in“water color”) that was feet long.

Together, these were the first weight-for-ward lines to be offered commercially inAmerica or the United Kingdom. HardyBros. Ltd. marketed the “Filip” SpecialTapered Salmon and Trout Lines in thethirty-ninth () edition of their soup-to-nuts Hardy’s Anglers Guide. The linesin this case were conceived with thecooperation of, and named for, Philip F.Chenevix Trench, Esq., of Dublin, the cel-ebrated sporting watercolorist. Hardy’sclaim, this time well founded, was that “alonger [fore-line] can be thrown whenshooting, owing to the special form of the

back taper, and the fact that the principalweight of the line is nearer the fly.”

Forward-tapered lines had come out ofthe closet, and anglers were buying them.Tournament casters needed much heavierand more aggressively tapered lines, all ofwhich were homemade and remainedcloaked in secrecy.One such casting enthusiast was

Stanley Forbes who, in , showed up atthe World’s Fair tournament held in SanFrancisco. He, and others, discovered thatone could increase the distances by hand-splicing additional silk fibers into the for-ward portion of a store-bought line. Eachcompetitor had his own shooting-headformula, and the length of the head andthe weight of the forward portion stillwere well-guarded secrets in the verycompetitive world of tournament casting.The various dimensions of his home-spliced forward-tapered line were only apart of the secret that he displayed to theadmiring crowd. Forbes won the all-around championship in the nine events

that he entered using hisunique line and a version ofwhat he called the delayeddouble pull. For most, it wasthe first time that anyone hadseen the double pull, an earlyversion of what is todayknown as the double haul.The Golden Gate Angling

& Casting Club in SanFrancisco was loaded withguys who could cast fartherthan their -foot-longcement casting ponds. BenRice—all -feet, -inches ofhim—could easily clear thewater while standing atwater’s edge. Some members(possibly first tried by LouGuerin) were splicing thinstrands of size-G level run-ning line into the bulked-upforward portion of their linesas early as , which, whenloaded correctly, pulled thelighter running-line coils offthe platforms almost instant-ly. It was the dawning of thenew shooting-line concept,soon known as the torpedotaper. Tourn ament caster J. C.Kenneth worked to perfectthe techniques in the s,but few bamboo rods in thosedays could withstand thestrain put on them by theweight of the lines and thespeed that one could generateby using a well-timed doublepull. Rods ex ploded andcould not be counted on tostay together, so the new tech-

nique was rarely used. It was not until that Lew Stoner of the R. L. WinstonRod Co. in San Francisco first made rodswith a semi-hollow, fluted rod design.They began to build strong, lightweightbamboo rods so that tournament casterscould once again reach for new distances,now armed with sophisticated torpedo-line tapers, thin running line, and thesplit-second timing of the aggressivedouble-haul technique.

MARVIN HEDGEDESIGNS A BETTER LINE

By the early s, men such asPortland, Oregon, native Marvin K.Hedge (–) and Californian JimGreen (–) were breaking dis-tance records with their own speciallyconstructed silk lines that were unique totournament casting, using bamboo rodsthat were specially made for tournamentwork. Hedge, along with his mentor,

Twenty-two-year-old Buddy Powell, on the left, withMarvin Hedge at a casting competition in .

Photo courtesy of the Powell family.

Walter Backus (Backus & MorrisSporting Goods Co.), first used a tourna-ment casting line competitively in designed by Backus called the OregonSpecial. Hedge was a large man who,unlike every one else in the casting game,placed his right foot about inches infront of his back foot and drove the castwith a muscled arm and a wrist like ajackhammer, with added power generat-ed by his trailing “off-foot.” In ,Hedge brought several innovations tothe national fly- and bait-casting nation-als held at Forest Park in St. Louis. Heused the double-pull technique learnedthree years earlier from Portland CastingClub guru and professional fly tierMaurice “Mooch” Abrams, much to thedelight of the crowd, most of whom hadnever seen it in action. Using a -footbamboo rod made by Oregonian JohnWilson, which somehow stayed together,and the “left-hand pull,” as he called it,Hedge produced a cast that broke theeleven-year distance record of feet by feet! He used one of his carefullyspliced shooting-head lines with a coat-ing of graphite dust (with which he pol-ished the surface of the silk line to asmooth finish). For Hedge—and thefly-fishing community—the event thrusthim into the national spotlight and soonput the weight-forward line in storeseverywhere. Not long after his celebrated win in St.

Louis, Hedge saw the opportunity tocapitalize on his newfound renown. In, none other than the famed James

Heddon’s Sons Company made an exclu-sive deal to manufacture a line of bam-boo fly rods, lines, line dryers, and otherequipment using Hedge’s name. Therods were not semi-hollow in design, butthey were powerful and usually had hispatented elevated thumb rest, which wasglued onto the forward end of the corkhand grasp. In , Hedge used a -footWinston rod made by Lew Stoner (that

weighed slightly less than the ¾-ounceweight limit) to break the world fly-cast-ing record by feet, and Hedge’s namebecame ubiquitous in angling circles. After more than two years of develop-

ment, Hedge patented the Hedge TaperAnti-Fly Splash fly line in . It hadseven precisely tapered sections ofunequal length and weight built into theforward section and feet of runningline. These lines were first made of braid-ed silk for Heddon by the S. A. Jones LineCompany of Norwich, Connecticut (laterthey were made by the Rain-Beau Pro -ducts Company), with the claim that eachline was coated with twenty thin coats ofdressing. Much was made of the patentedblack section: feet of line painted blackso one could see it easily. Hedge designedthe lines so that when the angler was pre-pared to make a “perfect cast,” the entirelength of the black section was off thewater and just ahead of the top guidebefore the back cast was made. The lineswere innovative and, until World War IIcame along, they were sold in Americaand Great Britain as fast as the HeddonCompany could make them.

“ALL ABOUT SPLICING”

Joan Salvato Wulff ’s father, JimmySalvato, a dealer of Shakespeare tackle inNew Jersey, gave his daughter a three-piece, -foot, -inch bamboo rod whenshe was only ten years old. In , at theage of eleven, she began to enter tourna-ment-casting events based on accuracy.By , Wulff was competing in dis-

The hand grasp of one of Marvin Hedge’s casting rods showing thethumb rest and a portion of the agreement with Heddon, signed by

Marvin Hedge. Photo courtesy of the Heddon Museum.

One of the Hedge Taper silk lines made for British tackleretailer Ogden Smith. Photo courtesy of the Heddon Museum.

tance-casting competitions as a memberof her local Paterson Casting Club. Shetraveled all over the western world tocasting events, competing at the highestlevel. “In , I was in Los Angeles,” sheremembers. “I was in Marvin Hedge’shotel room, and the floor was coveredwith fly lines. They were dark brown,and he was putting graphite on them.That was what made them shoot. Anyonewho was in tournament casting was intosplicing lines. They had their ownrecipe.”

William Taylor, who made bamboorods and was a beautiful distance caster aswell, was also a member of the PatersonCasting Club. Although a variety ofweight-forward lines were now available,distance casters usually worked withlonger shooting heads that were about feet long and had a ½-ounce weight lim-itation. Taylor handmade a silk shooting-head line (as well as a stiff tournamentrod) for Joan Salvato that was ⁄ ouncelighter than the maximum allowed by therules, and she cast feet in , againstan all-male field, with Taylor’s homemadeoutfit. “It was all about splicing,” Joanrecalled as we sat on her porch in theCatskills. “It was short sections of silk line.The guys who came up with the besttapers were winning the events. Mr. Taylorspliced my lines when I wasn’t watching.”

THE DAWN OF

SYNTHETIC LINES

Those who made fly lines from silkfibers seemingly had little to fear.Although they were costly to produceand had seen few innovations other thannew tapering ideas, silk fibers were thematerial of choice. By , the DuPontCompany had developed and patentedthe polymer known as nylon and intro-duced it to the public in the form ofladies’ stockings at the New YorkWorld’s Fair. Lines made of braided-silkfibers were still the only fly-line materialon the market until the summer of theWorld’s Fair, when the Ashaway Line &Twine Company, who first made silklines in , began to sell nylon fly linesmade from DuPont nylon “yarn.” Theymade level lines in seven weights, single-and double-taper lines, as well as a tor-pedo-head style, in five sizes, all of whichcame in a handsome Bakelite coilingbox. After three years of expanding sales,Ashaway, in their catalog, stated that“tests have proved them to be the equalof—and in some ways even superiorto—Ashaway’s finest silk fly-castinglines.” In the summer of , theAmerican government placed an embar-go on the importation of Japanese silk,

and within weeks Ashaway had to sus-pend production of twelve of their four-teen fishing-line products, includingtheir popular Soft Finish silk fly line.Two fly lines made of nylon stayed on themarket, albeit in limited production. Within months after the end of World

War II, many of the products that weredeveloped and used almost exclusivelyfor the war effort (such as tents, para-chutes, tires, ponchos, and rope) wereintroduced to consumers. Those, andhundreds of other products, began to fillretailer’s shelves, and line makers beganexperimenting with new ways to manu-facture and coat nylon fly lines. Nylonmonofilament (-pound test) was com-mercially available in quantity for bait-casting and new forms of spinning tack-le (first introduced by the French com-pany, Luxor, for Pezon et Michel in), which replaced conventional cast-ing reels and made casting for distanceeasier. American tournament casters likeJim Green and Phil Miravalle beganexperimenting with the thin, smooth-to-

the-touch “mono” as a new form ofshooting line that they carefully attachedto their homemade -foot-long silkshooting-head lines. Several tourna-ment-casting records were soon brokenusing the new material, but it was notuntil the war was over and nylon becamereadily available that line makers likeGudebrod, Rain-Beau, Gladding, andothers were able to make and marketnew lines that would benefit the growingnumber of weekend fly anglers. The Cortland Line Company intro-

duced a nylon multicolored fly line in, inspired by their work in WorldWar II, called the Cam-O-Flage line. In, Cortland began to market theirfamous light-green Cortland , theNon-Sinkable Top Water braided-corenylon fly line made for dry-fly fishing.One of the two products in their new-items-for- price list was the RocketWeight-Forward line. The cost was dollars; a hefty price when you considerthat one could buy a new E. F. Paynetrout rod for less than dollars.

Joan Salvato at the National Casting Tournament in Warren,Michigan, in , her last year of casting competition.

Photo courtesy of Tom McNally with permission of Joan Wulff.

Another DuPont product, Dacron (apolyester fiber introduced in ), soonbecame the choice for the braided insidecore because it was very tough and didnot stretch. New machines were indevelopment by Leon Martuch ofScientific Anglers that applied a variablethickness of plastic coating to theirbraided core with a polyvinyl chloride(PVC) finish in varying design thick-nesses and colors over a level inner core.Scientific Anglers introduced the Air Cel floating line in , and reliable high-riding weight-forward lines were in thestores. Today, we have a seemingly endless

array of lines, made for all fishing situa-tions, that feature an increase in thetaper near the front end of the line. TheSkagit, Torpedo, Switch, WindCutter,VersiTip, Scandi VersiTip, Pike, TropicPlus, Indicator, Atlantic Silver, Compact

Switch, Bonefish, Trout Boss, PowerSpey,classic Cortland , and the effectiveWulff Triangle Taper are only a few.There are so many offered now that it isimpossible for most anglers to try even asmall percentage of them. There is nomore need for hand-splicing and solitarylate-night experimenting. Companiesworldwide manufacture and sell myriadlines that are made to help anglers shoota fly to a target. The secret of weight-for-ward lines has been out for years, andmillions of anglers all over the worldhave benefited.

�

Thanks to Jim Adams, Steve Crandell,the Heddon Museum, Nate Dablock, PerBrandin, and Joan Wulff.

. H. (Henry) Cholmondeley-Pennell,Modern Improvements in Fishing Tackle andHooks (London: Sampson, Low, Marston,Searle & Rivington, ), –.

. Ibid., –. . W. D. Mansfield (president of the San

Francisco Fly Casting Club, the second-oldestcasting club in America, founded in ) seta national record for a cast of feet in inChicago, then set a record with a -ounce rodof ½ feet in . It was his record of feet that was broken in in St. Louis byMarvin Hedge with a cast of feet.

. J. L. Hardy, The House the Hardy Broth -ers Built (Ashburton: The Flyfisher’s ClassicLibrary, ), . On the same page, authorJames Leighton Hardy makes the spuriousclaim that Trench’s designed lines were “the firstcommercially produced forward tapered lines.”

. In a twenty-page letter to writer/angler(and eventually fishing editor of Field &Stream magazine) Ted Trueblood in ,Marvin Hedge notes that he first used theOregon Special fly line in for the purposeof fly-fishing only. The line was designed byWalter Backus and offered to rod maker andtackle dealer Perry Frazier in and manu-factured and sold by the Perry Frazier Line Co.

. Hedge developed three line variationsthat he matched with three different rods.The rods were placed on the casting platform,and he used the rod of his choice dependingon the wind and weather conditions.

. Albert “Buddy” Powell was the oldest ofE. C. Powell’s three sons, and he too worked inthe Powell rod shop making hollow-built, fast-action rods under the E. C. Powell name. Hewas a very accomplished tournament caster andeasily broke Marvin Hedge’s new record the fol-lowing year () in San Jose, California, by feet, inches. The slight, -pound Powellextended his own record to more than feet, inches just months before he was tragicallykilled in a car crash in .

. Interview with the author, summer .. Ibid.. The Ashaway Fishing Lines cata-

log (no. ), .

A page from the Ashaway Line & Twine Mfg. Co.catalog introducing their new nylon torpedo-head fly lines.

Robert Seaman

F been depicted, doc-umented, and displayed in moreways and in more forms than per-

haps any other sport. The AmericanMuseum of Fly Fishing alone containsmore than , books related to thesport, and hundreds of artists haveattempted to capture its essence in manystyles and media. From through, fly fishing was periodically shownon the covers of the New Yorker maga-zine. During that narrow eighteen-yearsegment of the magazine’s ninety-plus-year life span, seventeen covers (out of atotal of more than ,) drawn by someof America’s greatest cartoonists weredevoted to fly fishing.The New Yorkerwas founded in by

Harold Ross as a weekly humor magazinesimilar to Judge and Vanity Fair, its prede-cessors. It was published with Ross’s goalof creating a “smart humor magazine thatwould appeal only to a sophisticated andeducated elite and in a narrowly circum-scribed geographical area.” However,Ross was so adept at attracting and retain-ing the best humorists of his time(Dorothy Parker and other members ofthe Algonquin Round Table, E. B. White,Clifton Fadiman, and James Thurber, toname a few) that the weekly surged inpopularity, not only among its intendedaudience in Manhattan, but nationwide.In The Smart Magazines, George H.Douglas noted that “by the mid-s theNew Yorker . . . was an acknowledgedleader in American journalism throughits excellent short stories, its regulardepartments . . . its splendid theater andbook reviews.”

Ross planned that “the New Yorker willbe a reflection in word and picture ofmetropolitan life. It will be humor. Itsgeneral tenor will be one of gaiety, witand satire but it will be more than ajester.” He also wanted it to be “so enter-taining and informative as to be a neces-sity for the person who knows his wayabout or wants to.” Ross remained editorfrom the inception of the magazine untilhis death in , and Mary Corey notedin The World through a Monocle: TheNewYorker at Midcentury, “the magazine waswidely read and widely talked about and

came to have serious social cachet.” Shealso noted that “Ross created a distinctlymodern magazine that altered the styleand content of contemporary American

fiction, perfected a new form of literaryjournalism, established new standards forhumor and comic art, and shaped numer-ous social and cultural agendas.”During

Fly Fishing on theCovers of the New Yorker

by James D. Heckman

Figure . New Yorker cover from April by Rea Irvin. Permission forreproduction from Molly Rea, Jamie Noehren, and Christie Fernandez.

that era, the New Yorker became a stan-dard setter and social arbiter for theemerging wealthy upper middle class and,as J. W. Krutch noted in the SaturdayReview on January , its readers“took their every cue from its pages.”

This included identifying and promotingthe “right” recreational pursuits for itsavid readers, and in the s and s,fly fishing fit the bill.One of the most effective ways that the

New Yorker found to influence thinkingand behavior was through the use of car-toons, both on the cover and throughoutthe magazine. Its covers in particularcame to clearly portray Ross’s “picture ofmetropolitan life.” During the first decade

(–), sporting activities (golf, base-ball, hunting, and especially boating of allsorts) were frequently depicted at a rate ofthree to four covers per year. These sportsreflected—or perhaps were chosen todefine—the interests of the “sophisticat-ed” New Yorker. The appearance of flyfishing as a cover topic began in the springof and returned frequently—typical-ly each April, concurrent with the open-ing of fishing season—throughout thes and s, reflecting the rising pop-ularity of the sport during those twodecades, particularly among the maga-zine’s intended audience. Paul Schullery documented in Amer -

ican Fly Fishing: A History () that the

sport, and particularly eastern streamfishing, became the interest of manyupper middle-class men (and a fewwomen) who became financially success-ful following the Great Depression. Henotes that during those years, severalimportant books on the subject werepublished, starting with George LeonardHerter’s Professional Fly Tying, Spinningand Tackle Making: Manual and Manu -facturers Guide, which, although origi-nally published in , was reprintednineteen times over the next fifteen yearsand reportedly sold more than ,copies. In , John McDonald pub-lished The Complete Fly Fisherman: TheNotes and Letters of Theodore Gordon,

Figure . New Yorker cover from April by Abe Birnbaum.Permission for reproduction from Condé Nast, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

and Art Flick published Streamside Guideto Naturals and Their Imitations, whichSchullery concluded “made life simpler forcountless eastern anglers.” Soon there-after came John Atherton’s The Fly and theFish () and Ernest Schwiebert’s Match -ing the Hatch (). With these robustlyinformative resources, many individualsseeking leisure-time pursuits were em -boldened to try this heretofore relativelyesoteric sport, and they were remindedeach spring by the New Yorker covers thatthis was a sport worthy of pursuit. TheNew Yorker, on the other hand, did notpromote many other sports; for instance,my perusal of all New Yorker covers from

through revealed only two relat-ed to bowling (March and March). Almost as quickly as fly fishing’s popu-

larity rose after World War II, it fadedwith the development of spinning tackleand other technical advances in the s.Schullery points to the substantial growthof outdoor recreation in the United Statesduring that decade and emphasizes that“the spinning craze brought many to fish-ing who had no knowledge at all of thetraditions of fly fishing; all they wantedwere the most efficient fish-catching toolspossible, ones that could take the abusegiven by many clumsy beginners.” Not

only was the fly reel replaced by the spin-ning reel during this time, but bamboorods were replaced by fiberglass and latergraphite ones, flies were replaced by spin-ners, and silk line was replaced by onemade of synthetic materials. As a result,fishing became available to everyman, thehighbrow allure of traditional fly fishingfaded, and, after , fly fishing was onlydepicted twice again on a New Yorkercover (in and ). This disappearance of fly fishing from

the magazine’s covers may not have beenonly because the sport had lost its allure tothe sophisticated set. Some (most notablyJohn Updike) have noted that with the

Figure . New Yorker cover from June by Rea Irvin. Permission forreproduction from Molly Rea, Jamie Noehren, and Christie Fernandez.

arrival of the s, Vietnam, the civilrights movement, and other culturalchanges in America, the tone of the NewYorker changed to reflect the impact ofthese events and focused less on being asocial standard setter and more on theserious issues of the times. In the forewordto the Complete Book of Covers from theNew Yorker –, Updike remarked,“It is almost as if, during these troubledand contentious Sixties and Seventies, theNew Yorker protested, on its covers, bymeans of withdrawal . . . into a world ofvanished sentiment.” In the years follow-ing , fewer New Yorker covers havedepicted people in pursuit of any enjoy-able or recreational activities. Through my

very rough perusal of all of the covers, inthe early years (–), sporting activ-ities (besides fly fishing), especially variousforms of boating, were common coversubjects, occurring three to five times peryear. From until , sporting topics,including the seventeen on fly fishing,appeared four or five (and as often asseven) times annually. After , by mycount, sporting activities of all types(mostly baseball and boating) haveappeared at the rate of only about two peryear, and no more covers have depicted flyfishing specifically.During that narrow window of time

from to , when fly fishing was a rel-atively common cover subject, a couple of

recurring themes were seen. Because manyof the covers coincided with the opening offishing season, several of them depicted anopening day “combat zone” seemingly withmore fishermen than fish (Figures and ).A second theme focused on the hopeful butinexperienced angler being outwitted bythe denizens of the wilderness (Figure ) orfrustrated by the challenges of pursuing atrout (Figure ). Finally, several covers actu-ally got it right by portraying a couple ofhours of serenity away from the big citywith the fly fisherman enjoying a day on thestream or pond with perhaps the chance ofcatching a fish or two (Figures and ) orby capturing the anticipation of theupcoming season (Figure ).

Figure . New Yorker cover from April by Perry Barlow.Permission for reproduction from Condé Nast, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Over its nearly century-long exis-tence, the New Yorker has had a relativelysmall stable of cartoonists who have pro-vided the bulk of its illustrations. Amongthese were a few who, in addition todepicting many other subjects either onthe cover or inside the magazine, con-tributed one or more fly-fishing coverillustrations.

Rea Irvin (–) was hired byHarold Ross as the first art editor in. He created Eustace Tilley, thedandy who adorned the inaugural coveron February and has reappearedon the cover of each anniversary issuesince (with the exception of ).Between and his retirement in ,Irvin created New Yorker covers,including the first one on fly fishing (seeFigure ) and two others spoofing the

hopeful but ineffective fisherman (seeFigure ). He also created the distinctivetypeface still used today for the maga-zine’s nameplate and the masthead of theinformative “Talk of the Town” section.Irvin remained as the art editor until and contributed his last cover in .His vision for the magazine blended wellwith that of Harold Ross; Lee Lorenz, inhis book, The Art of the New Yorker:–, concluded that Irvin’s “centralimportance in creating the graphicarmature for Ross’s vision remainsunchallenged. Without Rea Irvin as mid-wife, the New Yorker’s style would neverhave been born.”

Abe Birnbaum (–) con-tributed frequently to the New Yorker,painting close to covers and con-tributing nearly cartoons to the

magazine over a career spanning fromthe s to the s. According to hisobituary in the New York Times, his dis-tinctive style (see Figures and ) “repre-sented people and objects in their mostuncomplicated terms.” Stephen Becker,in Comic Art in America, noted thatBirnbaum had “one of the surest lines inthe business—firm, strong, unmistak-ably emphatic.”His cover from April seems to capture the serene spirit ofthe sport, suggesting perhaps that he hadspent some time himself on the water.

Perry Barlow (–) providedcartoons to the Saturday Evening Post,Collier’s, and the New Yorker over a careerthat spanned more than thirty years andincluded more than New Yorker cov-ers. M. A. Farber, in Barlow’s obituary inthe New York Times, described Barlow’s

Figure . New Yorker cover from April by Abe Birnbaum. Permission forreproduction from Condé Nast,Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

cartoons as warm, realistic, and ofteninvolving children. In that obituary,William Shawn, editor of the New Yorkerat the time of Barlow’s death, was quot-ed as saying that Barlow “was one of thegentlest and most humane of comicartists” and that Barlow “was amused bythe everyday predicaments people foundthemselves in, but he was always on theirside.” This is reflected in his cartoon ofthe intrepid angler in Figure . JamesGeraghty, the New Yorker’s second arteditor from until , describedBarlow as a “quiet, shy, aloof man”;

hence, it is not too surprising that Barlowis the one who chose to depict an olderman busy at his fly-tying desk in earlyspring , preparing for the upcomingtrout season (see Figure ). One interest-ing fact about Barlow is that he was

color-blind, and his wife, Dorothy HopeSmith (a portraitist of children and theartist who created the iconic Gerberbaby), colored all of his ink drawings.

Charles E. Martin (–) pro-duced covers for the New Yorker overa career that spanned five decades.

After a few years as a set designer atBoston’s Little Theater, he moved to NewYork in and worked as an art teacherand supervisor in the federal govern-ment’s Works Progress Administration(WPA) until his first cartoons were pub-lished in the New Yorker and other mag-azines. During World War II, he was incharge of creating publications contain-ing political cartoons and other propa-ganda that was air-dropped behindenemy lines in the European theater.

His cartoons and covers in the New

Yorker, all signed CEM, focused heavilyon common New York City sights andscenes with an understated, almost min-imalist, tone. People were rarely featuredin his covers, and he only occasionallyportrayed sporting scenes. Thus, hiscover from May (see Figure ) withanglers standing in the stream is differentfrom his other works, and its uniqueunderwater perspective anticipates thework of more contemporary artists, suchas Mark Susinno.Besides these four artists, others con-

tributed covers relating to fly fishing(addressing themes similar to the onespresented here) during the s ands, including two by Ilonka Karaszand one each by Roger Duvoisin, BellaDankovsky, Leonard Dove, and GarrettPrice.

Figure . New Yorker cover from May by Charles E. Martin. Permission for

reproduction from Condé Nast,Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

These covers captured a special timein the annals of eastern stream fishing,and although the sport continues tothrive, other subjects have supplanted flyfishing. Maybe someday soon an artistwill remind the current generation ofNew Yorker readers of the beauty andserenity of the sport; perhaps one mightcapture a saltwater angler casting flieswithin the shadows of skyscrapers justoff the island of Manhattan.

�

. E-mail to author from Yoshi Akiyama,deputy director at the American Museum ofFly Fishing, Manchester, Vermont, July .

. George H. Douglas, The Smart Mag -azines (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, ),–.

. Ibid., .. Ibid., –.. Dale Kramer, Ross and theNew Yorker

(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, ), . . Ibid. . Mary F. Corey, The World through a

Monocle: The New Yorker at Midcentury(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,), x.

. Ibid., .. Joseph Wood Krutch, “The Profession

of a New Yorker,” The Saturday Review (January ), .

. Paul Schullery, American Fly Fishing:A History (New York: Lyons Press, ), .

. Ibid. . Ibid., . . Ibid., .. John Updike, foreword to The Com -

plete Book of Covers from the New Yorker,– (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ),v–vii.

. Ibid., vii.. “The Art of the New Yorker Visits the

Brandywine River Museum,” Brandywine RiverMuseum News, www.brandywinemuseum.org/news_print/news_print.html. Ac cessed August .

. Lee Lorenz, The Art of the New Yorker:– (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ), .

. “Abe Birnbaum, , Illustrator, Dies,”New York Times ( June ), .

. Stephen Becker, Comic Art in America(New York: Simon and Schuster, ), .

. M. A. Farber, “Perry Barlow, , aCartoonist on the New Yorker for Years,”New York Times ( December ), .

. Ibid. . Ibid. . Ibid. . Wolfgang Saxon, “Charles Elmer

Martin, or CEM, New Yorker Artist, Dies at,” New York Times ( June ).

. Ibid.

Figure . New Yorker cover from March by Perry Barlow. Permissionfor reproduction from Condé Nast,Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

W great ice ageretreated, it had piled and leftbehind huge mounds of sand

creating the peninsula of Cape Cod.Heavy deposits of glacier ice were buriedin the sand over an underground fresh-water aquifer. As the ice melted, thewaters created lakes and ponds that wererecharged by the aquifer. Many lakes andponds overflowed and created rivers tothe sea, while others, called kettle ponds,had neither inlets nor outlets, their evap-oration loss being recharged by springsand lenses through the aquifer. The char,known today as our sea-run brook trout,ranged between the glaciers and theirfree-flowing, cold, freshwater drainagesand the salt water. When the glaciers dis-sipated about , years ago, the sea-run brook trout remained behind andpopulated the freshwater rivers and lakes.

They utilized the saltwater estuaries, bays,and the sea to become fat on the abundantmarine foods, spawning in the rivers andthe headwater lakes to create a new cycle ofoffspring. As conditions dictated, theylearned to feed and grow in both fresh andsalt water, depending on water tempera-tures, seasons, predators, and food avail-ability. The char or brook trout thatbecame trapped in the kettle ponds with-out inlets or outlets adapted and used thegravel spring beds for spawning.Before man inhabited Cape Cod, the

trout’s predators were the larger fish atsea, seals and otters in the bay, and fish-eating ducks, osprey, and herons in theestuaries, rivers, and lakes. The nativeAmerican Indians—the Wampanoags ofCape Cod—fished for these brook troutbut never took so many as to depletetheir numbers. In fact, all through thethousands of years following the ice age,both the Wampanoags and the brooktrout flourished in these waters.In , another predator arrived on

the scene—the pilgrims of Plymouth

Colony, who discovered the brook troutto be of both the size and quantity to betaken as a steady food source. These set-tlers, however, depleted sea-run brooktrout not just by eating them, but bybuilding dams and millraces on nearlyevery free-flowing stream. There wastimber to cut and corn, wheat, and bar-ley to grind. Water power was used torun the mills’ waterwheels, and thatrequired dams. Dams are a death sen-tence to any anadromous fish popula-tion, whether they are shad, herring, eels,salmon, or trout. Our sea-run brooktrout, for the first time in more than, years, found themselves unable toascend the rivers from salt water to uti-lize the rivers for food, protection, andspawning. Thus began their decline,which continues today. Although nowmost of the dams have either beenremoved, circumvented by fish ladders,or fallen into decay due to the yearsof losing river-specific gene pools, thetrout have almost vanished and survivein just a few rivers.

A Tale of Two Rivers: The Troutby Ronald F. Lasko

Ronald F. Lasko’s book, A Tale of Two Rivers, waspublished in by Schiffer Publishing Ltd.(www.schifferbooks.com). This excerpt, “TheTrout,” is one of its twenty chapters.

The upper Quashnet River, restored from cranberry bog to wooded valley. Trout Unlimited volunteersbrought spawning gravel and riverbed rocks in by hand buckets to recreate this riverbed. They plantedtrees above newly log-reinforced banks. Today, trout are found below the overhanging foliage and in

the undercut banks. Courtesy of Ron Lasko and Schiffer Publishing.

All photos and illustrations by Ron Lasko

We did not, however, stop at overhar-vesting the trout and blocking their riveraccess alone. We cut down the foreststhat provided trees and shade thatcooled the rivers, allowing them to heatup intolerably for brook trout. We dugwells into the lenses of the aquifer,resulting in diminishing and even dryingup the spring flows, which in turnreduced the volume of the little riversand further warmed them. Our agricul-tural practices bulldozed the river val-leys, altered the course of the rivers, anddestroyed the riverbeds that harboredaquatic insect life and spawning gravel.Then we poisoned the land with fertiliz-ers, pesticides, and herbicides, whichdrained into the aquifer and into thesprings, ending in the rivers, where theyadded their pollution and poisonouseffects to the trout food and the troutthemselves. Then we cut a channel knownas the Cape Cod Canal and destroyed itstwo largest sea-run brook trout rivers inthe process, forever creating this island-peninsula. Then we built a giant militarybase and, through deliberate dumping onopen soil, allowed all sorts of chemicals,gas, and oil to drain into the aquifer, andfrom there, via springs, into the rivers.Our dump grounds add to the leachingof harmful chemicals—as do the road tarsand motor vehicle emissions and ourpower plant—making the rivers moreacidic from rainwater and further inhibit-ing the trout’s survival ability. But we arenot through yet. We have added our ownseptic waste leaching. We want greenerlawns, so we add more nitrogen, fertilizer,and pesticides to achieve the manicuredlawn look of suburbia, but ignore that ourland is made up of sand and that thesethings end up in the aquifer and runoffwaters. Then we add even more chemicalsthrough our large recreational fields forgolf and other sports.The Cape Cod brook trout had van-

ished entirely from most rivers, weremarginal, at best, in others, and onlymaintained small populations in a hand-ful by . Man rationalized that wecould resurrect the Cape Cod river fish-eries using stocked hatchery trout. Overthe last years, we have stocked theserivers with hatchery brook trout thatlacked the genetic disposition to survivethese waters. We stocked exotic hatcherytrout such as the West Coast rainbowtrout and the European brown trout.These stocked trout were oversized forthe little rivers. They tend to be overlyaggressive toward and competitive withthe native brook trout, further diminish-ing them.Most of the bays, estuaries, and rivers

of Cape Cod are now devoid of brooktrout. They have been eliminated by all

these practices. There are only two riverson the peninsula where sport-fishablepopulations of brook trout continue tohold on: the Mashpee and the Quashnet.They have withstood the onslaught ofmankind, the dams, the pollution, igno-rance of the natural world, the plantingexotic species, and the arrogance toward

this incredible species of trout. Theyhave, in recent years, withstood the bur-geoning populations of bluefish andstriped bass and increasing numbers ofheron and osprey. But housing develop-ments and strip malls at their doorstephave encroached on their habitat, so thefull effects still remain to be seen.

A -inch fresh sea-run brook trout from the lower Mashpee River nearthe brackish saltwater estuary, caught and quickly released by the author.These silver-blue brook trout will turn their regular colors within days ofentering fresh water. Courtesy of Ron Lasko and Schiffer Publishing.

The red lines represent former sea-run brook trout rivers wherethey have been extirpated, although several of these rivers haverare remnant populations. The blue lines represent the self-sustaining fishable populations found in the Mashpee and

Quashnet rivers. Courtesy of Ron Lasko and Schiffer Publishing.

Why have the sea-run brook trout of theMashpee and Quashnet rivers survivedwhen man and nature have been so set ondestroying them? I asked this question of aformer member of the Fish and WildlifeDivision who had been a proponent ofstocking European sea-run brown trout inour Cape Cod brook trout rivers. Heacknowledged that in retrospect, they hadmade a mistake. They had undertakennumerous studies in the first half of thetwentieth century that indicated that theCape Cod sea-run brook trout weredoomed. Their studies concluded that theysimply were not tough enough to with-stand man’s de structive forces and that

only the exotic European brown troutcould. They wrote off the brook trout’s sur-vival, figuring the sea-run brown troutwould fill the niche. They were wrong.After a thirty-year program of stockingsea-run hatchery brown trout in numbersand sizes greater than the brook trout pop-ulations of the Mashpee and the Quashnet,it is the brown trout that has not survivedin the Mashpee, and they are now nearlyentirely gone from the Quashnet. For -tunately, the stockings of brown trout inthe Mashpee and Quashnet rivers ceased in. The resultant growth in both the sizeof individual brook trout and in their pop-ulations has become obvious since.

Our Massachusetts Fisheries Divisiondoes an outstanding job of raising ournecessary hatchery trout for Cape Cod’strout ponds, and they should be com-mended for their excellent managementof these thirty-plus trout ponds andlakes, whose brook trout were netted outduring the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies and eradicated. Today, we enjoya little-known world-class lake and pondtrout fishery here on Cape Cod, thanks totheir efforts. They should also be com-mended for changing their views on thesea-run brook trout, as they now fullysupport maintaining the unique strainsof the Mashpee and Quashnet through

A -inch wild tiger trout caught and quickly released by the author inthe willow bend run above First Sluice on the Quashnet. These hybrid

sterile trout occur in the wild when brown and brook trout share the samespawning beds. Courtesy of Ron Lasko and Schiffer Publishing.

A strong, healthy, -inch brook trout from the restored woodland upperQuashnet River. This is still a rare trout, but they are more frequentlyfound than twenty-five years ago. The rod is the author’s restored

Catskill-style -foot, -inch South Bend fitted with an Orvis reel.Courtesy of Ron Lasko and Schiffer Publishing.

A map of the freshwater section of the Quashnetshowing access trails. The pink areas are inactivecranberry bogs. These bogs need to be acquired,

placed in conservation preservation, andreplanted into forest land. The riverbed needs tobe reconstructed and restored. Courtesy of Ron

Lasko and Schiffer Publishing.

habitat restoration and maintenance. Ourfisheries management is also studyingways to use these strains to expand thefishery to other historic rivers in order toresurrect those long-destroyed anddepleted waters. We can all agree now thatCape Cod’s remaining sea-run brooktrout are tough. After all, they have beensubjected to more than their share ofobstacles and adversity, and they have sur-vived. The absolute keys to successful sea-run brook trout fisheries on Cape Cod areprotecting existing habitat, creating newhabitat, keeping the springs running cooland unpolluted, and practicing catch-and-release, thereby allowing nature andthe trout to do the rest.It is my belief, and that of others, that

the thousands of years of genetic devel-opment have made these trout micro-habitat oriented in that they utilize everyaspect of the environment to theiradvantage. They use the sea, the estuary,the river, and the lakes at different sea-

sons for different purposes. They are notaggressive toward each other and toleratetheir brethren. They regularly shareprime holding and feeding areas withoutharassing one another. They are prolificin creating offspring. During the warmsummer months, I have even observedthem grooming one another of parasitesby nipping bloodworms and leechesfrom each other’s fins and gill plates. Ihave observed these trout tolerating thepresence of herring, eels, and other fishlife. During the heavy three-month her-ring runs up and back down these rivers,I have observed a stocked hatcherybrown trout drive itself to exhaustion ashe harried the migrating herring thattemporarily occupied his holding area.Conversely, our sea-run brook troutcalmly accept these adult herring andeven migrate along with them upriverand down, using them as cover and feed-ing alongside the herring without beingthreatened.

Another unfortunate occurrence dur-ing the heavy brown trout stockings onthese rivers was the successful hybridmating of brown and brook trout,because they spawn at the same time ofyear using the same riverbeds. Resultanthybrid offspring are called tiger troutand are sterile. Such sterile fish occupiedspace that should have been taken byreproducing brook trout. Fortunately,with the end of the brown trout stock-ings in , such instances no longeroccur. We must remain vigilant so thatsuch ignorance by anglers and fisheriespersonnel is never repeated.And so, as you fish these rivers and

catch these colorful and lovely brooktrout, give thought to their ,-yearhistory, their survival abilities, and theobstacles they continue to face, andrelease them gently back to the stream togrow and continue to add to their race.

�

A map of the freshwater section of the Mashpee showingaccess trails. The pink areas are abandoned cranberry bogs.As with Quashnet, these bogs need to be acquired, placed inconservation preservation, and replanted into forest land,and the riverbed needs to be reconstructed and restored.

Courtesy of Ron Lasko and Schiffer Publishing.

The lower Mashpee River’s brackish upper estuary at high tide.Courtesy of Ron Lasko and Schiffer Publishing.

A ’ play favorites; still, within weeksof my taking temporary assignment of editing theAmerican Fly Fisher, Gordon Wickstrom became one of

mine. Once he got used to me, he insisted that at his age, hecouldn’t face another regime change, and he practically orderedme not to abandon my post. Nineteen years later, I’m still here. Besides working on manuscripts together, Gordon and I car-

ried on a lively correspondence, first through the U.S. mail andeventually via e-mail. We very occasionally spoke by phone. Ihad all but given up on meeting him in person when I wasinvited to attend a dinner that he and G. William Fowler werehosting in Denver on behalf of the Flyfishers’ Club of London.At last, my husband and I were able to meet Gordon and hislovely wife and daughter, and we all had opportunity to makegood on Gordon’s and my long-standing promise to indulge ina martini. (He graciously, if reluctantly, tolerated my prefer-ence for a twist.)The obituary that ran in the Boulder Daily Camera on

September so well summarized Gordon and the things that mat-tered to him that I include most of it here. His friends John Bettsand Harry Briscoe, fellow fly-fishing thinkers, also pay tribute.

—E

Gordon Minton Wickstrom died at the age of eighty-eight on September after fighting cancer since the precedingApril. He was born on April in Boulder. Wickstrom wasprofessor of theatre at Franklin and Marshall College inLancaster, Pennsylvania, from to and department chairfrom until his retirement in as Alumni Professor of

English Belles Lettres and Literature. Upon retirement, he andhis wife, Betty Jane Smith Wickstrom, also a Boulder native,returned to Boulder. They have lived since then in a house builton the backyard of the family home on Bluff Street, where bothhis grandparents, of Boulder City Bakery, and his parents lived.Wickstrom was a master fly fisherman and fly tier who began

fishing at age twelve with a rod and reel that his mother andfather, Thelma and Percy Wickstrom, gave to him for his birth-day. His knowledge of Boulder Creek and the watersheds of themountains surrounding Boulder, combined with his fishing andhis consummate expertise in the theatre—especially the plays ofthe Irish Renaissance, of Bernard Shaw, and of Shakespeare—developed into many forms of writing and publication to whichWickstrom was devoted. He is the author of two books: Notesfrom an Old Fly Book (University Press of Colorado, ) andLate in an Angler’s Life (University of New Mexico Press, ).He made many contributions to the distinguished American FlyFisher, the journal of the American Museum of Fly Fishing. Withillustrations from John Betts and graphic design from MichaelSignorella, he published a graphic history of fly fishing, alongwith a unique dramatic piece, The Great Debate. For more thanten years, he published two gazettes, cherished by readers acrossthe country and internationally: the Bouldercreek Angler and theBouldercreek Actor. He also wrote for his blog, The BouldercreekAngler (http://bouldercreekangler.blogspot.com), posting hislast essay, “The Fisherman,” on September . He said that in theblog he wrote on “all matters of art, life, love and angling.” Hewas a member of the Boulder Flycasters and the illustriousFlyfishers’ Club of London.

Linnea Wickstrom

Gordon M. Wickstrom April – September

Gordon M. Wickstrom at the London Flyfishers’ Club in .

Wickstrom was a World War II veteran who served in theU.S. Navy from until . He received his degree from theUniversity of Colorado at Boulder in English literature in ,funded by the G.I. Bill of Rights. Subsequently, Wickstrombegan his teaching career at Powell High School in Powell,Wyoming, where his two children, Linnea and Maurya, wereborn, in and , respectively. While in Powell,Wickstrom pioneered in the theatre, directing the plays of theEuropean avant-garde of the time, such as those by SamuelBeckett. In , the family moved to Palo Alto, California,where Wickstrom earned his Ph.D. at Stanford University, witha dissertation on the Deidre plays of three Irish playwrights. Over the years, Wickstrom directed more than plays,

including directing and acting at the Colorado ShakespeareFestival. Upon retirement, and with J. H. Crouch as partner, hefounded the Shakespeare Oratorio Society of Colorado in .Each winter, the society produced one of Shakespeare’s plays intheir radically different “oratorical” format. Wickstrom playedKing Lear for the third time in the maiden production of thesociety. Wickstrom’s brother, Phillip, played Gloucester andbecame a regular with the company. He was ever, and remained to the end, a convinced and

practical Democrat. Wickstrom asked that his friends be directed to

Shakespeare’s Sonnet , and, in the spirit of Dean John Donneof St. Paul’s, think on death as the most interesting, exciting,mysterious, and disastrous thing that can happen to us.

A MAN OF AND FOR ALL SEASONS

T April mailbox was typically short, and tothe point. “Harry, I am seriously unwell and not likely torecover. We surely cannot go east for Easter. It’s been a

notable week.” Here now, six months later as I write this, and he’s gone. We

have lost a unique individual. Gordon M. Wickstrom’s obitu-ary—reprinted above—is perfect, describing an exceptionaland elegant man with talents and interests in arenas wellbeyond the pastime of fly fishing. For the majority of his work-ing life, he was a professor of theatre, letters, and literature atFranklin and Marshall College, that history explaining theexceptional writing skills with which we fly fishers are mostfamiliar. Gordon was a prolific thinker, and to our good for-tune, he was a prolific writer of that which he thought. Afterhis retirement from university life, Gordon began to producetwo quarterly newsletters, little mailings that he sent around toanyone who would have them. The Bouldercreek Angler and theBouldercreek Actor became the outlets through which he sharedhis talents. Those newsletters evolved into his two publishedbooks and other works, and in recent years, into his onlineblog. These archives document a significant talent. He had aremarkable ability to write concise and direct essays, often withunexpected and thought-provoking conclusions. You won’t getmuch “conventional wisdom” or “me and Joe went fishing”from reading Gordon Wickstrom, but you will be impressed,and you might find yourself thinking a bit more deeply. Hiswork, always sensitive and eloquent, deserves a much broaderaudience than it has received.Gordon and I met at a fly-fishing trade show in the mid-s.

Ever a traditionalist, he was impressed with our (Hexagraph) flyrod, and he wrote a nice review. With that, we became friends,and I came to know his work. We developed a relationship offrequent communication, and now, among my treasures, are agreat many things he sent me: handwritten letters, e-mails, andthe like. In the weeks since his passing, I have found comfortand satisfaction in those files. I remember our many telephone

calls and his booming baritone voice. He had a stage presence,and there was a sense of theatre in most of what he did. Despiteour primary mutual interest in fly fishing (and we discussedthat a lot), I find my own memories reach into areas beyondthe stream. Gordon loved many things: history, theatre, opera, concerts,

movies, the progress of the seasons through the year, and thecelebration of holidays. He lived for Christmas. He was literallygiddy with the approach of Halloween, of St. Patrick’s and St.Valentine’s days. He was beyond excited to report that a neigh-bor had given him a goose for Christmas (which he insisted onhand-plucking himself, to gain the full value) or an antelope orelk steak for the grill. He loved the house that he and Bettybuilt in Boulder, and he was beside himself when showing ushis library or while making martinis for my wife and me whenwe’d visit. He’d write pages on his garden—the flowers, thegooseberries, the rhubarb—and always with a thought of the“significance” of it all. Every time I sent him a message with athought on some random item, he’d come right back withsomething tangible to educate me further on the topic, mostoften with a related story of personal experience involving themeeting with some famous actor or diva. He used words likegrand, swell, and glorious, and phrases like Oh, boy! or We’dshow ’em, we surely would!—not for the theatre of it, but forthe fact that such was exactly what he meant or wanted to say.And, from Gordon, it was the perfect fit. He looked for reasons(even in his last weeks) to dress properly in a fine tie and coatbecause it made him feel more presentable. He was a gentle-man, with values learned like so many in his generation—arguably the Greatest Generation. Gordon lived his life fullyand broadly, but simply. He celebrated everything. We shouldall be so aware with our own. I’ll miss him greatly. Fly fishing,and much more, has lost a gem.

—H J. BK, T

A REMEMBRANCE

G I met more than twenty years ago. Fromthen, there have been hundreds of phone calls, notes,and letters on subjects ranging from sixteenth-century

art and culture to the most recent political flap. All of this wasliberally salted with face-to-face conversations and occasionallocal fly-fishing trips.From the time I met him, I never wrote a word for a book

or article that I didn’t privately run by him—“What wouldGordon think of this?” His presence was in some way part ofevery effort I made. His guidance was always appropriate, andavoided at my own peril. He had a significant amount ofknowledge on many subjects, including fly fishing, and he wasan adept angler and fly tier.He did not abide censorship, regardless of its source, and

was expressive in denouncing it. He knew a lot about the worldand always sought to learn more. He did not assume that whathe saw would turn out to be what he had been looking at.He was never afraid of going the long way round, with all

that that required. Thoroughness was the hallmark of hislearning and friendship.He never lost sight of the fact that at the core of what he

could do was his family. He truly celebrated Christmas and allthat goes with it. My wife Betsy and I were often privileged tobe part of that. For their kindnesses to us, Gordon and Bettywill always be in the heart of what we do.

—J BW, C

T extraordinary collection of books—most of which have been recently published by MichaelHackney’s Reel Lines Press—that constitutes part of the

tremendous contribution that John Betts has made to fly fish-ing. Betts should be familiar to readers through his articles inthe American Fly Fisher, which are listed at the end of thispiece. If you have never read his contributions, please takeadvantage of the journal’s archive on the museum’s website,because Betts is one of our sport’s most original thinkers.Betts approaches problems from a different slant by taking

a hands-on approach. For example, while the rest of us theo-rized about how Thomas Barker’s reel might have been built,Betts sat down and made one. When you couple his practicalskills with his inherent artistry and the fact that he has keptjournals for many years that detail the outcome of his everyexperiment, good or bad, then you have some idea of the mea-sure of this most extraordinary man. Those journals spanmany decades and are nothing if not works of art, written andillustrated by Betts. Some of their nature has distilled its wayinto his books, but we will come to that in a moment, becauseone of the things that Betts has always been about is sharinginformation for the benefit of all.It is a part of Betts’s character that every one of his books

represents an attempt to solve a problem, Fly Lines: How toMake Them being a fine example. The origin of Fly Lines lay inBetts’s dissatisfaction with commercial products back in theearly years of plastic-coated lines. I well recall one line madeduring this period—an intermediate, only because some partsof it floated and some parts of it sank. The product’s chief dis-

advantage was that the line came off the reel in an attractive, ifslightly frustrating, spiral. I spent many (wasted) hours tryingto straighten that line. By contrast, Betts locked himself in hisworkshop and set out to design something that cast as well assilk, floated like the best plastic, and lasted longer than either,and he succeeded in doing so. Betts’s method for building flylines works just as well today as it did when he first worked itout, and now that the book is in print, you can tap into the soulof a pioneer and build your own lines for just a few bucks.Then again, there is Synthetic Flies, first published in , in

which materials like Zelon, Zing, and artist’s brush bristles(a.k.a. Microfibbets) were introduced to fly tiers. Betts was apioneer of synthetics, and he took some serious heat over hisuse of them, which sounds astonishing today, when patternsthat are tied mainly (or entirely) from such materials drawhardly any attention at all. Thanks to Betts, I long ago erasedthe boundary between “natural” and synthetic materials frommy thinking, and today I use them interchangeably as condi-tions demand, much as everybody else does. The existence ofthis book is a small reminder of how much we owe Mr. Bettsfor blazing the trail, and it contains some very useful patternsand techniques.Betts’s innovation and his determination to share his

knowledge didn’t end there, and he went on to publish Flieswith an “Edited Hackle” in . Written by someone whocould not only talk the talk but walk the walk, having tied hun-dreds of thousands of flies both privately and commercially,the book was a response to the then-pressing problem of howto deal with the mismatch between demand for high-quality

Made by Hand: The Books of John Bettsby Andrew Herd

fly-dressing hackle and supply, which was woefully short atthat time. Most of us just shrugged our shoulders and usedwhatever we could beg, borrow, or steal, but true to form, Bettssat down and took a new look at the problem. The end resultwas a complete recasting of how trout flies might be tied, dis-carding tradition and prejudice in favor of logic and experi-ment. Looking back at it, it is hard to see why we didn’t realizethat we had another William Blacker in our midst, but thenagain, if such an idea had been put to Betts at that time, ornow, he would only deny it.Eight years later came Catch the Hatch, which was an accor-

dion-folded pamphlet aimed at helping anglers recognize themost common species of mayflies found in the United States andCanada. Designed to fit in a shirt pocket, Catch the Hatch was acompact and focused key to identifying mayflies on the water.There were more comprehensive guides available, but becauseBetts honed in on the species that really mattered, this little book-let still serves as a fine example of practical entomology.In came Making Strip-Built Fly Rods from Various

Woods on a Lathe, which Betts self-published as a spiral-boundsoftback before Frank Amato rode out of the sunset and pub-lished it in a sumptuous hardback edition. To this day, I can-not decide which of the two editions I treasure most, exceptthat I guess this is one of the few opportunities I will ever getto thank Amato for stepping in and making a truly useful vol-ume widely available. If you buy this and Garrison andCarmichael’s A Master’s Guide to Building a Bamboo Fly Rod,you really don’t need anything else except willpower and anability to learn from your own mistakes. Why did Betts publishthe book? Well, he had built rods on a private and professionalbasis for many years, and although much has been writtenabout building with split bamboo, hardly anything had beenset down about making them out of other kinds of woods. SoBetts took out his journals again and distilled all his experienceinto pages or so, illustrating just about every page with hisown drawings.I forgot to mention Betts’s tremendous skill as an artist. One

of the defining characteristics of his books is that they are notonly written (none are typeset, which I believe is unique forsuch a body of modern volumes) but they are also illustratedby their author, and Betts’s art is every bit as good as his writ-ing. In the upstairs hall of our house, I have a print of one ofBetts’s watercolors, The Bubble, and every time I walk past it, Iwonder how so much talent ended up being concentratedinside one man. Betts has a sense of color and form that isincredibly engaging, and the reproductions of his paintings arememorable—in my opinion, very few artists have ever cap-tured the spirit of what it means to fish quite so vividly.

After Betts published his books on making flies, fly lines,and rods, we all held our breath, because he surely wasn’t goingto publish a book on reels—but he did. Reels and Making Themwas published in by Reel Lines Press in association withthe Whitefish Press, and it marked the beginning of Betts’sassociation with Michael Hackney, who has done the great ser-vice of bringing Betts’s earlier titles back into print, therebytriggering this review. Reels is a massive book that makes a fan-tastic primer for anyone who is considering taking the ultimatestep and building his or her own reels out of wood and metal.What else can I say? Betts is sui generis in that no one else

has ever contributed in so much depth to the four major areasof fly and tackle development. If you aspire to think in newways, then I would suggest that the quiet charm and practicalnature of these books will prove hard to resist. MichaelHackney has taken the imaginative step of reproducing Betts’searly books, as well as Reels and Fly Lines, just as the author setthem down, in neat penciled longhand on blue-lined paper.This alone makes the books very different; and it means thatyou will have to have a good light when you read them. Bettswould maintain that because form follows function, his booksare best read as they were written, but I would extend a smallplea that those of us with less than perfect vision would appre-ciate seeing at least some of his magical books typeset, even ifit was with a cursive font. John, my friend, I salute you.

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The following books by John Betts are available in softcover from Reel LinesPress (www.ReelLinesPress.com): Reels and Making Them, with Michael Hackney (, handwritten pages,+ color photographs and illustrations, $)Synthetic Flies, Flies with an “Edited Hackle,” & Catch the Hatch (all in onevolume; , pages, handwritten and illustrated, $)Fly Lines: How to Make Them, with Michael Hackney (, handwrittenpages, + photographs and illustrations, $)

The following book is available from Frank Amato Publications(www.amatobooks.com): Making Strip-Built Fly Rods from Various Woods on a Lathe (, pages,color with black-and-white drawings throughout, $. softcover; $ limit-ed-edition hardcover)

Articles in the American Fly Fisher by John Betts:

• “Some of Marbury’s Favorite Bass and Fancy LakeFlies” (Winter , vol. , no. ), –

• “Fly Lines and Lineage” (Fall , vol. , no. ),–

• “Truly Hand-Tied Flies” (Spring , vol. , no. ),–

• “George La Branche: ‘A Very Beautiful Fisherman’”(Fall , vol. , no. ), –

• “Robert Venables’s Experience as an Angler” (Fall, vol. , no. ), –

• “Some Notes and Comment” (Fall , vol. , no.),

• “Gore Creek: A Love Story” (Spring , vol. ,no. ), –

• “Building a Barker Reel: Improvisation Then andNow” (Summer , vol. , no. ), –

A close-up look at a portion of John Betts’sThe Bubble.Watercolor, .

O N , the American Museum of Fly Fishinghonored Ed Jaworowski with the inaugural IzaakWalton Award at the Merion Cricket Club in

Haverford, Pennsylvania. The museum established the IzaakWalton Award in to honor and celebrate individuals wholive by the Compleat Angler philosophy. Their passion for thesport of fly fishing and involvement in their angling commu-nity provides inspiration for others and promotes the legacy ofleadership for future generations.Jaworowski is an international fly-fishing authority whom

Lefty Kreh has called “the best teacher of fly casting I have everknown.” He is writing his fifth book, has served as editorial con-sultant for another, and is working on a casting DVD in con-junction with Kreh. Jaworowski’s books and hundreds of arti-cles, appearing in more than twenty different periodicals, havebeen published in the United States, England, Spain, Norway,Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Japan. He is also a wide-ly published photographer and has served as consultant to sev-eral large fly-tackle manufacturers. Jaworowski currently worksas a consultant/advisor to Temple Fork Outfitters (SpringbrookTrading Ltd.), testing and assisting with the design of rods andother products. In , he retired from Villanova University,where, as a classical studies professor and department chair, he

taught Latin and Greek literature and Roman history for morethan forty years.This award celebration would not have been possible with-

out the support of event Chair Bob Moser and event commit-tee members Chuck Cutshall, Darrell DeMoss, Bill Grim, JamieHolt, Ted Leisenring, and Jeff Vincent.We would like to thank Senior Vice President Sam Freeman

from Freeman’s auction house for donating his services andmaking the auction a great success! Also appreciated are thosewho supported and donated items for the live and silent auc-tion: Jack Pittard with Bone Ami, Dennis W. Menscer of LittleRiver Rods, Susan Richards, Mark Susinno, Umpqua, GordonAllen, Jim Heckman, Gloria Jordan, Beau Thebault of VermontPaddleboard Outfitters, Pennsylvania Paragliding, Luther Hall,George Van Hook, John Swan, Pearl Street Slate, Temple ForkOutfitters, Darrell DeMoss, Chuck Cutshall, Bob Moser, JamieHolt, Yards Brewing Company, Ron Lasko, Ted Simroe, EdJaworowski, Eleanore Hayes of LunaMoth Designs, andKharlovka Company Limited.

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(event coverage continues on page )

Ed Jaworowski Receives Izaak Walton Award

Photos by Carley K Photography

Honoree Ed Jaworowski (center) with event ChairBob Moser and Executive Director Cathi Comar.

Honoree Ed Jaworowski with his wife, MicheleJaworowski, and the Izaak Walton Award.

Honoree Ed Jaworowski, Monique Marks, Michele Jaworowski,Joanne Moser, and Event Chair Bob Moser (from left).

Sam Freeman, senior vice president of Freeman’s auctionhouse, volunteered his services for the evening.

Auction items donated by Susan Richards in memoryof the late John Richards, an avid AMFF supporter.

(Izaak Walton Award continued)

Heritage Award EventPlease join the American Museum of

Fly Fishing and Honorary Event ChairLefty Kreh for our annual Heritage Award

Event honoring 2015 recipientTom Brokaw

Friday, April 24, 2015

Racquet & Tennis ClubNew York City

Updates available at www.amff.com

Schullery Inducted into Fly FishingHall of FameOn October , former AMFF Executive Director Paul

Schullery was inducted into the Catskill Fly Fishing Center andMuseum’s Fly Fishing Hall of Fame. Schullery began his career in history, conservation, and fly

fishing as a ranger-naturalist in Yellowstone National Park.From to , he served as the first executive director ofthe American Museum of Fly Fishing and was the editor of theAmerican Fly Fisher from to .Schullery went on to write eight books on the history, cul-

ture, lore, and natural history of fly fishing, and cowrote sever-al others. He has published in dozens of magazines and tech-nical journals, ranging from the New York Times to BioScienceto Outdoor Life, and including most of the fly-fishing maga-zines. He has been regularly honored as an influential writerand thinker on natural resource management and nationalparks, and has served on many advisory boards for conserva-tion and educational groups.Schullery is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than a

dozen books about Yellowstone National Park. He has been therecipient of a number of prestigious literary and professionalawards, including honorary doctorates from Montana StateUniversity and Ohio University; the Wallace Stegner Awardfrom the University of Colorado Center of the American West;and the Roderick Haig-Brown Award from the Federation ofFly Fishers. He has spoken on conservation issues in thenational media, including on the Today Show and on PBS,World Monitor News, the History Channel, NPR, and others.He wrote and narrated the award-winning PBS/ABC fea-ture film, Yellowstone: America’s Sacred Wilderness. He servedon the advisory board for the Ken Burns PBS series TheNational Parks: America’s Best Idea and appeared frequently in

the film. Since , he has served as scholar in residence at theMontana State University Library in Bozeman, Montana.According to the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame, “Paul Schullery,

fly-fishing’s preeminent historian, has been a pioneer of thestudy of the cultural foundations of our sport and the valuesupon which it depends. As a lifelong professional conserva-tionist, he has effectively championed the scientific manage-ment of a host of natural resources, all of which relate to theprotection of the fly fisher’s world. As a writer, he has pub-lished path-breaking literary and scholarly explorations of therichness of the fly-fishing experience.”Since its inception in , the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame has

inducted seventy members who have significantly enhancedthe culture of fly fishing. This year’s inductees also includedJoseph Bates Jr., R. B. Marston, and Bob Popovics.

Nardini Joins Museum StaffOur new communications coordinator, Peter Nardini, joins

the museum from the great state of Massachusetts. Peter waspreviously the social media manager at Boston Ski and Tennisand received his bachelor’s degree in from EndicottCollege in Beverly, Massachusetts. Never far away from astream or a mountain, Peter enjoys skiing, biking, kayaking,and attempting to golf in his free time. Peter has settled intothe Manchester area and is excited to make the museum amajor player in bringing fly fishing into the digital age.

Former Executive Director Paul Schullery, who was inductedinto the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame in October. Photo supplied by

the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum.

Peter Nardini, the museum’s newcommunications coordinator.

Sara Wilcox

In the LibraryThanks to the following for their donations of the titles that

have become part of our permanent collection (published in unless otherwise noted): Coch-y-Bonddu Books sent us Henk van Bork’s Salmon Flies

Past and Present. Reel Lines Press sent us John Betts’s Reels andMaking Them (); Remarques (); and Synthetic Flies, Flieswith an “Edited Hackle” & Catch the Hatch: A Compilation of

Three Works (). They also sent us John Betts and MichaelHackney’s Fly Lines and How to Make Them, Michael L. J.Hackney’s The Reelsmith’s Primer: The Art of Hand-crafting FlyFishing Reels (), Thomas C. Kerr’s In Search of SamuelPhillippe Rods (), and Andrew Marshall’s The History andEvolution of the Trout Fly, Part ().Skyhorse Publishing sent us Jay Cassell’s Fisherman’s Bible: The

World’s Most Comprehensive Angling Reference and RaymondCoppinger’s Fishing Dogs: A Guide to the History, Talents, andTraining of the Baildale, the Flounderhounder, the Angler Dog, andSundry Other Breeds of Aquatic Dogs (Canis piscatorius).

Recent Donations to the CollectionThomas MacLeod of Minnetonka, Minnesota, donated two

fly rods (maker unknown) to be sold to benefit the museum. JimHardman of Dorset, Vermont, gave us a collection of fly-tyingmaterials and tools. For a detailed list, contact the museum.

Al Barnes of Johnson City, Texas, donated his -by--inchoil painting, Will They Eat? Rev. David K. Chase sent us a pho-tograph taken on May of a trophy tarpon caught by W.Rowell Chase, along with his guide, Cecil Keith, at Islamorada,Florida. And Jim Heckman of Manchester, Vermont, gave us acopy of the April issue of the New Yorker and a copy ofthe cover of the June issue.

Joe Beelart of West Linn, Oregon, donated two books thathe edited by Lew Stoner: The Lew Stoner Winston Letters (TheWhitefish Press, , limited edition no. of ) and TheLew Stoner–Ted Trueblood Letters (The Whitefish Press, ,author’s proof no. of ). Beelart also donated a two-volumeboxed set, Howells (Whitefish Press, , limited edition no. of ): Volume , which he edited, is The Letter and Corre -spondences of Gary H. Howells; Volume , which he wrote, isThe Bamboo Fly Rods and Fly Fishing Legacy of Gary Howells.

Upcoming Events

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

A members-only event, the Rare Rod Rendezvous, washeld on September at the museum. A special thank youto Bob Shannon of the Fly Rod Shop, Tom Zemianek ofthe Orvis Company, Jim Becker of Becker Rods, andmuseum Deputy Director Yoshi Akiyama for their rod

expertise. A members-only event is among the many wayswe like to thank you for your support! Stay tuned for the

members-only event, the Rare Reel Rendezvous.

Sara Wilcox

February Gallery ProgramFit to be “Tyed”: p.m.–: p.m.

March –First Annual Deborah Pratt Dawson Conservation Symposium

March Izaak Walton Award Event honoring Tom DavidsonKey Largo Anglers ClubKey Largo, Florida

April Gallery ProgramSpring Training: p.m.–: p.m.

April Heritage Award Event honoring Tom BrokawRacquet & Tennis ClubNew York City

April Board of Trustees MeetingThe Anglers’ Club of New YorkNew York City

May –September Blue Star Museums ProgramFree admission for active military personneland their families

July –Angling & ArtBenefit Sale and Public Programs

July Celebrate National Ice Cream Day! Fly-fishing activities and free ice cream: p.m.–: p.m.

August th Annual Fly-Fishing Festival: a.m.–: p.m.

September Members-Only Event:Rare Reel Rendezvous: p.m.–: p.m.

December Gallery ProgramHooked on the Holidays: p.m.–: p.m.

Always check our website (www.amff.com) for additions, updates, and more information or contact Christina Coleat () - or events@amff.com. “Casting About,” the museum’s e-mail newsletter, offers up-to-date newsand event information. To subscribe, look for the link on our website or contact the museum.

Sara Wilcox

The museum welcomed Maple Street School students on October for a tour of the exhibit and the creation of clown flies!

Sara Wilcox

In October, Board President Richard Tisch and ExecutiveDirector Cathi Comar participated in a panel discussionat the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New

York. Following a screening of Eric Steel’s Kiss the Water,the discussion—part of the center’s Focus on Nature

film series—featured the history of fly fishing.

Jacob Burns Film Center/Sam Van Der Meer

The Friends of Corbin Shoot returned in October and wasa resounding success. At the end of this two-day event, eachparticipant is given a chance to win an original painting bysporting artist (and AMFF Trustee) Peter Corbin. This year

Justin Evans was the fortunate recipient of Marking the Covey.AMFF is deeply appreciative of the efforts undertaken by so

many to generate programming funds through this event,includ-ing Peter Corbin, Korky Podmaniczky, Peter Kellogg, GeorgeGibson, and the staff of Hudson Farm and Griffin & Howe.

Korky Podm

aniczky

With a grant from the Mount Laurel Foundation, themuseum worked with the Community Support Program ofthe United Counseling Service of Bennington County

(Vermont) to develop a program to interest developmentallydisabled adults in the history and sport of fly fishing.

Combining fly fishing’s healing and therapeutic properties withthe UCSVT focus on teaching new wellness skills, the program,held in November, included an overview of the history of thesport and the museum, an exhibit tour, a film, fly tying, and

casting instruction and demonstration (seen here).

On December , the museum welcomed the community to ourannual Hooked on the Holidays event. Community members,families, museum trustees, and local artist George Van Hookjoined us for an open house to color fish ornaments, decoratetrout cookies, craft Christmas cards, tie clown flies, put togethera practice rod, make s’mores, enjoy some hot cocoa, and take

advantage of free admission to our latest exhibition, The Wondersof Fly Fishing. Thank you to all of those who shared this special

time of year with us and to program sponsor TD Bank.

Sara Wilcox

After a career in television and films, Hoagy B. Carmichael turned his attention to bam-boo rod making. He wrote A Master’s Guide to Building a Bamboo Fly Rod () withEverett Garrison, produced a film chronicling Garrison’s work, and recently donated theentire Garrison-Carmichael rod shop to the Catskill Fly Fishing Center. Carmichael is aleading expert in the field of antique fishing tackle and has fished for trout and salmon formore than forty years. In later years, he has concentrated on trying to catch a few fish onthe Grand Cascapedia River while helping to develop their fine museum. His book TheGrand Cascapedia River: A History has been published in two volumes ( and ).Between those volumes, he published 8 by Carmichael (); a new book, Side Casts, willdebut in . Carmichael is also working on a musical that features many of his father’swell-known songs. His most recent contribution to this journal was “Chauncy Lively: AnInnovative Fly Tier and Consummate Fly Fisherman” (Spring ).

From the collection of Hoagy B. Carmichael

Ronald F. Lasko is an independent writer, author, and lecturerwho grew up fly fishing for trout in the Catskill and Adirondackmountains. As an executive, he resided in Hartford, Boston, Atlanta,and New York, traveling and fly fishing for trout from New Englandto Georgia. Over the last twenty-five years, he has resided on CapeCod, and his fishing and studies have been focused on its sea-runbrook trout. Lasko resides on a trout pond, minutes from the rivers,where he has written A Tale of Two Rivers (Schiffer Publishing, ).He recently completed his first novel and is at work on future fly-fish-ing books. Lasko has been interviewed on author TV programs, andhis book was reviewed in Trout Unlimited’s Trout magazine and theUnited Kingdom’s Flyfisher Magazine. He has given presentations atannual shows around New England (the Marlborough Fly FishingShow, the Bear’s Den Fly Fishing Expo, and the Fly TyingDemonstration in Sudbury, Massachusetts), as well as at the

American Museum of Fly Fishing. In addition to writing from his Trout Cottage on Cape Cod, Lasko instructs fly fishers, givespresentations, and supports restoration of trout waters.

Donna Lasko

James D. Heckman is a semiretired orthopedic surgeon who lives in San Antonio,Texas, but summers in Manchester, Vermont, where he enjoys fishing the small localstreams for trout. He has been a museum trustee for seven years, and he completedfour years as president of the board in November . (Here he is admiring a custom-made Jim Becker bamboo rod, which was presented to him by the trustees upon hisretirement as board president.) Heckman has a fascination with cartoons, and in thespring of , he discovered a New Yorker cover depicting an intrepid stream fisher-man. Subsequently, he has collected all seventeen original New Yorker covers on thissubject; the article in this issue describes seven of these and their artists. He recentlydonated all of the covers to the museum and is now collaborating with staff to createa display of the entire collection for the library.

Sara Wilcox

T Members Meeting took place on October in beautiful Manchester, Vermont. Theleaves were falling, but the enthusiasm for the museum,

its programs, and its overall direction was soaring!Seventeen current trustees were presented for next-term

reelections. At AMFF, trustees serve three-year terms. It isastonishing to note that three trustees were elected to theirninth term: Arthur Kaemmer, Woods King III, and LeighPerkins. We are fortunate to have such strong and continuedsupport from these passionate anglers! All officer positionsand committee chairs will remain the same for the next year.Five new trustees were welcomed onto the board, including

Peter C. Bowden (Texas), Jim Lepage (Michigan and Vermont),Anne Hollis Perkins (Florida, Wyoming, and Vermont), JohnRedpath (New York and Vermont), and Martin E. Zimmerman(Illinois and Montana). We are looking forward to working

with each of these new trustees as they begin to serve on com-mittees and ad hoc work groups.We must also report that four trustees have rotated off the

board. The museum truly appreciates the time and efforts ofMichael Bakwin (served –), John McMahon (served–), Kristoph Rollenhagen (served –), andPhilip Sawyer (served –). Throughout their tenures,each has added tremendously to our mission and fund-raisingefforts. Happily, all will remain AMFF supporters and ambas-sadors.As we continue to work toward our never-ending goal to

fulfill our important mission, the staff moves forward know-ing that our board and members are strong in their convictionand their support. Thank you one and all!

C CE D

With the Autumn Comes Change

A classic bass fly sits on a leaf at the edge of the museum’s casting pond.

Sara Wilcox

Main Street • PO Box Manchester,Vermont

Tel: () - • Fax: () --: amff@amff.com: www.amff.com

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

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

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

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

JMembership Dues (per annum)

Patron ,Sponsor Business Benefactor Associate

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

Scan with your smart-phone to visit ourcollection online!

Catch and Release the Spirit of Fly Fishing!