Crossing the Pond
By Neil M. Travis, Montana
The history of fly fishing clearly demonstrates that the
foundations of the sport were laid down in the Old World,
specifically in England. On the demanding chalkstreams
of the English countryside fly fishing rose from the
contemplative pastime of Walton to the dogmatic, scientific
school of Halford. Along the way countless contributions
were made by individual fly fishers, many whose names have
been lost with the passage of time. It is quite clear that
many of the discoveries were made by several individuals
at different locations, sometimes almost simultaneously,
and apparently some styles of fly fishing were discovered
and then forgotten only to be 'rediscovered' at a later
date. The history of fly fishing in the New World has a
much shorter but no less convoluted history.
The roots of fly fishing in the Americas appear to be found in
the mountain streams of Pennsylvania. The colorful brook trout,
not really a trout but a char, was the object of the fly fishers
offerings during those formative days. Streams with names like
the Sawkill, Lackawaxen, Bushkill, and Brodheads were the streams
where American fly fishing had its earliest beginnings.
In 1836 Arthur Henry built a structure called the Halfway House
along the Brodheads, a primitive log framed inn constructed to
meet the needs of mule skinners and stagecoach passengers traveling
along the freight wagon road. In 1848 it was enlarged and renamed
the Henryville House, which was to become the oldest fly fishing
hotel in America.
George Washington Bethune, the editor of the first American edition
of Walton's The Compleat Angler, published in 1847,
was the first writer to pay homage to the Henryville House, but
the most famous early fly fisher to visit the house was Thaddeus
Norris.
Thaddeus Norris published The American Angler's Book
in 1864, and it covered fishing in America from warm water fishing
for bass to the wilderness salmon fisheries of the north country.
Norris experimented with primitive dry flies, and he described the
technique in detail in his book. These flies were traditional wet
flies that were dropped gently on the surface of the water and taken
by the trout before they could sink. This was some 25 years before
similar tactics were used by Theodore Gordon on the Catskill streams
in New York.
Perhaps the most important contribution that Norris made to American
fly fishing, and fly fishing in general, was his collaboration with
Samuel Phillippe, a gunsmith and violin maker. Phillippe invented
the four and six-strip method of constructing the modern bamboo
fly rod. Although English rod makers had long experimented with
three-strip bamboo rods they glued the surface fibers on the
inside, but Phillippe placed the surface or power fibers on
the outside. The rods, made from Calcutta cane around 1845, were
hexagonal and then turned round. Phillippe passed his knowledge
on to Norris who became one of the great rodmakers of the
nineteenth century.
By 1888 the brook trout fishing on the Pennsylvania streams was
in sharp decline. The uncontrolled lumbering and clearing of the
land for agriculture changed forever the streams that had once
been the stronghold of the eastern brook trout fishery. The last
large brook trout recorded in the registry at Henryville House
was a two-pounder taken in 1893.
1895 marked the founding of the Brooklyn Flyfishers, and the
event was recorded in the registry at Henryville, but after
a disappointing season in 1897 they abandoned the Pennsylvania
brook trout waters for the Catskill streams in southern New York.
Here they established themselves near the Little Beaverkill where
the most famous American angler, Theodore Gordon, was already
plying the waters with his first primitive dry flies.
A series of ridges lying west of the Hudson river give rise to
all of the famous Catskill streams, and the principal Catskill
rivers have their source on two mountains; Doubletop and Slide.
Doubletop Mountain is the source of three historical rivers;
Dry Brook, Willowemoc, and the legendary Beaverkill. Slide
Mountain, the more impressive of the two mountains, is the
headwaters of the Esopus, the Rondout, and both branches of
the Neversink, the home waters of Theodore Gordon and Edward
Ringwood Hewitt.
The list of anglers that claimed these Catskill streams as their
home waters reads like a who's who of American angling. Theodore
Gordon, Edward Ringwood Hewitt, George La Branche, Rueben Cross,
and Louis Rhead were just a few of the founding fathers of American
fly fishing that plied the waters of these famous streams. Fly
fishing was soon to come of age in the New World. ~ Neil M. Travis, Montana/Arizona
From A Journal Archives
|
