The

American
Fly Fisher
Journal of the American Museum of Fly Fishing
WINTER 2004 VOLUME 30 NUMBER 1
 The Content in the Context
Out with the old, in with the new. See story and photos beginning on page 26.
F
ly-fishing history is in large part an account of people's
memories within an historical context. In this issue, writ-
ers juxtapose personal story, philosophy, and discovery
with historical literature, a tackle manufacturer, and flies.
In "Return to Paradise," Andrew Herd takes a fresh look at
the clues of place that F. D. Barker left behind in his 1929 book,
A n Angler's Paradise. Barker, who visited Ireland and stayed at
"the Gray House" in "Kerra" many times over a period of
approximately twenty years, gave accounts of his fishing expe-
riences there. Barker described the places he fished and gave
them fictional names; a map was even included with the book.
A few identities have long been known: the Gray House of the
book, for example, is the Clifden House in Corofin, now a
guest house. Herd and his friends were staying there when
". . .we happened to sit down one evening with the book, a bot-
tle of whisky, and the Shannon Fisheries Board leaflet for the
region and realized that the disguise is much thinner than is
commonly supposed." Herd's account of this discovery begins
on page 2.
Edward Davis describes his article, "Those Captivating
Classic Rods and Reels: An S. Allcock Story" as "part fishing
story, part history of a now-defunct tackle manufacturer."
Davis is the proud owner of a ca. 1938 Conway split-cane fly
rod made by the S. AUcock Company of Redditch. He received
the rod as a gift at the age of thirteen and fished with it for
more than fifty years. Davis first relates a story of his
youth-fishing for Salvelinus marstoni in southern Quebec-a
trip during which he used this rod. He then goes on to give a
short history of both the tackle (the Conway fly rod and the
Popular reel) and the S. Allcock Company itself, which was
founded in 1803 and eventually disappeared in name after
World War I1 events and subsequent company mergers. The
article begins on page 8.
A friend wondering aloud about what had happened to the
flies they had loved and fished in 1940 prompted Gordon
Wickstrom to take a look at the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies' evolution of the fly. To him, the change "from presenta-
tional artifice to representation of the natural" parallels
changes that were happening in society as whole: the disap-
pearance of romanticism and its replacement with the scien-
tific and technical. Wickstrom compares old and new fly types
according to form, material, inspiration, and use. The piece is
interspersed with interlinear commentary-reminiscences and
asides conversing with the text. "Where Are the Flies of
Yesteryear? An Essay with Interlinear Commentary" begins on
page 14.
And speaking of reminiscences, in a reminiscent piece about
meeting Edward R. Hewitt in 1948, H. Lenox H. Dick shares the
memory of first caring for Mr. Hewitt as his physician during
a hospital stay and later dining with him at his home. Dick,
author of several fishing titles, including The Art and Science of
Fly Fishing, treasures this memory of meeting an all-time
great. "Edward R. Hewitt: The Last Renaissance Man" begins
on page 20.
Late in October, the Museum broke ground on our new
building. Of course, this has included partial destruction of an
existing building, which makes for more interesting photos.
Sara Wilcox has put together some images of the early days of
demolition and construction. This spread begins on page 26.
As always, look to Museum News to find out where we've
been and where we're going next.
KATHLEEN ACHOR
EDITOR
 American
THEAMERICANMUSEUM
OF FLYFISHING
Fly Fisher
Journal of the American Museum of Fly Fishing
Preserving the Heritage WINTER 2004 VOLUME 30 NUMBER 1

of Fly Fishing
Return to Paradise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
T R U S T E E S
E. M. Bakwin Nancy Mackinnon
Andrew Herd
Michael Bakwin Walter T.Matia
Foster Bam William C. McMaster, M.D. Those Captivating Classic Rods and Reels:
Pamela Bates James Mirenda An S. Allcock Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Steven Benardete John Mundt Edward Davis
Paul Bofinger David Nichols
Duke Buchan 111 Wayne Nordberg Where Are the Flies of Yesteryear?
Mickey Callallen Michael B. Osborne
Peter Corbin Stephen M. Peet
An Essay with Interlinear Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Blake Drexler Leigh H. Perkins Gordon M. Wickstrom
William J. Dreyer Allan K. Poole
Christopher Garcia John Rano Reminiscences:
George R. Gibson I11 Roger Riccardi Edward R. Hewitt: The Last Renaissance Man . . . . . . . . 20
Gardner L. Grant William Salladin
Chris Gruseke Ernest Schwiebert H. Lenox H. Dick
James Hardman Robert G. Scott
Lynn L. Hitschler James A. Spendiff Museum News. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Arthur Kaemmer, M.D. John Swan
Woods King I11 Richard G. Tisch And So It Begins: A Groundbreaking Story . . . . . . . . . 26
Carl R. Kuehner I11 David H. Walsh Sara Wilcox and George Gibson
James E. Lutton 111 Tames C. Woods

T R U S T E E S E M E R I T I
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Charles R. Eichel David B. Ledlie
G. Dick Finlay Leon L. Martuch O N T H E COVER: T h e S. Allcock szx-strip split-cane rod, circa 1938. See "Those
W. Michael Fitzgerald Keith C. Russell Captivating Classic Rods and Reels: A n S. Allcock Story" on page 8.
William Herrick Paul Schullery iiic Arrier ciait kly Fziher (ICSN 0884 3562) i \ puhll<hed
Robert N. Johnson Stephen Sloan tour t m e \ a )ear hv the Mu\rurn at P O Box 42, Manchr\trr Vermont 05254
Publlrat~ondate, arc wlntrr, cprlng, summer, and fdl Memberqhlp due? include the coit ot the
O F F I C E R S purnal (515) and are tan deduit~blea\ pn,uirlrd f o ~b) Ilw Mernberqhlp rate\ are llrted In the b a i l uf each I s m e
Chairman of the Board Robert G. Scott All letter? rnanu\crlpt\ photograph\ and rnatenals lntrnded lor publication m the journal should he Fent to
the M u ~ r o m The h/iu\ei~mand journal are not rtspans~blefor unsol~clted manusinpts, drawmgs, photogiaphii
President David H . Walsh
material, or rnrrnorabll~a The hlusrurn cannot accept responi~b~l~ty for statements and mterpretallons that are
Vice Presidents Lynn L. Hitschler wholly the author? Unsolii~tedmanu*~nptscannot be returned unless postage 1s pro\lded Con~nbut~ons to The
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 Return to Paradise
I
F CHANCE OR FORTUNE ever
bring you to Corofin (or Corro-
fin-they have it both ways on the
sign), take the road to Kilfenora, and
turn left at the shrine by the wayside.
Press on a mile or two, and just before
the ruined house, go right, and follow
the road that winds up to the mountain.
For a few minutes, you parallel the river
Fergus, only a field away, and then, as
your way plunges into the trees, take the
track to the right. This leads you into a
narrow avenue, overarched by birch and
sycamore in a way that will be familiar to
anyone who loves Ireland, and after you
have crossed the river using the bridge
by the tumbledown mill, make sure to
take the left fork up the hill. Then, just as
Photographs by the author
THE A M E R I C A N FLY F I S H E R
by Andrew Herd
Clifden House as i t is today
your eyes have adjusted to the gloomth,
you burst back into the sun. Before you
is the broad sweep of the drive of Clifden
House, renowned as "the Gray House"
and the centerpiece of the adventures
described in Frederick Drummon
Barker's An Angler's Paradise.1
The present owners of Clifden
House are Bernadette and Jim Robson,
who found the place in an abandoned
state thirty years ago and have been
restoring it ever since, a daunting
responsibility, given that one of their
first tasks was to remove the 230 tons of
broken stone that had once been the
roof. Nowadays the Robsons take pay-
ing guests, so it is possible to sit in the
same room as Barker did and to
breathe the same soft air of morning as
you rig a rod to fish the loughs he made
so famous. It isn't often that you get the
chance to live a little history, though
admittedly in Ireland almost anything
is possible.
For readers who are unfamiliar with
the work, A n Angler's Paradise comes
from the same literary stream that gave
us The Erne: Its Legends and Fly Fishing
(by Reverend Henry Newland, 1851) and
The Practice of Angling (by James
O'Gorman, 1845), and though it has
never quite stood in the first rank of
Irish angling literature, the title has
always generated interest. The text
recounts a series of fishing trips to
Ireland undertaken by the author over a
twenty-year period. An air of mystery
has always clung to the work, not least
because Barker concealed the location of
the fishing by changing all the toponyms.

Some of the gardens at Clifden House.
Arguably, it wasn't a smart move to
choose such an alluring title to describe
a secret paradise, and if the author's
renaming of places, rivers, and loughs
was any kind of smokescreen at all, it
can't have fooled Irish readers for very
long: the description of the landscape
alone would have told them that the
fishing lay to the west of the Shannon.
After that, the most casual perusal of a
map would have led a finger to the lakes
at Corofin. As you drive into the village,
the road signs proclaim it as an angler's
paradise, although Barker might be sur-
prised to see the type of visitor it receives
today. In a way, his secret has survived,
because until we made a chance discov-
ery, the real names of many of the loughs
mentioned in the book remained uncer-
tain. But (demonstrating a proper Irish
trait) I digress.
In late May 2003, Patrick Grove
Annesley, David Burnett, and I (accom-
panied by my wife, daughter, and two
Labradors) journeyed to Corofin, partly
because it is one of the few areas of
Ireland we had not fished, partly because
there was a mystery to solve, and partly
because we wanted to see the Burren,
one of the land's most beautiful land-
scapes. Should any readers decide to fol-
low in our footsteps, there is accommo-
dation to suit every pocket and plenty to
occupy the family while some serious
fishing gets done. For American readers,
Corofin has the decided advantage of
being less than an hour from the
Shannon airport, in a country where dis-
tances are so deceptive that even after
twenty years, I still have to multiply my
original estimate by three to arrive at
anything near a realistic enroute time.
A n Angler's Paradise was published by
Faber and Gwyer in 1929 and is an
account of the author's experiences in
Ireland, which he visited every year from
about 1890 for approximately two
decades. Barker was an American by
birth, worked in London, and ventured
over to Ireland for long fishing holidays
each May and September. Although first
editions are available from booksellers,
there is a 2003 reprint available from the
Flyfisher's Classic Library, with an intro-
duction by Fred Buller, who is well
known to readers of The American Fly
Fisher. I have a copy of the original, a gift
from Jim Robson, and to leaf through its
pages is to travel back to days long gone
and to stand again in the hall of the Gray
House, hearing the steps of Patsey, the
ghillie, ringing on the bare stone flags.
The story begins conventionally
enough with the author's childhood in
eastern Massachusetts, presents a few
cameos of his angling experience as a
child, then swiftly proceeds to Ireland.
There is a caution that "there are no
thrilling adventures, no very great fish,
no moments of peril, no love interest
beyond a deep love of sport and
NatureY2before Barker goes on to write
a book full of adventure, big trout, big-
ger pike, and at least two accounts of
boating in wild storms, but he does keep
his promise about the love interest. Then
"--I.)
Patsey's brother: and Tom Quinnd who
David Burnett considers afternoon tactics.
WINTER 2004

I anodyne at best. Next he acquaints us
The high street of Corofin.
The limestone country of the Burren in County Clare.
1
Lough Inchiquin from the top of the "mountain."
T H E A M E R I C A N FLY F I S H E R
also ghillied for him from time to time.
Barker's characterization is the weakest
point of the book, and his portraits are
with his rod, which is "a greenheart fif-
teen feet in length and as near a perfect
balance as any I have ever had in my
handy4 marking Barker as a traditional-
ist in the days when the switch to single-
handed bamboo was well under way-
the author's would have been a double-
handed rod. There is an account of how
his friend Bob Trotter tried a rod of 11
feet and found it wanting, which Barker
tells with some relish.5 The flies he used
of which I write days do occur, now and
then, when svort is almost incredibly
good. But th; chances against a visit&
happening to hit on such a day are very
great, and one has not yet come my
waf7 Barker inserted this to balance the
stories, which create entirely the oppo-
site impression.
And then the enigma. At the begin-
ning of chapter three, just as the reader
has worked up an insatiable appetite to
visit this jewel of a place, Barker writes
rather archly, "I regret it is denied me to
tell you where Eden really is and how it
is named on the map. If I were to do so,
it would be Eden no longer. You might
be all for taking tickets and trying to
engage room^."^ None of the original
place names appear in either the text or
the maps. As I have already remarked, it
wouldn't have confused an Irishman for
long, but that is unlikely to have been the
author's intention, given that trout fish-
ing on the l o u ~ h was
s hardlv the nation-
alYsport thenuthat it is now. It would,
however. have thrown an English reader
off the scent. This leads us ;o the first
puzzle, because although the endpapers
are in the form of maps, showing the
principal villages, rivers, and lakes, it is
tough reconciling them with the text;
just try tracing a couple of Barker's boat
journeys and you will see what I mean.
When we arrived in Corofin, several
pieces of the jigsaw were already in place.
It has long been known that Clifden
House is the Gray House; that Corofin is
Kerra, the Junction is Ennis, and Lough
Inchicrag is Lough Inchiquin; but our
inquiries about the identities of the rest
of the lakes drew a blank-we found no
one confident enough to name more
than a couple. Given Barker's reticence,
this seems understandable, but we hap-
pened to sit down one evening with the
book, a bottle of whislty, and the
Shannon Fisheries Board leaflet for the
region and redized that the disguise is
much thinner thari is commonly sup-
posed. Far from the maps being C M ~ -
plete fantasy*as has been suggested to
me more than once in idle conversation,
they are a direct tracing of the outlines
of the loughs, all of which are shown in
their correct relative positions, dowing
for -a s d amount of vertical compres-
sion enforced by the format. It might
seem surprising that this hasn't been
noticed before, but when you bear in
mind that the Irish Ordinance Survey of
the area divides it m t l v into four and
that few maps of 1rela;d show all the Lough Tullymacken.
roads, let alone all the lakes, it becomes a
little easier to understand why such an
impression has arisen, The Shannon
Board's helpful leaflet contains the only
II
map I can recall that shows all the loughs
without my extraneous detail, and it
makes matching. Barker's fictional
names to the real ones a trivial exercise.
The only significant deviation from the
Q d n a n e Survey on the endpaper map
ig the transposition of Clifden House to
the east side of the Fergus-a strange
desisian, given that an angler standing
on the east si& of 1nchiquin"s ~uiflow
couldn't help but notice the building
that lies barely a hundred yards away
across the river. It is tempting to specu-
late that the cartographer got so carried
awa drawing trees and crags on the west
b a d that he simply ran out of space for
the house. Incidentallx don't get too car-
rkd away with the idea of the "moun-
tains'' Barker describes, because the
highest point in Ireland is Corrin A mayfly dun struggles on the water.
Tuathail, which though spectacular in

than the name might suggest.

This exercise begs an interesting ques-
tion. If it Is so easy to identify the loughs
using the endpapers, why did Barker let
the publisher bind them in? It is difficult
to provide a definitive answer, but it may
lie in the delay between publication and
the events the text relates. It is common-
ly assumed that the story begins in
approximately 1890, which would mean
that Barker's last visit was in 1910 or so,
at which time he had bought a cottage at
Ballyline and had taken to describing
himself as an old man. It is tempting to
speculate that he never returned: war
broke out in 19x4, and with it came the
A classic Inchiquin trout.

WINTER 2004
 The map from the endpapers of An Angler's Paradise.

first stirrings of revolution in Ireland, at of his contemporaries, he was so dis- Barker's Actual
that point under the rule of the British turbed by the Troubles that he never Lough Name Name
crown-two events that would have dis- returned, in which case, his concern that
couraged any travel that wasn't absolute- hordes of visitors would descend on his Inchicrag Inchiquin
ly necessary. Barker must have been other Eden had evaporated and he Daun Atedaun
looking forward to going back after the assented to publication of accurate maps, Ballyportree Cullaun
Armistice was signed in 1918, but the albeit with substitute toponyms. Another White Lakes Ballyeighter
Irish War of Independence broke out plausible explanation is that this crucial Namara George
almost immediately, bringing further decade took an already old man beyond
dangers to deter the casual visitor. The his active fishing years. Or maybe he Courah Tdymackenl
War of Independence had barely been finally realized that improvements in Muckanah
won when a bloody civil war began, travel meant that it was impractical to Nahinch Ballyteige
which, though it lasted barely ten keep his secret completely safe; after all, Long Lake Dromore
months, was so divisive that the afteref- he was running into danger the moment Ballyaar Ballyline
fects were still being felt years later and he first set pen to paper. Whatever the Inchicoll Inchicronan
have sent ripples into modern times. explanation may be, if you use the table
Effectively, there was a ten-year period at right to substitute Barker's names on Lake of Little Trout Ballyogan
when Ireland would have been out of the endpapers, you have before you a Ballymoher Ballycullinan
bounds to the author. Perhaps, like many functional map of the loughs. Rath Raha

6 T H E A M E R I C A N FLY F I S H E R

The final conundrum surrounds the
quality of the fishing itself. Visitors often
remark either that Barker talked the fish-
ing up a great deal, or that it must have
gone downhill considerably since the
book was written. I think we can acquit
the man on the first charg+he made no
bones about the fact that there were
many slow or blank days. The accusation
has its roots in the fact that Barker writes
more about good trips than bad ones,
but this is a feature common to every
book of this kind-the literature would
be much poorer if no one ever caught
any fish. Yes, Barker does describe days
that would be fabulous by modern
Corofin standards, but they should be
seen as his best memories of twenty
years of angling. As to their truthfulness,
I can testify to the fact that there are still
some very large trout in the loughs.
The second charge is better aimed.
The fishing has declined very consider-
ably in places, but only comparatively
recently-an angler visiting the lakes in
the 1950s would have known much the
same quality of sport as Barker did half a
century before. The decline happened in
the 1970swhen changes in farming prac-
Tullymacken trout.
tices led to Loughs Inchiquin and
Dromore, then the best lakes in the sys-
tem, becoming eutrophic. Catches
plunged, and despite a belated cleanup
campaign, they have never returned to
their original levels. It is something of a
mystery why this should be so, because
the water quality appears to be as good
as it ever was, but the trouble may lie in
the fact that the redds are no longer in
good condition, and you may draw your
own conclusions from the fact that the
area is now promoted and managed
more for pike, perch, rudd, tench, and
bream than as a trout fishery. It is heart-
breaking to see such a natural asset
shorn of its former glory, and Barker
would no doubt furrow his brow at the
new generation of float tubers paddling
around his beloved loughs; though as an
enthusiastic pike fisherman, I am sure he
would spare a moment to examine their
tackle and tell them that they needed
longer rods.
And yet. There are still some very
good trout there, if you know where to
look and fish well enough; this being the
one part of Barker's code that cannot be
broken-unless you are lucky enough to
trout there for a lifetime. This May, we
fished on one of the minor loughs and
saw a rise that continued into a heart-
stopping roll that seemed to go on forev-
er. None of us put the fish at an ounce
less than 4 pounds, which would make it
big even by Barker's standards, and if the
ones we caught were anything to go by,
that trout must have been in the most
superb condition. As a bonus, I also took
a pike of at least 6 pounds on a 5-weight
fly rod, which was as exciting as you can
imagine. But before you rush and make
your bookings, let me warn you that
Barker is right-there is easier fishing to
be had elsewhere in Ireland, and if you
go to Corofin, you must be prepared for
blank days and the occasional fish. But
when you do get a trout, you won't for-
get the catching of it. And if you don't?
Well, no real loss, because the other
thing Barker was right about is that the
lakes at Corofin are distractinglybeauti-
ful, pretty near to paradise, if such a
-
thing is granted to us on this lonely
planet.
ENDNOTES
I. F. D. Barker, An Angler's Paradise (London:
Faber and Gwyer Ltd., London, 1929).
2. Barker, 26.
3. Aiso spelled Quin. Like the signs, Barker has
it both ways.
4. Barker, 32.
5. Ibid., 33.
6. Ibid., 33; possibly fiery brown.
7. Ibid., 37.
8. Ibid., 39.
WINTER 2004
Those Captivating Classic Rods and Reels:
An S. Allcock Story
by Edward Davis

A true and tried rod of graceful proportions and known excellence, which has been
the faithful companion on many a jaunt by mountain stream, brawling river, on quiet
lake, and has taken its part, and shared the victory in many a struggle with the game
beauties of the waters, at last comes to be looked upon as a tried and trusty friend in
which the angler reposes the utmost confidence and reliance, and which he regards with
a love and affection that he bestows upon no other inanimate object.
-James Henshall, The Book of the Black Bass, 1881

And if the angler catches the fish with difficulty, then there is no man merrier than
he is in his spirits.
-Dame Juliana Berners, A Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle, 1496

Photographs by the author

T H E A M E R I C A N FLY F I S H E R
 The S. Allcock six-strip split-cane rod, circa 1938.
T
HE F O L L O W I N G is part fishing
story, part history of a now-
defunct tackle manufacturer. My
Conway split-cane fly rod was made by
the S. Allcock Company of Redditch in
the county of Worcestershire, England,
in approximately 1938. I received this rod
as a gift in 1940, at the age of thirteen,
and used it for more than fifty years to
fish for large trout, landlocked salmon,
smallmouth black bass, and red trout.
During my sixty-three years of fly
fishing there are, at the very minimum,
two dozen stories I could tell that
include the use of this cane rod. I have
selected one about Half Moon Lake
because the trout in this deep post-
glacial lake were the red trout of the
southern Quebec watershed. The first
quarter century of my experience with
the rod included catch and release of the
Salvelinus marstoni (red trout). My fish-
ing companions and I never retained
more than the two-day legal possession
catch in the provice of Quebec.
In this story, you will read about how
the drama of the fishing changed
abruptly from Saturday to Sunday. Sat-
urday was a cold dull day. Sunday was a
warm and sunny day. The S. marstoni
always began their surface feeding after
ice-out and when the sun began to warm
the surface of the water. This beautiful
subspecies of Arctic char was truly one
of the special joys of fly fishing during
the 1940s and 1950s. You will not read
about the Allcock Conway model by
name in this story, but I assure you, it
was there.
Then I'll share a little history of the
rodmakers whose rods and reels have
become classic, as well as a bit of my
own history and experience with their
products.
My Laurentian mountain lake odys-
seys are steeped in the tradition of the
marstoni of the southern Quebec water-
shed. As a young man, I enjoyed the
companionship of family and close
friends who had inherited the ways of
the fly rod, as well as the rich legacy of
their experiences.
I had been tying large slate-colored
variants and bright attractor streamer
flies the long wiLter of my fourteenth
year. Anticipatory fever had reached its
height. The trout season opened on
April 15, and the paramount concern in
the minds of my elders was water tem-
perature and the possibility of ice on the
lakes. Half Moon Lake lies in a region
known for harsh winters, and snow is
not unknown in mid-April. It is a land of
WINTER 2004 9
 Frank Charles Sr. (left) and the author with a two-day legal (Qudbec)
catch of red trout, circa 1952. The Salvelinus marstoni was named after
the British angler R. B. Marston, editor of Fishing Gazette, London.

breezy highlands, of gentle slopes, and
forests untouched by the axe; of fresh
cool mornings, the scent of pine and
juniper, and the play-acting of mink,
otter, and fox.
The exvedition was conceived in the
mind of k a n k Snow, a family friend and
business colleague of my father, Ted
Davis. Frank was the water biologist of
the group, as well as a man who could
cast a fly with unbelievable accuracy, the
softer rod of the day notwithstanding.
Frank, Gilbert Wilding, my father, and I
made up that late-April fishing party.
It was early Saturday morning, and
the sun was partly obscured by the hori-
zon and cumulus clouds. The heater in
the car was set to maximum. The road
was a rutted track made soft by recent
spring thaws. The Oldsmobile rocked
over what vassed for a not-so-level un-
used farm crossing. A local farmer,
known by one of the four members of
our fishing party, had offered to garage
the car in his barn. We planned two days
at Half Moon Lake, staying in a cabin on
its shore. But it would require several
hours of the first dav on foot to reach the
deep postglacial lake nestled in the
mountain terrain.
The farm could have been located by
ear. I have not seen. before or since. so
many golden retrievers in one fenced-in
compound. The minute of our arrival
coincided with feeding time. A cacopho-
ny of barking greeted us as we stepped
out of the car into the farmyard. We
unloaded food, fishing gear, and other
equipment. After coffee laced with
cognac, at the invitation of the farmer,
we started across fallow fields. Late A ~ r i l
buds stirred in a light breeze on a row of
cut-leaf mavle trees, which marked the
perimeter o? the field.
The beginning of the trail was muddy
and difficult, but passable. I shifted the
weight of the 30-30 rifle under the crook
of my left arm and skirted a pothole. My
three companions led the way in the early-
morning silence. Perhaps their thoughts,
like my anticipation, were centered upon
the cold waters of the lake we would reach
by late morning. The trail dried as we pro-
ceeded to higher ground. Suddenly a
squealing and scampering sound occurr-
ed, and, through a cluster of oak trees, we
sighted two bear cubs. We moved forward
at a slower Dace and watched these two
brownish-black animals scamper up a
tree. They climbed with the alacrity of a
chipmunk. "Keep a sharp eye for the
mother bear," my father advised.
One of our group exclaimed a sight-
ing of the lake. We proceeded down a
long sharp descent to the shoreline,
located the boat, removed the padlock,
and, turning the boat upright, placed it
in the water. The boat had been built on
site and leaked. The water was a2 degrees
a "
Fahrenheit. We could see the cabin on a
rocky point across the lake. Paddling and
bailing close to the shoreline, which was

10 THE A M E R I C A N FLY F I S H E R

also rocky, it occurred to me that Half
Moon Lake resembled the appearance of
a typical bass lake rather than a reposito-
ry of the red trout.
That afternoon, following a sandwich
lunch and with no visible rises on the
lake, we tried a variety of flies. Frank
caught one trout on a small streamer fly.
The marstoni weighed exactly 1 pound,
and I admired the bright small scarlet
spots along its lateral line and its slender
appearance with forked tail. The gill cov-
ers were bronzed with an iridescent
bluish cast. I watched Frank gently
release the fish.
Our party, recapping postmortems
around an after-dinner log fire, claimed
The Allcock reel with snelled flies, 1930s.
that it had tried everything in the fly
books. No one in our party possessed
nymph tyings during those days.
Certainlv.,, that is. not flies consciouslv
dressed to imitate nymphs. But wet flies
and streamers had been tried at a varietv
of depths. I had, as usual, spent consid-
erable time hanging up flies in trees
along the shoreline and losing streamers
in underwater obstructions. With some
further discussion, it was apparent that
only two or three rising trout had been
observed during the afternoon. The pos-
sibilities, I reflected, were still good. The
red trout has a proclivity to feed right
after ice-out and when the sun begins to
warm the surface of the water.
I slept sporadically because of the
need to keep the fire going. It was bitter-
ly cold during the night. If the trout were
not feeding tomorrow, I would concen-
trate on improving my double haul. I
would fish flies that I had not used last
year; had not used for years. I would
practice roll casting from the bow of the
boat. Wind whistled through spaces
between the plank walls of the cabin. It
was too early in the season for mosqui-
t o ~ ,and they could not hatch in this
cold.
Sunday revealed a cloudless day.
After shaving at the edge of the lake, I
looked in the shallows at several places
and saw a few minnows darting among
WINTER 2004 11

Note the price at the top left corner of the reel box.
the rocks. The sun rose as we breakfast-
ed, and we were on the water soon
afterward. The air temperature was
warming rapidly. Two of our group
were in the boat; the other two mem-
bers of the party were in a canoe that
had been stored in the cabin. The takes
were few at first, but as the water sur-
face warmed, the situation developed
into a surfeit of strikes for the fly fisher-
men. The surface of the lake near the
shoreline became a madhouse! I forgot
about practicing the double haul and
the roll cast. We caught and released
trout after killing the legal limit. In
those days the possession limit was two
days legal catch in the Province of
Qukbec. Almost every trout taken that
Sunday weighed about 1 pound; they
appeared to have been cloned.
12 T H E A M E R I C A N FLY F I S H E R
The Allcock reel with its original box.
At 2:30 P.M. we headed back to the
cabin to pack and store the canoe in-
doors. I reflected about the unpredict-
able nature of the feeding habits of
trout. What had awakened these trout?
Had the heat of the sun warmed the
water to an extent to which minnow
activity promulgated feeding? Almost
every trout in the lake must have headed
shoreward and chased minnows. It was a
classic example of the value of the small
streamer fly-in this case, the Harlequin.
We locked the cabin and paddled the
boat back to the trail entrance. There
were patches of snow on the ground
among the trees where violets grew
through thin wafers of ice. The shadows
became longer as we hiked to the farm-
house. I could hear the distant barking
of golden retrievers.
A SHORTHISTORY OF T H E
S. ALLCOCKCOMPANY
In 1803, Polycarp Allcock founded
what would become one of the largest
fishing tackle manufacturing companies
in the world. The company's home was
at Redditch in Worcestershire, England.
It was during 1803 that Polycarp Allcock
commenced the manufacture of fish-
hooks as a sideline to needle manufac-
turing.
In 1829, a son, Samuel, was born, and
at age ten he entered the business and
began work for his father. Samuel
matured during the Industrial Revo-
lution, and his travels around Great
Britain gave him the opportunity to see
the potential market for rods and other
tackle. It was Samuel who really extend-
ed the business and who introduced an
early form of mechanization for making
fly rods.
Although London's Great Exhibition
of 1851 included displays of split-cane
rods, they did not become popular at the
time, probably because of a lack of qual-
ity. However, fly rods came into favor
when Allcock's and other manufacturers
started producing them during the
1870s.
By 1879, Allcock's was one of the early
makers producing the hexagonal split-
cane rods. The company's catalog for the
year 1881 illustrated both American and
their own "Hexagonal Built or Split
Cane Rods." Also offered were salmon
rods made from hickorv. Allcock's trade-
mark, which appeared on a considerable
number of their fishing tackle, was a
stag.
In the 189os, Allcock's opened a facto-
ry at Murcia in Spain for the production
of silkworm gut. This product supplied
markets all over the world.
During 1884, Samuel Allcock took two
sons-in-law into partnership. They were
Alfred Williams and G. E. Leach. In 1902,
a third son-in-law, Schrimpton, also
joined the company and eventually
became chairman and managing direc-
The reel seat had a black finish and
uplocking with a screw thread. The black
finish prevented flashing from sunlight.
The Conway model weighed about 6
ounces. I used this fly rod for large trout,
landlocked salmon, and sinallmouth
black bass for more than fifty years.
During the i97os, my Conway rod
required refinishing. The work was done
by John Palmer, a well-known Canadian
builder of six-strip fly rods. Only the
worn snake guides were replaced. The
original color windings were used, and
the rod was dip-varnished to its original
color.
A suverb flv rod to work with has a
numbe; of definable characteristics.
When casting and moving the point of
the rod forward, the tip of the Conway
rod would return quickly to the straight
position without vibration. There was
no vibration in the vertical or horizontal
plane. The Conway model was rather
more stiff than limber, ensuring the per-
formance of what is sometimes termed a
"dry-fly action." The rod was flexible
enough for accuracy in close work, yet
stiff enough to assist the caster's arm
when distance casting was required.
The fly line is integral to the rod. The
first two silk fly lines I used were desig-
an HCF-the equivalent of a w ~ today.
7
By 1962, the American Fishing Tackle
Manufacturers' Association (AFTMA)
had adopted the numerical designation
standard.
During the years that followed, I
learned that this Allcock fly rod func-
tioned equally well with a w ~ or 7 a DTS
line, with 30 feet or more fly line in the
air. The W F ~line became the line of
choice on the Allcock Popular fly reel,
illustrated in the photograph on this
page and on page 12. This trout reel, with
regular
" maintenance. was reliable over a
period of many decades. It was designat-
ed no. c753 with a 31-inch spool. This
combination of rod and lightweight reel,
with its capacity for adequate backing,
provided for a reservoir of pleasures on
lake and stream.
-
BIBLIOGRAPHY
For a history of S. Allcock and Company, see G.
Turner, Fishing Tackle: A Collector's Guide
(London, 1989). Information courtesy of Tohi1 A.
Moldenhauer, Ph.D., president of Rising Trout
Sporting Books, Box 247, Hanover, Ontario,
Canada, N ~ 3c4.
N

tor when Samuel died in 1910. nated as HEG and HDG. It was 1941,
Allcock's sold more than 140 reel however, at Abercrombie & Fitch in New For more detail about the red trout, see Ed
models, often with variations df each York City, that I obtained a silk line, Davis, "The Red Trout: Profile of a Rare Gamefish
reel, during its last century of trading. which initiated the best action for this during the 1930s in Quebec," The American Fly
The Aerial reels were the most successful cane rod. The line size was designated as Fisher (vol. 12, no. I), Winter 198j,ii-13.
products they marketed. Today these
reels are collected and used throughout
the world.
At the outbreak of World War 11, pro-
duction of tackle ceased, and a misguid-
ed decision was made to store all tooling
and dies in Birmingham. That city suf-
fered some of the heaviest bombing. ",
and
all production materials were destroyed.
A procession of company mergers
ensued, and eventually this famous
name disappeared.

A SHORTHISTORY
OF THE

The S. Allcock Conway model fly rod

was made from split Tonkin (more cor-
rectly Tsinglee) cane. It was a three-piece
fly rod with an extra tip and fitted with
snake guides. One tip guide was lined
with agate; the other rod tip guide was
lined with garnet. This feature served to
protect the fly line from friction and,
hence, excessive wear. The Conway rod
was finished a light brown with scarlet The Allcock reel.
windings, as illustrated in the pho-
tographs on pages 8 and 9.

WINTER 2004 13
 Where Are the Flies of Yesteryear?
An Essay with Interlinear Commentary
Displayed o n a vintage package of silkworm g u t leader, these fly
patterns represent some of the classics of the previous century.
J
UST RECENTLY a friend, in a fine fit
of devotion to the past, wondered
out loud what had happened to the
old flies we had all loved and fished, say,
around 1940. Why couldn't we still use
them? Wouldn't they be as effective now
as they ever were? What happened?
It's a good question.
What happened, I believe, is that the
change in trout flies over the past centu-
ry and a half from presentational artifice
to representation of the natural-of
which we are all aware-took place as a
result of the same historical-cultural
This essay will be included in Gordon
Wiclistrom's new book, Late in an Angler's Life,
which will appear this winter from the University
of New Mexico Press and is published here
through their courtesy.
14 T H E A M E R I C A N FLY F I S H E R
by Gordon M. Wickstrorn
pressures and ideas that affected the rest
of our evolving, sometimes revolution-
ary, society.
In my last days before going off to
World War 11, I worried about my flies
that had to be put aside for "the dura-
tion." I put them in mothballs and tight
containers, and provided every other
security I could think of.
Here's a catalog of the old flies from
which mine were selected: Rio Grande
King; Western Bee; Captain; Coachmun;
Royal Coachman; Lead- Winged Coachman;
Cowdnng; Blne Bottle; Jock Scott; Silver
Doctor; Wickham's Fancy; McGinty;
Greenwell's Glory; Blue Quill; Ginger Quill;
Black Gnat; the Gray Hackles: yellow, red,
green, and peacock; Grizzly King; Gold-
Ribbed Hare? Ear; White Miller; Yellow
Sally; Badger Palmer; Blue Dun; Call'farnia
Hackle; the Brown Hackles: peacock, red,
and yellow; Flight's Fancy; Professor; Pink
Lady; Mosquito; Montreal; Queen of
Waters; King of Waters; Red Ant; Black Ant;
March Brown; Cahills, light and dark; Rube
Wood; Red Ibis; Governor; Parmachene
Belle; Blne Upright; Whirling Blne Dun;
Warden's Worry; Willow; Dusty Miller; Seth
Green; Deer Fly; Iron Blue Dun; Mormon
Girl; Mister Mite and family: Sandy, Buddy,
Dina, and Lady-and the Major Pitcher.
When in 1946 I had lived to open up
my cache of flies for the first postwar
season, I found them curiously disap-
pointing. They didn't have the same
hold on my imagination as they had
before I went awav.
Something new was in the air.
Everything seemed on the edge of
 T h e earliest representation of angling, c. 2000 B.C. Reproduced i n William Radcliffei
Fishing from Earliest Times (London, John Murray, 1921, J p . 314).
change, and my dear old flies looked
somehow "old fashioned," though I
would then have been hard put to
explain why. I could not have guessed
back then what seems quite apparent to
me now: that trout flies and their devel-
opment came under the same pressures
and influences as every other aspect of
our lives, and that the course of the trout
fly in the twentieth century reflects and
parallels the intellectual and cultural his-
tory of that tumultuous time.
Many of the flies that I had stored
away for "the duration" were traditional
wets because where I grew up in the
West, we were an old wet-fly culture.
Their range.
" , as in the list above. was con-
siderably more limited than the spectac-
ular array of national wet fly patterns
found in the painted plates of Ray
Bergman's influential T r o u t (1938).
Perhaps, among those hundreds of
mostly fancy Bergman flies, the Royal
Coachman best illustrates the old-fly
type. This American development from
the Coachman of English origin is a
model of the type considered the con-
ventional "wet fly": all peacock, red, fiery
brown, and white, with a tail of various
material. It's probably the most famous
of all flies in North America and was
common to almost every old fly book.
Now to the matter of fly types, old
and new. I'd like to discuss them accord-
ing to a four-part abstract: form, materi-
al, inspiration, and use. What can we say
first about the old order of flies accord-
ing to these categories?
Form: The flies were traditional and
conventional; that is to say that in phys-
ical shape they were all pretty much
alike, had been around for a very long
time, were widely accepted, and bore
only incidental connection, here and
there, with natural insects.
Material: The flies were tied from
what we might call imperial stuffs, from
all over the world, made possible by the
imperial hegemony of Britain and
America. These materials were often lux-
urious, exotic, and expensive-beautiful
feathers, furs, and hair for the greater
glory of ladies' hats and trout and
salmon flies.
Inspiration: The inspirations for
these flies were rather more limited: they
were academic and circumscribed by
authority not unlike the great academies
in nineteenth-century Europe that
sought to protect language, art, and cul-
ture from corrupting innovation.
Use, or utility: Their use was reflexive;
that is, they had to be useful within the
convention, the tradition. Seemingly
numberless patterns were invented, but
within the convention, few outside it.
The proper use of a proper fly was to be
a proper fly.
On this side of the Atlantic, the old
flies worked particularly well in the
northeastern and mid-Atlantic states for
the native brook trout who never-or
hardly ever-turned a blind eye on the
fancy, the pretty, and the colorful. These
flies were part and parcel of a lingering
romantic inspiration.
Truth to tell there were those few stapleflies,
subversives in the ranks of the old fancies,
which suggested the real thing by virtue of
their subdued and "natural" colors. They
took lots of fish. I'd nominate the Ginger
Quill for a leader in that pack.
The seeds of change had been planted
long before I waded in after my war. The
change had begun, in fact, in the shank
of the nineteenth century and the late
romantic period with such pivotal fig-
ures as that hard-fishing" William C.
Steward, who proposed in 1857 that we
work uvstream to a aosition behind or
below a' fish, out of iis line of sight, and
cast upstream over it. Essential to this
revolutionary idea was the need for flies
of a new type. And so began the end of
the time-honored, across-and-down-
stream, cast-and-drag of old flies inher-
ited from the Treatvse of 1496.
, , and later
from Izaak Walton's dear companion
Charles Cotton. down to those of Marv
Orvis Marbury, and, in the mid-last cen-
tury, Ray Bergman.
But fishing, fly fishing especially, has
always moved slowly indeed, cherishing
its old ways and resisting the new. It's
remarkable how few and how slow have
been the fundamental changes " since the
first image of rod fishing in that famous
Egyptian drawing of zoo0 B.C. (see
above illustration).
Yet from the mid-nineteenth century
on, something really new in Western cul-
ture and intellectual life was stalking the
old ways of thinking, seeing, and doing.
Modernism was looming over every
aspect of our cultural lives. If Modern-
ism meant anything, and it was begin-
ning to mean everything, it was a speed-
up in all things, even changes in fly fish-
ing. The full brunt of the new movement
was felt suddenly and with history-
changing force at the "scandalous"
Armory Show in New York in 1913. The
radical paintings shown there, which so
profoundly shocked the "academy" and
WINTER 2004 15
 A plate, of classicfly patternsfram Ray Bergman's Trout.
outraged public taste, would change for-
ever how we would look at and value
aesthetic objects, social and political life,
even reality itself.
Dadistpainter Marcel Duchamp's infamous
and wonderful Nude Descending a Stair-
case tended to sum up the experience of the
show and incite to near riot.
Nothing would escape Modernism's
fierce analysis. Not even the trout fly
could escape the powerful vortex of its
influence.
And, following hard upon the Armory
T H E A M E R I C A N FLY P I S H E R
Show was the First World War, with its
unspeakable horror, universal disillu-
sionment, and despair. Young men were
forced to put away their flies for the
duration of that war, too. In England,
nearly an entire generation of young
men never saw their flies again. In the
face of disaster on this scale, something
had to change!
Change, both for better and worse,
did take place-and fast. Reform of the
trout fly, like everything else, accelerated
greatly in the barely thirty years between
1918 and 1948, from the end of onp
immense war to another. While most
anglers, especially out West, in, let us say,
1940, were happily using their heavy gut
straps of two reliable old wet flies, in the
greater world the integrity of those very
flies was already being undermined,
even before the "Great War."
I can only list the most influential of
those who changed the fly. Suffice it to
say that Frederic M. Halford, as early as
the 18g0~,had defined the new floating
fly in England. G. E. M Skues followed
Halford, reimagining the sunk fly and
inventing the nymph on the same

These are examples of laterfly tying from the author's collection.
English waters. Theodore Gordon was
doing his important work on the
American dry fly in the Catskills, work
that others such as Art Flick would bring
to fruition. At midcenturv., ,Tames
Leisenring in Pennsylvania was working
his own magic on nymphs and wets with
precisely selected materials and an acute
attention to translucence and texture.
Also in Pennsylvania, Vincent Marinaro
would do his important work on terres-
trial insect patterns and "discover" the
hidden hatch, the Tricorythodes, that
would lure us away from our old size 8s,
los, and 12s, through the smaller 14S, 16s,
and 18s-and most importantly down to
size 20,22, and 24! This relentless down-
sizing of our flies was crucial. and its
U
importance cannot be overestimated.
The tiny hooks left the old flies stranded.
When I read Marinaro in 195.2, I immedi-
ately tied some of his size 24 Jassids, took
them up the South Fork of the Shoshoni
River, and made fools of those browns.
And yet another Pennsylvanian, Ed
Koch, came along in the 1960s to tell us
how trout feed heavily on minuscule
midges. He developed dressings for-
and promoted them as essential to-any
well-appointed fly box of the new dis-
pensation. Who would have thought
that these wretched little creatures-
these inconsequential, annoying midget
insects-were a primary food for trout!
We called them "gnats" in the old days
and wanted only to shoo them away.
A decade earlier, artist-angler John
Atherton proposed an elegant theory for
an effective new series of flies. Impres-
sionism, in which reflected, not inciden-
tal, light was the secret of the brilliant life
of those paintings, was the working prin-
civle in Atherton's radiant flies. And in
the present moment, John Betts, a leading
innovator. has discovered and introduced
many remarkable synthetic materials to
fly tyers. Their wide and innovative use
has brought on immense and exciting
changes in fly design.
In general, then, duck slip wings were
coming off the traditional flies. Trans-
lucent and reflective materials, natural
and synthetic, were replacing opaque
silks, wools, chenilles, and duck slip
wings. Hackles were thinning down
"just enough" (except in some attractor
dry flies). Flies were getting "buggier"
and more effective. And. not to be over-
looked are ultralight, strong nylon tip-
From the collection of Gordon Widistrorn
vets down to 8x and hooks down to size
28. They have played a decisive role in
the changeover to the new flies.
The oG flies, of that now antique type,
carried within them the seeds of their
own demise.1 As we continued to fish
our tandem two wet flies mostly across
and downstream in the old pre-Steward
manner, we were slow to realize that the
flies themselves were too big, too coarse,
often too flamboyant, too often modeled
upon prevailing commercial examples-
too generally unlifelike for our trout,
who were wising up to the old stuff.
I knew a commerc~altyer of wetflies back in
the 1930s who winged every pattern with
duck primary slips and trtmmed them into
an absolutely regular back-sweep shape. To
those of us who knew no better, they looked
really neat. And they were two for a quarter.
Those trout, for whatever genetic,
evolutionary, behavioral scientific rea-
son, were growing steadily more selec-
tive, warier, more easily put down, and
reauired more careful stream tactics
from the angler, who could no longer be
so casual about fishing. Countless trout
were now being caught and released
repeatedly; and though they are crea-
tures of "little brain," still they can
WINTER 2004 17

A sampling of some snelledjlies as they hang from a dryer,
displayed w i t h a period spool of thread, varnish, a n d scissors.
learn-especially with the constant
opportunity to get a lesson from the now
endless numbers of us stomping through
their riffles.
Some argue that if we would dress the
old flies on smaller hooks, dress them
lightly and fish them lighter
tippets, they would still work on selec-
tive trout. No doubt that's true. But no
doubt also that those flies tied in that
"new" way would be a transformation
Erolu the collection of the Amrrlcan Museum of Fly Fashine
from the given type of old fly headed
toward the new. When I dress a Rio
Grande King on a size 20 hook, it's no
longer the same creature as the size lo I
used when I began throwing flies in 1938.
W e n I was a kid, a neighbor, Nick Shons,
a the e m e s i s of t o in Boulder r e .
take a new Grande King with its
white duck quill wing and chew that wing
down to a mere nubbin o f a thorax ahead of
the black chenille body. ~ e ' dthen chew o f fa
lot of the hackle in the same operation, and,
m y good Lord, did he catch fish on that and
a ~ e l l o ~ - ~ ~ gray
l l i e hackle!Neither
d he nor
I knew thefi"t thing about thoraxes and the
anatomy of insects.
Anglers are conservative and slow to
change, but they won't reject a killing fly
pattern. And so, if evidence is needed for
the demise of the old fly type, a peep into
the fly boxes of the contemporary angler,
or into the endless little compartments
of flies for sale in the fly shops, and into
the commercial catalogs will prove the
point. If the painted plates in Bergman's
Trout are the measure of the old order of
things (see the illustration on page 16),
let the lavish photographs of new flies in
the U m p q u a Enflycopedia2 stand as the
measure of the present dispensation.
The long-argued tensions between paint
and photography in art would, in fact,
seem to suggest similar tensions between
the old and the new flies.
The flies of the new type have taken
on many forms, with a representative
shape or form for each of the major
aquatic insects: for mayflies, for caddis,
for stoneflies, and midges (nymph,
emerger, and dry). This is to say nothing
of the renditions of countless land
insects, crustacea, minnows, even fish
eggs of the stream.
On top of all that, it proved a bold and
productive move in fly fishing clearly to
admit the distinction between flies sug-
gesting actual insects and the spectacular
attractor flies that suggest who-knows-
what and a little bit of everything-even
chunks of fish flesh. These invaluable
patterns, and the principle behind them,
got up their head of steam in the 1950s in
the northwest part of the country and
never looked back.
This development has cleared the field
for entomology of the actual aquatic
insects to move in and claim its essential
place in our angling. We wanted to know
this mayfly from that one and to under-
stand the life cycle of the caddis. Where
we used to see only mosquitoes and
gnats and maybe a n a n t , tohay we can
recite, even in Latin, dozens of midges, a
dozen or more mayflies, all the stone-
flies. and who knows how manv caddis
varieties. Hard evidence that the new
angler rejoices in amateur entomology
for the fishing day is, again, his fly boxes,
with, for instance, row upon row of
exquisitely arrayed tiny midge larvae
patterns. Even we old-timers now have
something of a love affair with those
insects that trout love. It was the noted
Ernest Schwiebert and his Matching the
Hatch (1950) who produced the first
American fly fisher's entomology. He
deserves the lion's share of credit for
incitingu this new and now basic concern
of every serious angler.
Nature has come barging into our fly
boxes: that's all there is to it. And where
we draw the line-or the space in our
boxes-between nature and our never-
seen-before attractor flies is a matter of
keenest interest to each of us. We have all
of us become technicians of the new fly
and of the trout stream.
What, then, is the new fly type accord-
ing to the four-part abstract of form,
material, inspiration, and use?
In Form: The flies are improvisation-
al. No holds are barred. Tvers invent
endlessly, but of primary concern is
the imitation of trout foods.
In Material: Materials now come
from protected environments, both
wild and commercial, and are greatly
augmented by synthetics.
In Inspiration: Nature, science, and
virtuoso tying are the spirit of the
thing.
In Use: The primary use of the new
flies is to catch fish, to match the
hatch, and to display the craft.
One of the powerful ideas of the last
century was that of the gestalt, a concept
that emerged from the Bauhaus in
Germany before Hitler suppressed it.
Gestalt translates out that form follows
function, that the shape of a thing (its
form) depends upon how and for what it's
used. This was to become a controlling
idea in the new fly tying: catching fish.
By the heyday of the Bauhaus in the
193os, Modernism had swept the field in
aesthetics, thought, and every walk of
life-even svorts, for that matter. The
L .
pleasant romanticism of our old fishing
was fast disappearing in favor of the sci-
entific, pragmatic, empirical, and "tech-
nical." The old fixed idea of a fly, dragged
along on a heavy gut snell, no longer had
any credit.
As noted above, the new flies moved
farther and farther away from the old
forms. Thev tended to use less and less
material, became simpler and simpler,
duller and duller (even in their
names)-one might say they became
minimalist.
I a m told and believe that wise trout are to
be caught on a small bare hook, sometimes
painted, and most likely suggesting a midge
larva. This may be as far as minimalism can
go. I'm reminded of Samuel Beckett's late
plays, which distilled the theatrical event
down to a bare hook. Where can anglers-or
actors-go from there?
All this suggests movement beyond the
modern toward the postmodern, a set of
mind at once more skevtical. susvicious.
A , L (New York: Barnes, 1949). The estimable Carhart
and analytic, and yet almost playful, cer-
tainly debunking, playing alarming varia-
tions on themes and inventing new ones.
The postmodern critic, with a blast-off of
energy from the counterculture move-
ment of the 1960s, is generally scornful of
the past and what is seen as its record of
conspiracy on behalf of white, male,
straight Europeans-but not so foolish as
to disregard it entirely.
Please do read or re-read Richard Brauti-
gun's crazy-brilliant little novel Trout
Fishing in America (New York: Dell, 1967)
as a wild and compelling way to live in a
radically dangerous time and find its mean-
ing in trout fishing. If the author could not
survive it, the reader can.
The postmodern impulse in our lives,
almost in spite of itself, has sought
appropriate places in art and thought in
which to maintain what it treasures from
the past. I'm thinking now especially of
vostmodernism in architecture. in
hhich established motifs of the past are
recalled not in the engineering of struc-
ture, but as formal ideas, decoration, and
detail, often quite playfully, a sort of
tribute to the past of which many of us
old-timers remain fond.
So, and finally, that question in the
title: W h e r e are the flies of yesteryear?
Unlike the snows of yesteryear, we have
seen that trout flies responded, like
everything else, to the historical, cultur-
al, and intellectual pressures and
urocesses of their times. from the
romantic, to the modern, through wars
and rumors of wars. on to the vostmod-
ern. The old flies disappeared at stream-
side, almost forgotten, certainly out of
fashion and outmoded for catching
trout; but the postmodern idea took
them up again and found them a worthy
place in our greater angling lives where
they remain as singular objects of art
and devotion. They hook us affection-
ately into our past where they can be
remembered, studied, and treasured in
dedicated museums., svecimen collec-
L
tions, in frames on walls, in books and
luxurious magazines. and in the ritual
"
exercises of memory of those of us old
-
enough to have used them and. when
u
their time came, to have given them up.
ENDNOTES
1. The only effort that I know of to study the
relative popularity of fly patterns over time as
recorded in manufacturers' records of actual sales
to anglers is that of Arthur H. Carhart in his near-
ly forgotten, but still valuable, Fresh Water Fishing
published lists of twelve most-purchased flies, first
for 1892, then 1935 and 1947 These lists show a
marked movement toward the popularity of flies
that suggest nature.
2. The Urnpqua Enflycopedia is a complimenta-
ry publication of at least one thousand current flies
as developed by leading fly tyers and offered for
sale by Umpqua Feather Merchants. Among the
one thousand, I could find only about a dozen to
represent the old order.
WINTER 2004 19

Edward R. Hewitt: The Last Renaissance Man
Pharmacist, Organic Chemist, Engineer, Inventor, Writer, Entomologist, Fish Biologist, Fish Hatchery Expert,
Advisor to Francisco Franco on Spanish Salmon Fishing, and One of the Leading Fly Fishermen of His Time
T
HE STORY OF MY MEETING Edward
R. Hewitt begins in 1947. I was just
out of the U.S. Army Medical
Corps and was a resident physician at
the Guthrie Clinic in Sayre, Pennsyl-
vania, which was an offshoot of the
Mayo Clinic, but not directly connected
with it. Many prominent people stayed
at the clinic for several days for an annu-
al checkup. Two of these were Mr.
Hewitt's daughter, Candace, and her
husband, Gordon Stevenson. Dr. Donald
Guthrie, for whom the clinic was named,
knew of my passion for fly fishing.
Consequently, when Mr. and Mrs.
Stevenson finished their checkups, Dr.
Guthrie invited me to spend a day with
them fishing a section of a small trout
stream he owned near the clinic. Mrs.
Stevenson was the fly fisher of the two;
her husband was an artist.
I had read many of Mr. Hewitt's books
on fly fishing for trout and salmon and
was thrilled to have a chance to talk to
the great man's fly-fishing daughter. She
was a charming person, a delight to talk
to, and obviously knew a great deal
about the science of fly fishing. She
showed me her father's Neversink Creek
flies, and I showed her the typical ones
used on the Deschutes and McKenzie
rivers in Oregon. I had a marvelous time
talking with her.
In 1948, I was chief resident at the New
York Medical School's Internal Medicine
Service at Lenox Hill Hospital in New
York City. One lunch period I suddenly
met Mrs. Stevenson in the cafeteria.
Naturally I asked what brought her
there. "We have Father here," she told
me. He is one of Dr. la Chappel's
patients." The chief of service, my boss,
was Clarence de la Chappel, a famous
cardiologist. Just at that moment I
received a call to go to room 623. Mrs.
Stevenson said, "That's Father's room."
I could not have been more excited
and felt like the village priest who is sud-
denly asked to take care of the pope.
There were several of Mr. Hewitt's books
20 T H E A M E R I C A N FLY F I S H E R
R E M I N I S C E N C E S --
by H. Lenox H. Dick
in my office. I very quickly outlined to
Mrs. Stevenson that I would give Mr.
Hewitt a complete physical examination.
His therapeutic orders and tests would
be written by Dr. la Chappel.
I went to his room and sitting there
upright was Mr. Hewitt. He was about 5
feet, 8 inches in height, stockily built,
moderately overweight, and pleasant
appearing. I introduced myself and he
returned my greeting graciously. I went
over him quickly and called Dr. la
Chappel, who dictated his orders based
on my findings. Mr. Hewitt recovered
from his heart problems promptly. He
was, however, confined to his room for
the next five days. He was obviously very
bored with his forced stay. I sloughed off
as much of mv work as I could to the
assistant residents and interns. Mr.
Hewitt and I went fishing in his room.
We spent most of our time reading
water. I made crude sketches in my
Hewitt's Handbook of Fly Fishing during
these sessions. Shortly after he left the
hospital, he invited me for dinner at his
house.
Hewitt lived in a small, three-story,
old brownstone house in Gramercy
Park, squeezed between two tall apart-
ment buildings. The interior was
Victorian with many beautiful antiques.
There was no attempt to have any of the
so-called modern decor of the 1920s or
1930s. His wife, Mary Ashley Hewitt, was
a charming gray-haired lady who, in my
mother's description of such women,
was "to the manor born."
At dinner Mr. Hewitt wanted to talk
about his health problems, whereas I was
anxious to talk about fly fishing. He
won, of course, so I discussed all aspects
of his health. The meal, served by a
maid, was delicious. No wonder Mr.
Hewitt was overweight.
After dinner, Mr. Hewitt invited me to
go up to the third floor to his shop. We
climbed the stairs to the second floor.
Then Mr. Hewitt reached up to a rope
with a knob on it, pulled down a set of
steep stairs with rope rails that led to his
attic shov. I looked at the steevness of
the stairs, plus the rope rails, and I
thought it would make an impossible
barrier for Mr. Hewitt. I decided to wait
until he either fell backward down the
stairs or made it to the top. If I were
directly behind him when he fell, it
would be bad for both of us. With much
huffing, puffing, and grunting, he made
it uv the stairs. I followed him ravidlv.
L ,
His shop was actually a combination
machine shov and laboratorv. There was
a bewildering combination of ovens,
lathes, bench saws, chemical reagents,
and lots more that I cannot remember.
He showed me some plastic that he
talked about making into a fly reel. He
grunted, "Modern fly reels are no damn
good."
In the course of my being shown
about the shop, I asked, "Would you
please show me some of the trout and
salmon flies you have tied?"
He handed me a box. Miracle of mir-
acles! Joy of joys! They were as poorly
but sparsely tied as mine. If he could
catch trout and salmon with flies like
these, then I had nothing to be ashamed
of. After quite a long time in his shop,
just before I departed, he invited me to
come and fish the Neversink with him. I
never saw him again. We did not fish the
Neversink River together; I was too shy
to call him and remind him of his invi-
tation.
There was no auestion that he was
arrogant and opinionated. I have heard
that many members of the Anglers' Club
of New York thought he was conceited. I
instinctivelv liked him and feel that this
phase of his character should be called
"very self-assured."
A secondhand story I heard about
him: Hewitt went to Scotland to fish for
Atlantic salmon and was skunked. The
Anglers' Club of New York figuratively
stood up and cheered.
m
STRENGTH .POWER .LIGHTNESS
Light swing weight and ultra-sure trGectories are the
hallmark of T W S new
-. I

Thomas &Thomas 627 Barto

(413) 774-5436 Fax: (413) 774-54

W I N T E R 2004 21
 H a p p y f a ~ uat the Philadelphia dinner/auction (18to rgght): Joanie Brenton,
Aleta iznnell, Mark Lukenda, Bob Moser, John Richards
zoo3 Fall DinnerIAuctions
Philadelphia. This year's Philadelphia
dinnerlauction was hosted by Eleanor
Peterson and the folks at Radnor Hunt
in Malvern, Pennsylvania, on September
25. The event kicked off our fall fund-
raising season in style!
Thanks to the hard work and dedica-
tion of our committee members, the
evening was a resounding success. This
group pulled together a strong, albeit
unusual, auction for us. In a live-auction
first, all of the offerings were trips, both
day trips and overnight outings. Our
sincere thanks go to committee chair
Lynn Hitschler and committee members
Dr. Jane Griffith, Pat Harner, Ted
McKenzie, Lynn Norley, Eleanor
Peterson, Lee Pierson, and Jay Tolson.
Additional thanks go to the Delaware
Valley Women's Fly Fishing Association
and the Anglers' Club of Philadelphia for
providing the table wine for the evening.
Our hats off also to our auction
donors: Roy Chapin, Peter Corbin, Dr.
22 T H E A M E R I C A N FLY F I S H E R
and John Richards IIZ,
Jane Griffith, Mary Kuss, Ted McKenzie, Rivers: A Story in Photographs of Catskill
Michael Osborne, James Prosek, and Dr. Fly Fishing, donated by David Foley.
Ernest Schwiebert. We are indebted to our dinner chair
Hartford. On November 1, we ven- John Mundt Jr. and committee members
tured back to the Avon Old Farms Inn. Jerry Bannock, E. Arroll Borden, Phil
Sixty guests enjoyed the inn's hospitality Castleman, David Egan, David Foley,
and were generous in their support of Larry Johnson, Richard Kane, Steve
the Museum. The raffle increased a bit in Massell, R. Tracy Page, Bill and Marie
size this year, as did the silent auction. Pastore, Roger Plourde, Vincent Ring-
Many items in the silent auction were rose, and Ed Ruestow. The committee-
solicited by our committee, with a few most of them auction donors them-
extra goodies thrown in by the Museum. selves-did an outstanding job this year
We received numerous welcome compli- (as always!) of soliciting items for the
ments on both. dinner and for bringing friends and fel-
The live auction had six day-trip or low anglers to the table. Thank you one
weekend excursions, including a round and all.
of golf for four at the Golf Club of Avon, A hearty cheers! to our auction donors:
a Christmastime luncheon for two at the John Betts, Bistro Henry, Phil Castleman
Anglers' Club of New York with John and Castle Arms, William Chandler, Jack
Mundt Jr., and a midweek Manchester, Coyle, Robert Demarest, the Equinox
Vermont, getaway with lodging provided Resort and Spa, David Foley, Richard
by the Equinox Resort and Spa. Other Kane, Tony Lyons and the Lyons Press,
noteworthy items included a Heritage John Marona, John Mundt Jr., the Orvis
Spey rod, kindly donated by Phil Company in Avon, R. Tracy Page, George
Castleman, and a set of Beaverkill prints Pardee, Roger Plourde, Ed Ruestow, Jack
that accompanied the book Land of Little Smola, and Karl Van Valkenburgh.
Back in Print by Popular Demand!

$29 95 plus shipping

a

Call (802) 362-3300

A Treasury of Reels
Available once again from the American Museum of Fly Fishing, A Treasury of
Reels chronicles one of the largest and finest public collections of fly reels in the
world. Brought together in this richly diverse and popular book, which includes
more than 750 reels spanning nearly two centuries of British and American reel-
making, are antique, classic, and modern reels; those owned by presidents, enter-
tainers, novelists, and angling luminaries; and reels owned and used by everyday
anglers.
Accompanied by Bob 07Shaughnessy'sexpert photography, author Jim Brown
details the origins of this fascinating piece of technology, from a 13th-century
Chinese painting depicting a fisherman using a rod and reel to later craftsmen
like Vom Hofe, Billinghurst, and Leonard.
Out of print for almost ten years, A Treasury of Reels is a must-have for collec-
tors and enthusiasts alike. It can be ordered for $29.95, plus postage and han-
dling, either through our website at www.amff.com or by contacting the Museum
at (802) 362-3300. Proceeds from the sale of this book directly benefit the
Museum.

W I N T E R 2004 23
LIIC l l C W l y IF.Il"VLLLLU I*laC.I"lUIICI, L\CUIIII

in Healdsburg, California, on November

15. The Gallo family purchased the prop-
erty a few years ago and has set about
renovating each building on the acreage,
as well as producing some fine wine from
its grapes. We ate dinner in the barn
where Fred MacMurray kept horses dur-
ing his lifetime. As our guests checked in,
there were gasps to be heard and a few
wows to boot, mirroring our own initial
reaction to the redone interior.
During cocktails and hors d'oeuvres,
our guests had the opportunity to cast
antique bamboo rods from the Muse-
um's teaching collection out on the lawn,
bid on our silent auction, and preview
the live auction merchandise. When it
came time for dinner, our forty guests
sat Tuscan style around one very large
table and feasted on the terrific food
provided by Park Avenue Caterer; wines Eleanor Peterson, our host at Radnor Hunt, shares a moment with Pat Harner.
from Gallo of Sonoma, MacMurray
Ranch, and Murphy-Goode were a few Diana Siehold

of the potable delights we sampled. At

dinner we were also treated to com-
ments and thoughts by Fred's daughter
Kate MacMurray, who shared a bit about
what life was like growing up on the
farm and its history.
With no natural lighting in the barn,
we had gas lamps hanging from the
beams. We believe it was our first time
holding an auction by candlelight. The
new ambiance worked out weu-it was
our best winery event ever from a
fundraising standpoint. The live auction
was spirited, to say the least, with some
folks competing heavily against each
other for the winning bid. Museum
Executive Director Gary Tanner acted as
auctioneer, and he had as much fun con- Phil Castleman, Dick Bell, and Roger and Pierrette Plourde join fellow
ducting the auction as our guests did anglers at our annual Hartford dinner-and yes, this table was having
participating in it. just as much fun as was caught "on tape"!
There were many new faces at the din-
ner, mostly courtesy of committee mem-
ber Ed Beddow, who rallied sixteen of
his friends to the dinner and, shortly
after the dinner, e-mailed me and said
"Darn-had four more we should have
had there. Please add them to next year's
mailing list." Some folks trekked across
the country for this dinner: Trustee
David Nichols came from Maine to join
his friend Ed Hope, himself flying in
from Hawaii, and Scott and Carol Patten
came all the way from Colorado. We'd
like to raise our glasses to all who attend-
ed and express our gratitude for their
incredible suvvort.
Cheers al&-go to dinner chair Roger
Riccardi and committee members Committee member Ed Beddow (with his back to the camera), along with
Edward Beddow and Jon Rosell. And, as sixteen of his anglingfriends, joins other guests at the MacMurray Ranch
for what was a superb meal, setting, and auction for the Museum.
always, a very special thanks to our auc-

24 T H E A M E R I C A N FLY F I S H E R
 Fishing for Chalk Stream by G. E. M.
Skues (A. & C. Black, Ltd., 1960), and
The Way of a Trout with a Fly by G. E. M.
Skues (A. & C. Black, Ltd., 1967).
Susan Cronin of Manchester, Ver-
mont, gave us five books: Fishing the
Flats by Mark Sosin and Lefty Kreh
(Nick Lyons Books, 1983), Striper by
John N . Cole, first edition (Little Brown
and Co., 1978), Fly Fishing in Salt Water
by Lefty Kreh (Nick Lyons Books, 1986),
Bonefishing by Stanley M. Babson, third
edition (self-published, 1965);Fly Fishing
by Tom McNally (Harper & Row, 1978).

In the Library
Thanks to the following publishers for
their donations of recent titles that have
become part of our collection (all titles
were published in 2003):
Pruett Publishing Company sent us A.
K. Best's Production Fly Tying, 2nd ed.
Stackpole Books donated Mike Lawson's
Spring Creek.
Frank Amato Publications, Inc., sent
Dinner chair and Trustee Roger Riccardi holds a 3-liter bottle of zinfandel at the zoo3 us Brent Curtice's Fly-Fishing for Trophy
annual winery dinner/auction at MacMurray Ranch. Turns out Roger was the win- Trout: A Complete Guide for the Begin-
ning bidder and shared the bottle with our guests. Thank you, Roger, and cheers! ning Fly-Fisher; Dan Blanton's Fly
Fishing California's Great Waters; a
paperback edition of Paul Ford's Beloved
Waters:for Steelhead and Salmon, Bone-
tion donors: Alexander Valley Vineyards, zine articles that featured him and salt- fish and Tarpon; and Rainland Fly
R. Valentine Atkinson, John Betts, Gallo water fly fishing. Casters' Northwest Fly Patterns and Tying
of Sonoma, Dr. Jane Griffith, the Lyons George Angstadt of Philadelphia, Guide.
Press, Martini Vineyard, Dennis and Pennsylvania, donated three William
Katie Murphy ancl Murphy-Goode Mills & Son, Inc., fishing tackle catalogs:
Winery (who supplied 2001 fum6 blanc 1 February 1964, 6 March 1964, and 1
for our dinner), Roger Riccardi, and February 1966. He also donated sixteen
Dave Van Winkle. books: The Fine Bamboo Fly Rod by
-DIANA SIEBOLD Stuart Kirkfield (Stackpole Books, 1986),
Odyssey at Limestone Creek by Chuck
Robbins (Tussey Mountain Publishers,
Recent Donations 1997), Further Guide to Fly Dressing by
Nathaniel Reed of Winter Harbor, John Veniard (A. & C. Black Ltd., 1964),
Maine, donated ten Moise River salmon Fly Tying by Helen Shaw (The Ronald
flies tied by Megan Boyd. Bill Adams of Press Company, 1963), Nymphs and the
Cambridge, New York, gave us a lo-foot, Trout by Frank Sawyer (A. & C. Black
three-piece, eight-strip bamboo fly rod Ltd., 1970), Chalk Stream Flies by C. F.
made by New York rodmaker C. B. Fitz- Walker (A. & C. Black Ltd., 1953), Fly
Maurice, c. 1880-1895. Charles M. Dressers' Guide by John Veniard (G. P.
Harden of Barnstable, Massachusetts, Bond & Co. Ltd., 1952), The Soft-Hackled
donated a framed plate of flies painted Fly by Sylvester Nemes (Chatham Press,
by Austin Hogan. 1975), Any Luck? by Eugene V. Connett
Barry Serviente of Plainfield, I11 (Garden City Publishing, 1939), The
Pennsylvania, sent us "Come Fish With Well-Tempered Angler by Arnold
Me" (Battenkill Production, 1975): a set Gingrich, first edition (Alfred A. Knopf,
of six records featuring stories written Inc., 1965), The Lure and Lore of Trout
and read by Arnold Gingrich, Ernest Fishing by Alvin R. Grove Jr. (The
Schwiebert, Dana S. Lamb, Ed Zern, Art Stackpole Company, i951), Fly Tying by
Flick, and Nick Lyons. William Bayard Sturgis (Charles
Arthur Frey of Placentia, California, Scribner's Sons, 1940), Wit & Wisdom of
donated the four issues of volume 1 Fishing by Louis Bignami (Publications
(1974) of The American Fly Fisher. Bill International, 1998),Minor Tactics on the
Catherwood of Tewksbury, Massa- Chalk Stream by G. E. M. Skues, third
chusetts, gave us photocopies of maga- edition (A. & C. Black, 1924), Nymph

WINTER 2004 25
 And So It Begins:

R
ocket scientist Wernher von Braun once noted, "We can lick gravity, but
sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming." After months of learning
just how accurate von Braun's statement was, work on the Museum's
future home finally got under way in the last days of October 2003. Things
inside the Museum did not hum along quite as efficiently as usual, as the staff
all kept succumbing to the urge to go watch the demolition in action; we con-
sidered closing up shop and settling down outside with some popcorn. But
even when the dust had finally cleared and the less dramatic work of pouring
the foundation began, it was still very exciting for all concerned to see this tan-
gible evidence of a future that before had only existed on paper. We hope these
pictures will infect you with the same delight and anticipation we at the
Museum feel as we continue to watch the dream become a reality.
SARAWILCOX
SPECIAL PROJECTS

Dust rag, anyone? Here the excavator works on separating the frontpart of the Moments after this image was shot,
structure, which will remain standing, from the part to be razed. Yoshi Akiyama. He'd wanted a close-up via
he probably shouldn't be quite that clost

As workproeded, the crew discovered a new~rportion of the roof had simply

been built over the old, Both roo$ lfsltimatelycame down Note how the smallt?r
of the two chim~leysis about to grab some ground as well. The back portion is no more as

26 T H E A M E R I C A N FLY F I S H E R
 Photogra~hsbv Sara Wilcox

New support beams help stabilize the remainingpart of the building while the
excavation team works on the new foundation.

the chimney in question almost landed on

ojthe chimney's collapse, but as it fell realized
Luckily for all of us, Yoshi is fast on his feet. The walls come tumbling down as demolition commences.

A
fter eighteen months of planning, meeting with architects, and satisfying var-
ious levels of bureaucracy in the state of Vermont, we finally broke ground on
the main building at Brookside in late October just as the trustees met for
their fall board meeting.
Since then, we have demolished the existing building, except for the oldest section
right along the road, and at less than we'd budgeted for. We then dug out the old base-
ment and put footing drains around the entire structure. The weather stayed mild into
early December, allowing us to complete the framing and pouring of the new base-
ment; by simplifying the original foundation plan, we also saved a considerable
amount of money in the process. The decking for the first floor has been completed
over the new foundation and is being heated to 40 degrees F to prevent frost problems.
By early February, the timber frame for the exhibition gallery will be on-site and erect-
ed above the first-floor gallery walls. Despite a snowy and bitterly cold winter-with
lows of lo to 15 degrees below zero-we are on schedule and have had no unusual sur-
prises to date. We welcome all, if you are in town, to drive by and take a look. We wdl
have a beautiful new museum open in 2004. Thank you for your support.
GEORGE GIBSON
CHAIR,BUILDING COMMITTEE
BOARDOF TRUSTEES
mnstruction crew go U U U U ~their labors.

WINTER 2004 27
 The
American Museum
of Fly Fishing
Box 42, Manchester,Vermont 05254
Tel: 802-362-3300.Fax: 802-362-3308
EMAIL: amff@together.net
WEBSITE: ww.amff.com

JOIN!
Membership Dues (per annum)
INDIVIDUAL
Associate $35
Sustaining $60
Benefactor $125
Patron $250
GROUP
Club $50
Trade $50
Mid-November: Thefirstpart of the foundation is in, rebars at the ready Membership dues include four issues of
for more concrete. The American Fly Fisher. Please send your
payment to the Membership Director
and include your mailing address. The
Museum is a member of the American
Association of Museums, the American
Association of State and Local History, the
New England Association of Museums,
the Vermont Museum and Gallery
Alliance, and the InternationalAssociation
of Sports Museums and Halls of Fame. We
are a nationally accredited, nonprofit, edu-
cational institution chartered under the
laws of the state of Vermont.

SUPPORT!
As an independent, nonprofit institution,
the American Museum of Fly Fishing
relies on the generosity of public-spirited
individuals for substantial support. We
ask that you give our museum serious
consideration when planning for gifts and
bequests.
In early December, the foundation is nearly complete. This was thefirst time the
crew needed to get the snow shovels out, and it certainly was not the last. BACK ISSUES!
Available at $4 per copy:
Volume 6, Numbers I, 2,3,4
Volume 7, Number 3
Volume 8, Number 3
Volume 9, Numbers 1,2,3
Volume lo, Number z
Volume 11, Numbers 1, 2, 3,4
Volume 13, Number 3
Volume 15, Number 2
Volume 16, Numbers 1, 2,3
Volume 17, Numbers 1, 2, 3
Volume 18, Numbers 1, 2 , 4
Volume 19, Numbers 1, 2, 3,4
Volume 20, Numbers 1, 2,3,4
Volume 21, Numbers I, 2,3,4
Volume 22, Numbers 1,2,3,4
Volume 23, Numbers 1, 2,3,4
Volume 24, Numbers i , 4
Volume 25, Numbers 1,2,3,4
Volume 26, Numbers 1, 2,4
Volume 27, Numbers I, 2,3,4
Volume 28, Numbers 1,2,3,4
With the decking in place, the walls begin to take shape in mid-January. Volume 29, Numbers 1, 2,3,4
-

28 T H E A M E R I C A N FLY F I S H E R
 --.*- a
In A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean wrote
"All good things .. .come by grace, and grace c m s by art, and art does not come easy."
Grace and art just two of the qualities that Hewtgraph delivers.
Incredible accuracy, quiet power, unparalleled durability and exquisite beauty come at no extra charge.
- 4%-
Hexagraph is more than just a great fly rod that fishes better than anything you own it's a tradition in the ma mg."'**P"*aY"m

---.
ST0
V I N E Y A R D

WINTER 2004 29
American Fish Decoys by Steven Michaan J

"This book must be seen to be appreciated. The pages. are black, causing the color
decoy images to pop from the page, Edges are silver-gilded, and the cover is sparse, yet
-
magnificent."

"Michaan begins his first chapter of this handsome book by questioning whether 'there
is some intrinsic magic in the image of afifh. 'After flipping thourgh a few more pages of
the American Fish Decoys, Michaan answers the question for himself; yes, there is a
magic and it becomes evident with the turning of each page of this book"
Art &l' 'mes, De- - 17, ; - - 3

American Fish Decoys is fast becoming one of the classics of American fishing collectibles.
Written by the co-author of Beneath the Ice, the Art of the Spearfishing Decoy, the book is 208
pages long and features more than a hundred images from the author's collection of significant
folk art ice fishing decoys, Included are early works from New York State as well as sections on
the most important Michigan carvers, including Oscar Peterson and Hans Janner, Sr. There is
also a section devoted to the carvers of Depression-era Mt.Clemens, Michigan, the
self- proclaimed "Capitol of Ice Fishing"

Printed in Europe by one of the foremost museum printers, American Fish Decoys is an
important addition to the library of every sportsman and every lover of American folk art.

Available in Hard Cover (shown above) and in a Deluxe Leather-Bound edition which features
a large fold-out poster of an Oscar Peterson store sign in the form of a Pike.
-
Avalable onllne at www.flshdecoy.com, toll-free at 1-888-3YO-kl3H (3424)
or on Ebay (search :'American Fish Decoys")
 C O N T R I B U T O R S
Edward Davis is a native of Montreal and a retired quality controllassurance specialist.
He graduated in 1985 and 1990 from Sir George Williams University in Montreal. He has
authored technical papers for Paperboard Packaging Journal (1967) and Canadian
Training Methods (1976), and facilitated research and development projects for Donitar
Research while superintendent of quality control for Donitar Packaging.
Davis is an avid outdoorsman, and a former golfer and swim instructor. His passion
for fly fishing was launched at age eleven, the year he dressed his first trout fly. Salmon
fishing in Canada's maritime provinces and bone fishing in the Bahamas have become
frequent pursuits. He is ardent about conservation and the restocking of trout waters,
particularly in the Haliburton Highlands region of Ontario. Davis has served as chair-
man of lakes for the Stonecrop Trout Club in the Caledon hills of southern Ontario. In
recent years, he has been an instructor of fly tying and photography, as well as giving
fly-casting lessons for the outdoor club of the Royal Canadian Military Institute, of
which he is an honorary member. A major highlight of his fly-fishing career included
twenty-one years of fly fishing for the red trout (Salvelinus marstoni), one of three
known subspecies of Arctic char and now a very scarce game fish in the southern
Quebec watershed.
During the past three decades, Davis has contributed more than thirty articles about fly fishing and fly tying to
journals such as Fly Tyer, The Fly Fisher, Fly-fishing (Oregon), American Angler, Fly Tyer, and the Atlantic Salmon
Journal. His book Patterns and Places (Winchester Press) was published in 1991. Davis's trout and salmon fly pat-
terns were displayed in William Cushner's fly-fishing museum in Florence, Oregon. Davis lives in Toronto, Canada.

H. Lenox H. Dick is a retired physician. He is the author of three books published by Frank Amato Publications,
Inc. His first, The Art and Science of Fly Fishing, was first published in 1967 and is now in its fourth edition, with
nineteen other expert fly fishermen providing chapters. He is also the author of Experience the World of Shad
Fishing and Walleye Fishing Simplified. His collection of short stories and memoirs, Just After You Left, was pub-
lished in late 2003 by Freestone Press.

Andrew Herd was born in London and has lived in the north of England for many years,
within a few miles of the beck on which Canon Greenwell learned to fish. He has had a
lifelong interest in history, which has led him all over the world. His first book, a mono-
graph o n medieval fly fishing, was published by the Medlar Press in 1999, accompanying
a facsimile of The Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle. He maintains a website devoted
to the history of fly fishing (www.flyfishinghistory.com), and his second book, The Fly,
a history of fly fishing, was published by the Medlar Press in 2001, with an introduction
by Fred Buller (www.medlarpress.com) and a preface by John Betts. The Fly has just
been released as a paperback, complete with an index and color section, and is available
in the United States from Callahan and Company (603-924-3726).
Dr. Herd fishes for almost anything, but trout and salmon are his main interests. He
is a member of the Flyfishers' Club, London. His latest contribution to the journal, "Fly
Fishing for Coarse Fish before 1900," appeared in the Summer 2002 issue.

Gordon Wickstrom is native to Boulder, Colorado, a World War I1 navy veteran, and
graduate of the University of Colorado. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and
is professor of drama emeritus at Franklin and Marshall College. He retired to his native
Boulder in 1991. He has written for Gray's Sporting Journal, Fly Tyer, Angler's Journal, The
Art of Angling Journal, Wild on the Fly, Streamside, and is a not infrequent contributor
to The American Fly Fisher. He has published a popular linear display of the history of
fly fishing and currently publishes The Bouldercreek Angler, "a gazette for those who
fish" and The Bouldercreek Actor, "a gazette for those who make theatre." His Notes from
a n Old Fly Book was published by the University Press of Colorado in 2001. His Late in
a n Angler's Life will be published by the University of New Mexico Press in January
2004. Wickstrom most recently contributed to the Summer 2003 issue with "A Portrait
of the New Fly Fisher."

WINTER 2004 31
 A Letter from the President

Feathers, drawn by Miss Sambourne, in ?: C.

Hofland, Esq., The British Angler's Manual.
London: H.B. Bond, 1848, new edition, p. 200.

Fellow Fly Fishers:

In late October 2003, the American Museum of Fly Fishing took a major step forward when it
commenced construction of its future home on the recently acquired Brookside property.
Importantly, this property is adjacent to the Orvis Company's flagship store in Manchester,
Vermont. Although AMFF is not affiliated with Orvis, our new location is ideally situated to beck-
on the large number of fly fishers who annually visit that facility. Most importantly, the new
Museum will offer a substantial increase in display space, allowing us to present to the public a
much larger cross section of the collection that we have been building for more than thirty-five
years, a collection of which we are very proud.
In addition, the Carriage House, located immediately behind the new Museum, is nearing com-
pletion. It provides expanded, modernized archival space that will allow room for important growth
of the collection. The Carriage House will also, in its new library, finally allow us to display and
make more readily available AMFF's extensive book collection.
If all goes as planned, construction should be completed by summer, permitting a grand opening
of these expanded facilities to take place in September 2004. We hope you will be able to join us in
Manchester at that time. A few photos of and comments about the construction currently under
way can be found on page 26.
Change came to AMFF in another way recently when Gary Tanner, executive director for more
than six years, decided to pursue other interests. During his tenure, Gary made a number of con-
tributions to AMFF, and the Board of Trustees-and all our members, I am sure-wish Gary well in
the future. Fortunately, especially with construction proceeding apace, Yoshi Akiyama, who was
hired by Gary as AMFF collection manager, has agreed to act as interim executive director while the
board conducts a search for Gary's replacement. We have every confidence that Yoshi, who will write
this column in the magazine's next edition, will do a superb job.
Tight lines,
DAVEWALSH
PRESIDENT, BOARDOF TRUSTEES
THEAMERICAN MUSEUM OF PLY FISHING,
a nationally accredited,nonprofit, education-
al institution dedicated to preserving the rich
heritage of fly fishing, was founded in
Manchester, Vermont, in 1968. The Museum
serves as a repository for, and conservator to,
the world's largest collection of angling and
angling-related objects. The Museum's col-
lections and exhibits provide the public with
thorough documentation of the evolution of
fly fishing as a sport, art form, craft, and in-
dustry in the United States and abroad from
the sixteenth century to the present. Rods,
reels, and flies, as well as tackle, art, books,
manuscripts, and photographs form the ma-
jor components of the Museum's collections.
The Museum has gained recognition as a
unique educational institution. It supports a
publications program through which its na-
tional quarterly journal, The American Fly
Fisher, and books, art prints, and catalogs are
regularly offered to the public. The Museum's
traveling exhibits program has made it possi-
ble for educational exhibits to be viewed
across the United States and abroad. The
Museum also provides in-house exhibits,
related interpretive programming, and
research services for members, visiting schol-
ars, authors, and students.
The Museum is an active, member-orient-
ed nonprofit institution. For information
please contact: The American Museum of Fly
Fishing, P. 0. Box 42, Manchester, Vermont
05254,802-362-3300.