1994-Vol20-No2web.Pdf

Books, Poetry, and An Esquire

HIS IS AN EXCITING ISSUE we've studying and collecting older tackle. And as a note and apology, in the put together, rich, it seems, with In his poem "Why Should Not Old conversion of the final proofs of our Tpeople and books, fine writing Men Be Mad?" the great Irish poet W. B. Winter issue of The American Fly Fisher and poetry, old photographs and Yeats wrote, "Some have known a likely to the printed magazine, a naughty sketches. It will arrive during the heady lad1 That had a sound fly-fisher's wrist1 computer gremlin came in and mischie- rush to enjoy spring's divine gifts. Turn to a drunken journalist." Sounds vously swiped some type. The headline We are most pleased in this issue of as if he knew what he was talking about "Trustees" was dropped from the mast- The American Fly Fisher to introduce (the wrist, not the drunken journalist). head, and later on page 26 the name of our readers to member Warren Miller, Erudite member Gordon Wickstrom the object generously donated by trus- who is writing a biography of the color- chronicles for us Yeats's familiarity with tees Earl Worsham, Gardner Grant, and ful publishing and sporting figure our sport. The knowledge that Yeats fly Jim Taylor- a Billingshurst reel, 93.32.1 Arnold Gingrich. Gingrich, as most of fished will now inform my reading of -was inadvertently eliminated from the vou know., havvenedLA to be one of the his L,voetrv. list of 1993 donations to the collection. Museum's early supporters and first If you think about nineteenth-centu- Luckily our trustees are of a nature that presidents. This biography affords us a ry America and the spread of sporting they don't get too whipped up about a fascinating window into the work and knowledge, you might just wonder how computer malfunction. We'll seek to psyche of a very intriguing man- I pre- western folk learned the fancy art of rein in the little devil who's trying to get dict you will not be able to put the mag- casting. In this issue Warren Vander Hill us in trouble next time. azine down as you spend a busy morn- and David Wheeler look at how people We are excited by your recent re- ing, circa 1968, with America's Esquire. learned to cast, especially in the remote search and contributions to The Ameri- Old friend (and fine rodmaker from areas of the western wilderness. The im- can Fly Fisher, both of which further the Maine) Dave Klausmeyer brings us up to age of rough frontier settlers, soldiers, body of knowledge about this sport. date on recent publications with a cowpokes, and landed gentry flailing Please contact me with your ideas and look at rod books for flv rod lovers and their rods and hooking" bushes iust as thoughts. We love to hear from you. collectors. The literature, he shows, is we all did when we learned to handle a MARGOTPAGE trying to keep pace with the interest in fly rod is, well, endearing. EDITOR THEAMERICAN MUSEUM OF FLYFISHING Preserving a Rich Heritage for Future Generations

TRUSTEES E. M. Bakwin Woods King 111 Michael Bakwin Martin D. Kline Foster Bam Me1 Icreiger 2 William M. Barrett Ian D. Macltay A Morning in the Life of America's Esquire...... Bruce H. Begin Malcolm MacIcenzie Warren D. Miller Paul Bofinger Robert E. Mathews I1 Lewis M. Bordeil I11 Bob Mitchell Donn H. Byrne, Sr. Wallace J. Murray 111 W. B. Yeats and the Fly...... lo Roy D. Chapin, Jr. Wayne Nordberg Gordon M. Wickstrom Michael D. Copeland Leigh H. Perkins Peter Corbin Romi Perkins Thomas N. Davidson 0. Miles Pollard Books about Fly Rods, Fly Rod Makers, and Charles R. Eichel Susan A. Popkin Fly Rod Lovers...... U G. Dick Finlay Dr. Ivan Schloff Auduil Fredrikson Stephen Sloan David R. Klausmeyer Arthur T. Frey Arthur Stern Reed Freyermuth John Swan Notes & Comment: Larry Gilsdorf James Taylor Gardner L. Grant Richard G. Tisch Fly Casting Instruction Reaches the Terry Heifernan James Mr. Van Loan American Frontier ...... 18 Curtis Hill San Van Ness James Hunter Richard J. Warren Warren Vander Hill and David Wheeler Dr. Arthur Kaeininer Dickson L. Whitney Robert F. Kahn Earl S. Worsham Off the Shelf: TRUSTEES EMERITUS Frontispieces ...... 20 W. Michael Fitzgerald Leon Martuch Robert N. ]ol~nson Keith C. Russell Gallery: Theodore Gordon Collection ...... 22 David B. Ledlie Paul Schullery Edward G. Zern Letters ...... 23 OFFICERS Chairman of the Board Foster Bam Museum News...... 26 President Wallace J. Murray 111 Vice Presidents William M. Barrett Contributors...... 28 Arthur Stern Treasurer Wayne Nordberg Secretary Charles R. Eichel ON THE COVER: Arnold Gingrich was a publishing and sports icon, well known in the middle of this century. He also happened to be one of the STAFF Museum's ardent supporters and an early president. In this Spring issue, Executive Director Donald S. Johnson biographer Warren Miller gives us an inside look at a most interesting Executive Assistant Virginia Hulett writer, fly fisher, and the founding editor of Esquire magazine. Photograph Curator Alanna D. Fisher courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Registrar Jon C. Mathewson Development Coordinator Lynda C. Kinney Research/Publicity Joe A. Pisarro

The Amel->canFly Fisher~spubhihrd Editor Margot Page toor times a year by the Museum at PO. Box 42, Manchrster, Velmont 05254. Publication datcs are winter, spnng, summer, and f,,ll Mcrnbershlp ducs include the ruat of a one-year Art Director Randall R. Perkins subscrrpt~on($20) and are tax deductible as provided for by law Membership rates are listed In the bark of each Copy Editor Sarah May Clarltson Issue. All letters, manuscripts, photographs, and material\ ~nlendedfor publication in the ~ournalshould be sent to the Muse~ull.The Museum and journal arc not responhlble tor unsolicited manuscripts, drawmgs, photographic Publtcatzons Coordinator Alanna D. Fisher material, or memorabilia. The Museum cannot accept respolislbility for stateluenta and interpretations that arc Offset Printing The Lane Press, Inc., wholly the author's. Unsolicited manuscripts cannot be rcturncd unless portage is proviiled. Contributions to The Burlington, Vermont American Fly Fisher are to be cona~drredg~aluitous and the property of the Museum unless otheiw~rrrrquesled by the contributor Articles appearing m th~slourndl are abst~actedand indexed in H~stoiicnlAbitiacts and America. Histor>, and Life. Copyright 0 1994, the Amencan Museu~uof Ply F~shing,hlanchestcr, Vermont 05254. Orrglnal materlal appearing may not be reprinted without prior pcrmisaion. Second Class Perm~tpostagc paid at Manchestcr Accwdltod by tho ~rnedmnASSOCI~IO~ Vcrmont 05254 and add~tionaloffices (USPS oi7qio). ?he Amencan FIT Fisher (ISSN 0884-3562) qMu5ourns r o s r h.1 A s T F R : Send address changes to The American Fly Frsizer, P.O. Rox 42, Manchester, Vermont 05254.

SPRING 1994 A Morning in the Life of

by Warren D. Miller

ARNOLD GINGRICH was one of the long after Roosevelt closed the banks in Great Depression to dominate the Museum's first presidents (1974-1976). His 1933, yet it was an immediate commer- world's economic and military order, he cial hit. Later, Esquire, Inc., became one remained consistent and centered. His literarv renown as the editor of, EsauireL of the first media conglomerates to go refined sensibilities were Esauire's ~ri- magazine and his sporting allure lent this . . fledgling museum the credibility and ex- public. mary strength. When American stan- posure it needed. Gingrich's biographer, Gingrich's career was extraordinarv. dards of taste and conduct steadily de- member Warren Miller, has pieced to- ~urinihistenure with Esquire he edit& clined in the 1960s, Gingrich's Renais- gether a partial mosaic of this private and the work of fifteen Nobel Prize laureates sance Man became an anachronism. Es- fascinating man's life by juxtaposing biog- and fifty Pulitzer Prize winners. From quire's style had less and less in com- raphy with excerpts from Gingrich's own Hemingway in the magazine's October mon with American men. In 1979 two writing. We are pleased to be the first to 1933 launch through contributors such young businessmen from Tennessee ~ublishada~ted material from Miller's as Updike, Bellow, and Tom Wolfe in bought the magazine for a pittance work-in-progress, America's Esquire: The the 197os, the magazine was a consistent barely three years after his death. Life and Times of Arnold Gingrich. reservoir of som;of the best writing in Gingrich's personal life and habits EDITOR America. Ginerich's" columns and arti- were a paradox. Descended from fore- cles appeared in over 400 issues of Es- bears who had founded the Mennonite N THE MIDDLE THIRD ofthiscen- quire until his death on July 9, 1976. His Church. and born in Gerald Ford's tury three editors dominated Ameri- old friend and angling companion, hometown of Grand Rapids twelve days Ican magazine journalism: Henry Charles Ritz, died four days later. before the Wright Brothers' 1903 flight Luce of Time, Harold Ross of The New Like legendary editor Max Perkins, at Kitty Hawk, he was a philanderer Yorker, and Arnold Gingrich of Esquire. Gingrich understood writers. He felt the who married three women a total of five Of the three, Gingrich was arguably the isolation our art imposes. He was kind, times. He and his first wife, Helen-Mary best editor and had the greatest cultural generous, compassionate, and resource- Rowe, married three times - once when influence, yet until now biographers ful, but he was no patsy. One example: they eloped as college seniors in 1924 have overlooked him. Like Luce, Gin- He had made a sizeable advance to Scott (and never told her mother), again a "grich was visionarv and concerned Fitzgerald, in return for which Fitzger- year later after Gingrich had a job pay- about the direction of American cul- ald had done nothing, and done it for ing $50 a week (the minimum income -ture. Like Ross, he knew and loved clas- months. Anxious to get something, any- rewired for her mother's blessing), and sical literature. Unlike either, he was a thing, to satisfy the advance, he tracked a third time twenty-eight years later af- graceful and unobtrusive editor, secure down the elusive Fitzgerald," who was ter they divorced, Gingrich having sur- in himself. "He edits best who edits paralyzed by writer's block, and gently vived a disastrous eight-month mar- least" was his statement on the art of persuaded him to write the famous riage" in between. editing. "Crack-Up" series about-what else? Grace Coolidge described his last Esquire, with which his name was -writers with writer's block. wife, Jane, as "the most beautiful girl synonymous, was the first for-men-only During a period of American history ever to set foot in the White House." magazine in the United States. The when many prominent writers were ei- Gingrich met that "girl" in mid-1936 at magazine'su maiden issue came out at the ther drunks or alcoholics, Gingrich was the Compleat Angler, a saloon on Bimi- then-unheard-of price of fifty cents not neither. As the nation rose from the ni where Ernest Hemingway hosted a

2 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER Arnold Gingrich, longtime publisher of Esquire magazine, was the author or editor of many books including The Joys of Trout, The Well-Tempered Angler, and American Trout Fishing. He was a dedicated conservationist and served on numerous boards, including a term as president of this fledgling museum

Jane owned, an elegant, two-story Dutch home on four acres in Ridge- wood in north Bergen County, New Jer- sey. Built in 1757, ten years after the Gin- grich forebears arrived near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, from the Alsace region of France, the old house became the Gin- grich manse on April Fool's Day, 1964. In his later years, he had an established

morningu routine there- when he wasn't overnighting with his paramour at his apartment just off Fifth Avenue on New York's Upper East Side. What follows is a description of that

morningU ritual. The first four hours of each day included his three favorite ac- tivities: fly fishing, editing, and playing the violin. At two of those, Arnold Gin- grich, co-founder and founding editor of Esquire, excelled.

HE DAY MIGHT WELL HAVE been April 1, 1968. The Tet offen- Tsive in Vietnam had just ended, hundreds of thousands of college stu- dents protested U.S. involvement there

dailv., , and LBT had startled the nation the night before by announcing, "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nom- ination of my party [for another term] party. After an intermittent affair span- We in the fly fishing community as your President."' "Liberal Commu- ning three continents and almost two know Gingrich by the books he wrote nist" Alexander Dubcek was trying to decades, they finally married in 1955, the on our passion- The Well-Tempered relax the hold of totalitarianism in first time that both were single at the Angler (1965), The Joys of Trout (1973)) Czechoslovakia. Gold sold for $28 an same time. and The Fishing In Print: A Guided Tour ounce, and then, as now, the prime rate Difficult and mercurial writers Through Five Centuries of Angling Liter- was 6 percent. Guess Who's Coming to adored him, yet he was distant from his ature (1974). Published two years before Dinner with Tracy, Hepburn, and Poiti- three sons. That may be why a signed he died, the latter volume reveals the er, was packing the nation's movie hous- first edition of Cast Down the Laurel depth and breadth of Gingrich's prodi- es; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are ended up in the hands of this writer. gious knowledge of fly fishing. He also Dead was a Broadway hit; and John Up- Penned on February 11, 1935, the in- edited American Trout Fishing by dike's Couples was number two on the scription to his son begins: "For Rowe" Theodore Gordon and A Company of New York Times Book Review's bestseller and ends with "Arnold Gingrich." Why Anglers (1966). list. Nolan Ryan was a rookie pitcher for not something like "Love, Dad" for his Gingrich maintained a voluminous the Mets, and Tony Jacklin had just be- seven-year-old boy? angling library at the residence he and come the first Briton to win a

SPRING 1994 3 Courtesy Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan

Arnold Gingrich (in his Esquire ofice) during the height of his career.

professional golf tournament in the United States. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had announced he would visit Mem- phis later in the week to support a strike by municipal sanitation workers there, and a lanky young fellow named George Bush was a first-term congressman from

Houston.-- ~ Gingrich habitually rose at 4 A.M.He slept in Italian silk pajamas, over which he slipped a Pendleton robe as soon as he got out of bed. He liked to wear slip- the fish. In its deepest self, fishing is the As an agent of change, Gingrich was pers made of llama fur, which he had most solitary sport, for at its best it's all self-effacing. Though prominent social- bought on a trouting trek to the Peru- between you and the fish.2 ly, he was neither social climber nor vian Andes in 1957. Not one to soft-ped- Comparing women watching fisher- self-promoter. He was a modest man

dle her views on any subject, Janie called men to a dog watching television would who took life seriouslv.,, but himself not the strange-looking white slippers "gi- invite heaps of derision upon anyone at all. A man of charm and social grace, ant hair balls." By the time they became making such a comparison today and he was also an iconoclast who reveled in husband and wife, she was what he deservedly so. Though Gingrich loved the uproar his first book (and only work termed "an ex-fisher." There had been a women, and liked them, too, he was an of fiction) created. The book-Cast time when he was not so lucky. unreconstructed male chauvinist. Such Down the Laurel, a parody of life in an attitude was common and accevted Grand Rapids at the- time of his up- Women fishing is one thing, and watching in an age when men's views of women bringing-offended virtually all in the women fishing is another. But women amounted to little else. upper social crust there, including his watching fishing -well, in my experience, women who watch fishermen, at least He undoubtedly kept his chauvinism straitlaced mother-in-law at the time. stream fishermen, almost invariably re- to himself around plainspoken Janie. Most mornings Gingrich would put mind me of a dog watching television. She had suffered a debilitating stroke in on his trademark half-rim glasses, They have no capacity of sustained atten- 1967, so he routinely read himself to which rested on whatever book he had tion, no concentration whatsoever, and sleep from one of the several books on dozed off reading the night before, and an eye only for the extraneous and incon- his nightstand. In the case of Updike's check his wife's condition, usually with sequential. Still there is a fairly general Couples, mate-swapping, homosexual Marguerite, the female half of the feeling that for some reason fishing romance, and a panoply of gratuitous French cou~lewho lived with the Gin- should be a shared experience. griches. Then he would don his every- I've known men who said they didn't four-letter words made for a combina- go fishing any more, since their old buddy tion guaranteed to make Gingrich shud- day angling uniform, including khaki died, or moved away, or whatever. And der. trousers, red wool shirt, navy blue wool they didn't mean their wives. I wonder if It wasn't that Gingrich minded necktie, tweed sport coat, and Tyrolean these men really ever did go fishing. changing times or changing with them. wool hat. As part of his Ridgewood Maybe they just went on what used to be He didn't. In fact, he rather liked lead- morning ritual, Gingrich enjoyed cast- called "outings," presumably because they ing the charge of change, as he had ing over the ponds at the Joe Jefferson let you out of the house. I'm all for when, during the depths of the Great Club up the hill. Its spring-fed pools friendship, and partnership has been a Depression in 1933, he, Dave Smart, and maintained a vear-round water temver- good idea since Damon and Pythias, I Bill Weintraub launched Esquire. Bur ature of 55 degrees, ideal for trout. He suppose; but if what you're setting out to wore a beige fishing vest over the coat do is to come, by the most permissive of changing times didn't have to mean definitions, within the pale of angling, poor taste and pandering literary stan- and kept a Dunhill Meerschaum pipe then you don't need a partner. Your part- dards. Or so he thought. This was a and four new pipe cleaners in a vest ner, your one true old buddy, if you could man whose slogan was, after all, "Never pocket specifically reserved for them.3 only get it through his minimal brain, is leave well enough alone." By the time he tamped down and fired

4 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER Arnold and Jane K. Gingrich in Iceland in 1956. The rod andfish are A1 McClane's.

better berry, but doubtless God never did': And so, if I might be judge, 'God never did make a more calm, quiet, in- nocent recreation than angling.' "5 Gingrich liked to put it more suc- cinctly: "Fly fishing is the most fun a man can have standing up." In fishing, as in most endeavors, he was a tradi- tionalist. Gingrich's tweaking of the austerity of his Mennonite ancestors didn't end up his pipe, he would have smoked one left to Mother Nature's care, and that's as with two dozen bamboo fly rods or a or two unfiltered cigarettes, even though true of the places where we live as well as half-dozen classic violins: this was a he had undergone lung surgery. where we work. Largely, of course, it's be- man who owned two Bentleys. The old- cause Mother Nature has taken such a er car, a black 1954 model, was named I had thought, as so many have said, that pushing around from man-made interfer- The Beautiful. As soon as Janie had the United States Senate was the hardest ence with her processes. Why, even the learned that its companion, of 1963 vin- club to get into, but some of these fishing ponds I fish at Joe Jefferson Club, though tage, was a model called the Country- clubs must make that claim dubious. It fed from springs that have been there man, she dubbed it The Bumpkin. The took me three years to crack this one, and since time out of mind, require constant Beautiful and The Bumpkin resided in if Traver [Bob Traver - close Gingrich pal care or they too could soon go to pot. the garage a few paces from the house. and General Electric executive - no rela- That might not have been true back in Not surprising for a guy whose tastes tion to John Voelker's pseudonym, Robert 1874, when Joe Jefferson first acquired ran to old violins, old books, and old fly Traver, author of Anatomy of a Murder, them. It took bulldozing and the judi- Trout Madness, and Trout Magic] hadn't cious use of weed killers, before the ponds rods, Gingrich preferred The Beautiful. happened to be its president, I might not could be brought to their present pristine The two-mile drive up tree-lined East have made it yet. Its site is Saddle River, state where they're fishable the year Saddle River Road to the Joe Jeff Club just above the town line of Ho-Ho-Kus, around.4 typically consumed less than five min- and that's the back door of New York utes. This private fishing preserve sat City. But that's only a facet of the fact that The temperature that foggy Monday three hundred yards off the road and the city is what it has its back to, and as a morning was 62, 6 degrees warmer than was protected by both a fence and a city dweller that was something I had to the night before. The barometer had locked gate. Gingrich was usually there live down. This I have been trying fallen a half inch overnight to 29.73. by 4:30 A.M., well before sunrise. His earnestly to do for the past five years, Falling pressure means an approaching serving as the club's volunteer adjunct approach to fishing was epitomized caretaker, feeding the fish on all weekends front, which means rising fish, and Gin- when he described himself as a "20/2o and holidays, working my tail off with grich knew of nothing quite so beautiful man," zo/zo being the measurement for rake and broom keeping the ponds' sur- as a feeding trout, unless it was the deep How Well an angler fished, not for How

faces cleared, and in general seeking to madeL uglow of one of his classic violins Much one caught. deport myself as I always adjured my kids by Stradivari or Guarneri or Amati. to do, like "a little gentleman," but there What better way to greet Opening Day A quarter century ago I fished frequently are times even now when I harbor the than with a cellar-dwelling barometer with Ernest Hemingway out of Key West feeling that I might still be on probation. reading? and in the Gulf Stream off Bimini. They The club takes its name from the fact With his lifelong habit of voracious say that the human memory tends to en- that its grounds belonged, in the last years reading, Gingrich annually reread Wal- large upon pleasure and to minimize of his life, to the famous American actor pain, but about all I remember of that (and fisherman) Joe Jefferson. Jefferson ton and Cotton's The Compleat Angler. fishing now is the agonizing backache. I'd fished places like Henryville with the likes Nearly 300 years before, they wrote: "In- pump and reel for the better part of an of Gifford Pinchot and Grover Cleveland. deed, my good Scholar, we may say of hour to get a big tuna up to the boat, only angling, as Dr. Boteler said of strawber- to have him sound like an elevator with a There are very few places that can be ries, 'Doubtless God could have made a snapped cable. Then I'd pump and reel

SPRING 1994 j John Groth sketched Gingrich astream, the lead illustration in Gingrich's 1974 book, The Fishing in Print.

again for the better part of another hour before losing him, finally to the sharks. I know now, as I didn't know then, that the finest fun in fishing is qualita- tive-and that all that fishing I used to do, whether trolling for bass in Pistakee Bay or for big fish on the blue water, was merely quantitative. Like most Ameri- cans, I started out in fishing by Thinking Big. I didn't know that the added dimen- sion of fishing fun begins only when you start Thinking Fine. when you start caring more about the thing longer than 6 feet, or weighing ap- Since 1939, when I first crossed that fishing than the fish. It is something like preciably more than 2 ounces. On such great divide between fishing and angling, the gambling axiom, "Scared money nev- rods I have consistently taken salmon, I've acquired a baker's dozen fly rods, in- er wins" - greedy fishing never produces. though never yet larger than 14 pounds. cluding some fairly stout sticks intended Or maybe fish are like cats; they won't As for trout, I now generally use, except for salmon, but for the past five seasons come to you if they know you want them, on big rivers, a rod of 4 feet, 4 inches in I've hardly ever had occasion to use any of but swarm over you if they know you length, weighing exactly an ounce [Jim them but one, a custom-made bamboo don't. To sum up, you give all the good Payne made only three of these little ba- job measuring just over 6 feet long and cards to the fish, then win more handily tons and Gingrich owned two of them]. weighing just under 1% ounces. It's called than you ever did bef~re.~ Correspondingly, the dimensions of the the Midge, as it's primarily intended for Gingrich liked to fish from the nar- rest of my tackle have also shrunk, as I use with tiny midges of size 20 or smaller, have learned that the increase in enjoy- but it's such a versatile rod that I've used row strip of land between #I, the large ment, when you're fishing fine, is in direct not only bucktails and streamers of sizes pond on the west, and #3, a smaller one proportion to the decrease in your size of 10 and 12 on it but even salmon flies up to on the southeast. His favorite was #2 on tackle. size 4. the northeast. Now, more than seven- . . . Of course, I ought to warn you that You're in another league, you might teen years after his death, a sign pro- going in for fine tackle is definitely doing say, and its standards are infinitely higher. claiming "ARNOLD'S POOL" is nailed to it the hard way. You will get snarls, not Your new par for the course is zo/zo, and a tree facing #2 by his favorite casting only in your leader but even in the the thrill of making it, even if you manage svot. forepart of your line, and they will be to bring it off no more than once or twice He kept several rods, including his pesky to pick loose because of the very a season, is greater than hauling in a boat- beloved Russ Peaks, on the racks at the fineness of your tackle. You must be load of fish by the old chuck-and-chance- temperamentally suited to getting a kick it and troll-and-pray methods. Of course, Joe Jeff clubhouse. Fishing with small out of doing it the hard way, or this fish- 20/20 means getting a fish of 20 inches or rigs, of course, he hooked far more fish ing is not for you. My wife says that a more on a fly of size 20 or less. Every time than he landed, bringing to mind Her- tape recording of me "enjoying myself" you do it you are entitled to give yourself bert Hoover's dictum, "All men are on the stream would strike fear into the the secret grip of the exclusive society of equal before fish." Nonetheless, when hearts of a riot squad. Sure, the slightest veritable anglers, as distinguished from Gingrich caught a fish at the Joe Jeff unexpected trick of the wind or lapse in ordinary fishermen. Club (or anywhere else), he could be ex- your own timing can make you goof into What fly? When you're fishing fine, it pected to indulge his habit of talking to an unholy mess and you'll cuss yourself to doesn't seem to make a great deal of dif- the fish before releasing it. He believed high heaven. But when that little coil of ference. If it's a size 20 or smaller, I hon- " oiled silk shoots out ahead of you the way estly think it could be slyblue-pink and that trout are too beautiful to catch only it should, as it does about nineteen times you'd still get a strike on it. Also flies this once. As he got older, his rods got small- out of twenty, fishing fine is an unexam- small are very tolerant of slight errors of er to even the terms of the contest be- pled thrill. presentation that might be fatal in the tween fish and fly fisher. Perhaps the best way to test yourself, conventional sizes. before investing in a mess of light tackle, The ironical part of it all is that your Now, I hardly ever have occasion to use, is to compare angling to driving. Auto- headiest success as an angler only begins out of my present battery of fly rods, any- matic, no-shift gearshifts have been avail- Jacketphotograph from Toys of a Lifetime (1966) by former Esquire art director Henry Wolf:

scriptions, so long as they were midge- Though a warm and contented man, the size or smaller; lines, leaders, and reels bags under his eyes gave him a look of appropriately matched to these diminu- perpetual sadness. He was balding and, tive rods; and flies, flies of all sizes, col- since the early i93os, had sported a thick ors, and descriptions. He didn't tie his mustache. which he stroked often. At 5 own, and he loved to catch fish, so he feet, lo inches and 163 pounds, he stayed bought what he used, and he was sus- trim by following a diet he called ceptible to a marketing pitch of any DEAMOF - Don't Eat Anything Made sort. The more outrageous the claims of Of Flour.9 He often said that it was the success that accompanied it, the more only diet that had ever worked for him. likely he was to be hooked. Gingrich In his downstairs bedroom Gingrich personified the notion that most flies would don his publisher's uniform: catch more fishers than fish. charcoal gray custom-made wool suit with nonmatching vest from D. Mon- My big trouble is that I over-react to both V success and failure. Let me catch a four- dati in Rome over a white cotton shirt pounder on no matter what fly and I'm with fraved French cuffs. A maroon- ready to make that fly the foundation of a and-white silk regimental tie, English new religion, and I'm chucking it at every wool hat. and handmade N. Tuczek poor fish in sight for the next month, un- shoes the color of a vintage port fin- til I make them all so sick of the sight of it ished the job.10 Though Esquire was a able to the motorist for just about the as to obviate its last chance of enticing powerful force in men's fashion, Gin- same length of time that spinning tackle any of them. I've done this with the Mon- grich was no model of sartorial splen- tana nymph, the Zug Bug, the little Royal has been available in this country to the dor. In fact, it seemed that looking quite fisherman. Both have been a boon to the Coachman streamer, and most recently with a New Zealand pattern called Mrs. the opposite came easily to him. guy who is only concerned with "getting Thoueh he ordered his ex~ensive there" in the easiest way possible. But Simpson. The latter is one of three pat- V there are those to whom a car, in and of terns featured in a mail-order offering Tuczeks handmade from a London itself, is more than a mere means of trans- that must have been made to all the fish- craftsman. he refused to wear " galoshes portation. Of such dedicated motorists it ing clubs in the country, and in the case over them. "I pay a lot of money for has been written: "An accomplished mo- of the Joe Jefferson Club, the treasurer, these fine English" shoes. and I'm not torist no more wants an automatic drive who gets all such mail along with the going to tarnish them with galoshes," he than an accomplished pianist wants an bills, gave it to me. He did it without say- often said.ll automatic piano.'' Shifting gears is getting ing why, but presumably under the as- On a misty morning like April 1, there the hard way, too, but if you can un- sumption that I am the club's likeliest sucker for anything new, and sure enough 1968, Gingrich would have probably derstand the thrill of gunning a car slipped into a beige raincoat before through the gears, instead of leaving all I sent off the next day for a dozen of these that work to some musho~naticmachin- "proven trout killers," as advertised, at a hanging a tape recorder around his ery, then you probably have the tempera- dollar apiece. Better I should have sent neck, picking up a satchel bulging with ment to try becoming a zo/zo angler.7 them the twelve bucks as a nondeductible manuscripts, and heading off to catch goodwill contribution, telling them to his 5:5o A.M. bus. Though he usually On most mornings, Gingrich in- keep the flies, but of course I had no way carried the satchel in one hand and his dulged himself at the Joe Jeff Club for of knowing that at the time.8 umbrella in the other. he still made the thirty minutes or so. Well into his sixty- No later than a few minutes after five three-quarter-mile walk in twelve min- fifth year, he had long since reached He- he would return his gear to the club- utes, arriving at the intersection of witt's third of the three stages in an an- house and head for home to get ready Racetrack Road and Route 17 at 5:45 gler's development, where the angler for work. After another look in on Janie, A.M. Even in the months when it was prizes the means above the quarry, How who was usually still asleep, he would light, he often hailed the bus with a Well above How Much. For Gingrich, shower, shave, brush his teeth, and lantern. that meant rods of all makes and de- comb his few remaining strands of hair. He liked to ride in the back of the bus

SPRING 1994 7 Photograph entitled "Narcissus at the Music Rack" from A Thousand Mornings of Music: The Journal of an Obsession with the Violin (1970).

because he often met interesting people there. He also enjoyed riding there be- cause it was something a man of his stature would not be expected to do, and unassuming people rather like do- ing the unexpected. Besides, he could read unobtrusively in the back as he lis- tened to himself L,~lavthe fiddle on his tape recorder as he rode into Manhattan. After a lapse of forty-nine [Gingrich added a couple of imprecise years in the following excerpt] years, he had begun taking violin lessons in 1967. But unlike his dexterity with a fly rod and his flu- ency with a story, his fiddling was atro- sent at the creation of the magazineu that day he might well have leafed through a cious. Harry Shub, his violin teacher had become the country's preeminent couple of the manuscripts that had been who had given recitals at Carnegie Hall, chronicle of male style and literature submitted for the thirty-fifth anniver- observed with tactful understatement, was irrelevant. Practice all of Shub's stu- sary issue of Esquire. The theme of that "He was not blessed with talent." dents must, and Gingrich was no excep- special 300-page edition, due out in late tion. September, was "Salvaging the Twenti- Overnight I became hourly more deter- mined to get Mr. Shub to take me on as a To everyone but Gingrich, his violin- eth Century." It included feature articles pupil. When I played the reglued Kloz [a playing was a terrible assault on the by Daniel Boorstin, Gore Vidal, William violin] for him in the back room at ears. Nevertheless, he insisted on sawing F. Buckley, Jr., Kenneth Tynan, Dwight Rosenthal's the next noon, his first ex- away on his Strad or his Guarneri or his Macdonald, William Styron, Wilfrid pression was that of a man who has just Amati or his Stainer in rapt enchant- Sheed, Truman Capote, and David Mer- been told that the chicken sandwich he is ment, eyes closed, body swaying back rick. finishing was actually made of rattlesnake and forth with the movements of his The 18-mile bus ride to Manhattan meat. bow. ended at the Port Authority terminal I spared him the necessity of saying Gingrich might have been oblivious building on Eighth Avenue at Fortieth anything by telling him that my last to the grating sound he produced, but Street. From there he usually hailed a teacher, over fifty years before, had said that "it must be the way you were taught, Janie wasn't. Endowed with perfect cab for the short ride to Esquire, Inc.'s because nobody could get that bad all by pitch and hearing abilities that dogs offices, which occupied the fourth floor himself." would covet, she could hear the high of the Look Building on Madison Av- "No," said Mr. Shub, now swallowing notes before they ever could. Her gifts enue between 5ist and 52nd Street. Ar- as if he had just taken a test for the of pitch and plainspokenness haunted riving about 630 A.M., Gingrich ordi- mumps, "it isn't as bad as that, it's just him when he played his classic 1618 Am- narily had the place to himself, it being that it's so-well, what shall I say-so ati at home. "You sound dreadful even the habit of the magazine's younger chaotic." when you play fairly well," she said denizens to amble in about 9:30. "Well said," I told him, "I've been look- more than 0nce.u Gingrich fiddled on. After shedding raincoat, tape record- ing for a term to describe it to myself, and u all I've thought of up 'ti1 now is 'utterly Somehow, listening to a tape of his er, and satchel, he invariably pulled the ~nhousebroken.""~ own violin playing helped him read. violin case from the top shelf of one of Though he had turned over the day-to- his bookcases and removed the gleam- Twenty years Gingrich's junior, the day editorship of the magazine to ing Stradivari from inside. He was ha- demanding Mr. Shub cared not a whit Harold Hayes, Gingrich still read every bitually mesmerized by the richness of about any of his students' accomplish- word of every article that appeared in this beautiful instrument made in 1672. ments. The fact that Gingrich was pre- the magazine before it was printed. This Tucking the Resonans Number Three A fancz'ful male sporting club scene sketched by John Groth for The Fish- ing in Print, but eventually not used.

sense of recognition value that makes the fisherman nod his head, and maybe touch his temple, as if to say, "I must remember this." Entering the room in the house that was once called my office, we crawl through thickets of rod cases and fly box- es until we come upon a veritable spate of books. And there we go a-fishing.l4 .=y

ENDNOTES

I. Tom Wicker, New York Times, April I, 1968, p. 1. Actually, Wicker's lead omitted "for another term," even though Lyndon Johnson's statement shoulder vad between the fiddle and his hattan, fishing in print was as close to included it. coat, he would hold the violin between heaven as this nominal Episcopalian 2. Arnold Gingrich, The Well-Tempered Angler (NewYork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), pp. 71-72. his chin and his shoulder, grab his gold- could get. 3. Gingrich had a large collection of pipes. The trimmed Dodd bow with the ivory frog, first he ever owned was a briar made by Dunhill, and take his place in front of his music As Sparse Grey Hackle says, some of the but he also owned pipes by Comoy, Peterson, and stand. Then he would turn on his best fishing is to be found not in water Borling, among others. For an entertaining look at recorder. but in print. It follows that some of the his love and knowledge of pipes, see Chapter 11 in For the ensuing ninety minutes ca- best fishing partners are to be found not his "My Pipe and My Bowl,'' in Toys of a Lifetime in life but in literature. I know there are (NewYork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966). cophony would reign. Gingrich never some things I've read that come to mind 4. Arnold Gingrich, The Joys of Trout (New wavered from his music, often playing more often while I'm fishing than any- York: Crown P~tblishersInc., 1973), pp. 35-36, 64. his favorite piece, the adagio from the thing I can remember that anybody ever 5 Quoted in Gingrich's The Fishlng in Print: A Third Mozart Concerto in G. K216. said to me beside stream or pond. Guided Tour Through Five Centuries ofAngling Lit- along with its Franko cadenza. As al- It was in the preface to his own edition erature (New York: Winchester Press, 1974), p. 44. ways, he would play with his eyes closed of The Compleat Angler, in 1896, that An- The passage comes from the fifth edition (1676) of drew Lang said: "To write on Walton is, The Compleat Angler, and Gingrich wrote, "It is as his body swayed in time with his undoubtedly one of the best known and most of- indeed, to hold a candle to the sun. Had relentless sawing. ten quoted passages ofall." " Montaigne been a fisher, he might have When the tape ran out, Gingrich 6. Arnold Gingrich, Field 6 Stream (December written somewhat like Izaak, but without 19591, Pp. 40, 82,101. would lovingly wipe off the violin, the piety, the perfume, and the charm." much as he had gently stroked the trout, 7. Gingrich, The Well-Tempered Angle); pp. 34, We can do without the piety, I should 43-44. loosen the tension on the bow, and tuck think, but the perfume and the charm 8. Gingrich, The Joys of Trout, pp. 21-22. the Stradivari back into its case and lift -yes, that's the two-way stretch with 9. Gingrich, Toys of a Lifetime, p. 290. Gingrich it back atop the bookshelf. On top of which to test the samples, to see if they details his various battles with his bulge in Chap- the paper-strewn coffee table would go warrant inclusion in a book of memora- ter X, "My Flesh and the Devil with It." the sheet music. Down would come the bilia. lo. Gingrich elaborates on his preferences in A book can fall considerably short of Chapter I, "The Cut of My Jib,'' in Toys of a Life- music stand. Then. until the routine ten time. o'clock business meeting, he would lis- measuring up as a literary masterpiece, and still contain the wherewithal to en- 11. Quotation attributed to Arnold Gingrich by ten through his headset to Gingrich chant the angler. Let it diffuse the whiff of John A. Russo, Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, in inter- playing Mozart as he read still more ar- authenticity, that is to the fisherman the view with the author on August 13,1989. 12. Arnold Gingrich, A Thousand Mornings of ticles. perfume of credence, and let it exude a When he needed a break, Arnold Music: The Journal of an Obsession with the Violin modicum of charm, to endow things as (NewYork: Crown Publishers Inc., 1970), p. 82. Gingrich pulled out a fishing book. In they are with an aura of things as they U. Ibid., p. 50. the steel and concrete of midtown Man- ought to be at best, and you convey that 14. Gingrich,The Fishing in Print, pp. 1,3-4.

SPRING 1994 9 W. B. Yeats and the Fly Fly fishers find Yeats's imagery evocative of their own best moments on the water

by Gordon M. Wickstrom

From Autohiogi-apilies by W. B. Yeats (1927)

POETRY,IT HAS BEEN SAID, is the for souls or the human fisher for self- Yeats, arguably the greatest poet of our most esoteric of the arts. So it's remark- hood. Witness Christ's call to Saints Pe- century (1865-1939), used the fly fisher able to find jly fishing quite often invoked ter, Andrew, James, and John to leave and his craft as a central and controlling by poets to serve as metaphors or alle- their nets and be fishers of men and image in several of his most impressive gories. An outstanding example is the Christ's own symbolic identification as a poems. His output over half a century poet William Butler Yeats, as shown in fish. dealt with his native Ireland; Ireland of the analysis here, first published in 1970 In a strange way, fishing and the at- ancient mvth and modern revolutionarv in the F.F.F. journal, The Flyfisher, by fre- tendant killing have never been associat- politics, of nature and art, of passion quent contributor Gordon M. Wickstrom. ed with the carnage, blood lust, and and hate, his loves and occult philoso- JOEA. PISARRO moral risk that some sentimental per- phy. Former editor of The Flyfisher sons and many zealots have often attrib- Yeats was a native of the west coun- uted to land hunting. The fish as prey is try, of County Sligo, and though he ROBABLY NO SPORT has so vivid at once more spiritual and less particu- lived his adult years in London, Dublin, a life in literature as fishing. So lar; his life does not appear to be his and finally in his tower-home in County Pspecial is the role of fishing, and own as is the case of the pheasant, the Galway, he remained faithful to his idea particularly fly fishing, in both life and deer, or the fox. He belongs to a differ- of himself as a Sligo man-Sligo, twin- art that the compromised word "sport" ent realm of consciousness, another ele- shouldered by Donegal to the north and has always been an uneasy generic name ment, abstract and formal, abundant Mayo to the south where perhaps the for what Izaak Walton called "the con- with ritual significance. finest of all the splendid Irish fishing for templative man's recreation." That fish- The fisherman clearly operates in a both trout and salmon is still to be ing was the first and perhaps still is the different order of things from the found. Though he fished almost exclu- only sport to inspire a masterwork of hunter or any other "sportsman." His sively in his boyhood, and then only oc- world literature in Walton's Compleat solitary pursuit has archetypal sub- casionally, he learned enough during Angler attests to this specialness. From stance, and when he is most truly "con- those Sligo years and observed enough our beginnings, we have attributed an templative," and when he fishes the fly, later to make his grasp on angling accu- important symbolic meaning to fish, he is most apt to be open to and aware rate and sensitive. fishing.", and fishermen. In the sacred of the ancient and profound meaning. Fly-fishing readers of his poems find waters of our origins, the fish is soul or Confident of this specialness about these images right on the mark, evoca- self; the fisherman is the divine fisher fly fishers and their flies, William Butler tive of their own best moments on the

10 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER W B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, and G. W: Russell (A. E.) fishing on Coole Lake on the estate of Lady Augusta Gregory, probably around 1907

Although I can see him still, The freckled man who goes To a grey place on a hill In grey Connemara clothes At dawn to cast his flies, It's long since I began To call up to the eyes This wise and simple man. All day I'd looked in the face What I had hoped 'twould be To write for my own race. . . The poem goes on to a catalog of the "other" Irishmen, self-defeating cravens, drunks, knaves, and clowns who spoil all they touch. Then the poem returns for solace to the fisherman:

Maybe a twelvemonth since Suddenly I began, In scorn of this audience, Imagining a man, And his sun-freckled face, And grey Connemara cloth, Climbing up to a place Where stone is dark under froth, And the down-turn of his wrist water. The reader validates the image oppression had to end; the Irish had to When the flies drop in the stream; with, "Yes, that's the way it is." Such val- revive their literature and create a dra- E:: E:: :k: ~~~~~~~~~~; idations of experience are at least one of ma. Paradoxically, the literary efforts, And cried, 'Before I am old the essential functions of poetry. which Yeats sparked and led, had to be- I shall have written him one Yeats describes in an early poem, gin in London among the exiled Irish poem maybe as cold "The Song of the Wandering Aengus," intellectuals there and come home to And passionate as the dawn.' (pp. 145-46) how: Dublin around the turn of the century. This huge and ultimately successful un- And so one of the great Poems of the I went out to the hazel wood, dertaking held many moment of &illu- language at once seems to crystallize the Because a fire was in my head, sionment and disappointment for the fly-fisher's experience, his energy, his And cut and peeled a hazel wand, poet. The Irishman, who in too many solemn role in a larger experience, and And hooked a berry to a thread; cases was immune to the call of great- its close kinship to poetry "as cold and And when white moths were on the wing, ness from the poets, revolutionaries, passionate as the dawn." And moth-like stars were flickring out, Ireland has a built-in receptivity to I dropped the berry in a stream even exquisite women like Maud Gonne, And caught a little silver trout.' (p. j7) Yeats's first and great love, seemed to such the Irish are a fish-con- need no enemies, even the British. scious people, long associating fish with The delicate and lovely poem contin- The failure of Ireland to rise to the a stable economy, food, and sport as well ues through the vision of a beautiful girl challenge of his vision disappointed as symbolic life. In myth, the salmon is (not unusual in angling lyrics: remem- Yeats, often nearly to despair. In 1919 he identified with wisdom and a metaphys- ber Walton's milkmaids) and ends in the responded with the poem "The Fisher- ical life.2 In his notes to early Poems, poet's promise to hunt for the girl man" in which the gray, Connemara fly published in Crosswa~5,Yeatswrote: through all that western land "till time fisher becomes a symbol for the con- The little Indian dramatic scene was . . . and times are done." trolled passion (a useful description of (ccAnashuvaand vijayan) about a man But other places and sterner tasks fly fishing) and the ideal of Irish man- loved by two who had the one were to call the poet away from his hood for the modern dilemma. The soul betweell them, , , , It came into my youthful, Celtic dreaming and cause poem comes round to Yeats's hope, his head when I saw a man at Rosses Point him to transform his angling image. Ire- intention one day to make a poem of carrying two salmon. "One man with two land had to be recalled to her past na- equal intensity and skill to the fisher- souls," 1 said, and added, ''0no, two peo- tional and cultural glory; the English man's art: ple with one soul." (p. 447)

SPRING 1994 11 From W B. Yeats: Man and Poet (1949)

new potential. The image of sanity and purpose, of controlled passion is in that fly-fisher's wrist, its downturn over pools among the rocks as the flies follow the line's tight loop toward the fish. Regardless of how frustrating and unsatisfactory the confused events of our vublic lives become, whether in Yeats's new Ireland or our own more Los Angelized country, there's promise of another way -that ancient, youthful fly fisher still stands there in the cold, gray Connemara dawn, casting his flies from the past into the future to a prey that is not a prey at all, but a quest, a mystery, a symbol of the fly fisher's own soul.5 - Irish revolutionary, actress, and writer Maud Gonne was the inspiration and love of Yeats's life. Her impas- sioned beliefs and unflagging energy landed her in prison on more than one occasion. She refused Yeats's ofers of marriage but remained a lifelong friend.

This is the kind of teasing past . . . when with rod and fly, thought that the fish and fisherman Or humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bul have for the Irish mind. The salmon has ben's back a heroic shape-an epic, mythic life, And had the livelong summer day to spend. (p. l92)4 Innisfree, Lough Gill while the trout belongs" to the world of the lyric, to the experience of love, a It was a time of passionate imagination, congenial nature and a reflective, if gray, but not so passionate as that of the old integrity. age now "tied" to him by the world. Re- ENDNOTES In the complex poem "The Tower," luctantly, he would give way to younger, the aging poet inventories his diminish- stronger men. 1. Quotations from the poems are taken from ing vigor and regrets that he must leave The Collected Poems of W B. Yeats (New York: But such men were hard to find: he Macmillan, 1961). Page numbers given by the Ireland to "young upstanding men" had been one himself, he argues in the quotes are from this edition. while he retreats to a reclusive study of poem, before the "sedentary trade" took 2. In his play Deidre, Yeats has his heroine the dignified abstractions suitable for a over his life. Looking back on it all compare the King's deception with "Hackles on proper old poet. The young men to brought forth the famous poem "Why the hook." Interesting also to the angling entomol- whom he resigns his power are those: ogist is the mayfly paternity (according to one ver- Should Not Old Men Be Mad?" In it he sion of the myth) of Cuchulain of the Red Branch began: That climb the streams until legends, greatest of all the Irish heroes. 3. The ideal condition of nature for men is the the fountains leap, and at dawn Why should not old men be mad? one ideal for trout. Drop their cast at the side Some have known a likely lad 4. Ben Bulben is that great mountain-mesa in of dripping stone; . . . That had a sound fly-fisher's wrist the north of County Sligo, close to the Yeats an- I leave both faith and pride Turn to a drunken journalist; cestral home and in whose shadow he lies buried To young upstanding men A girl that knew all Dante once at Drumcliff Church. Climbing the mountain side, Live to bear children to a dunce; (p. 333) 5. Other poems to look at are "The Stolen That under bursting dawn Child," "The Ballad of Father O'Hart," "The Fish," They may drop a fly; (pp. 196-97) He recalls everything that caused him "The Blessed," "The Wild Old Wicked Man," and grief: his own Maud Gonne- for him a "The Long-Legged Fly." Many more poems, Earlier in the poem, anxious to es- though not presenting the fisher directly, deal with modern Helen of Troy, the success of cape the bondage of age, he cites his the world of stream and lake, of fish and water- bad men, failure for the good, naivete of boyhood again: bird, where the fisherman is implicit, native, and the young, Ireland's resistance to her welcome.

12 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER Books about Fly Rods, Fly Rod Makers, and Fly Rod Lovers

by David R. Klausrneyer

N RECENT YEARS there's been an few other makers are touted as being critic" for the true historian. It's like the increase in the number of anglers "must haves" if any collection is to ever difference between a scholar of the his- Iwho study the historic aspects of our be complete. And the same holds true tory of the theater and a theater critic. sport and collect older rods, reels, and for reels, with examples by Walker, Both have their contributions to make, related paraphernalia. Unfortunately for Zwarg, and Vom Hofe heading the list yet the reader must always keep in mind the person whose enthusiasm doesn't of those that will be found in any re- that the former is describing objective match his or her pocketbook, this grow- spectable collection. Yes, the work of all facts, while the latter is attempting to ing interest has also been accompanied these craftsmen is quite fine, but that's give an educated opinion, but an opin- by escalating prices for these items. To- not the point. The problem is that many ion nonetheless. The tackle critic just day, fewer and fewer fly fishers can now of these items, and a whole lot more, are can't run down to the local fly shop and own their own little piece of angling his- being declared worthy of serious con- wag a scarce bamboo rod or spin the torv. Yet still thev dream. sideration, or not, based on very little spool on a reel made by a company long These anglers pore over the collec- firsthand experience with these pieces of out of existence, but the theater critic tor's catalogs.". visit the shows. and at- tackle and with very little authoritative can go to the theater and judge for him- tend the auctions. With eyes as big as literature on these subjects. Perhaps one self. salmon reels, they absorb everything of the most accurate statements that can that lies before them: flies, rods, reels, be made about the whole tackle collect- books, art, and all manner of things that ing craze is that good, sound informa- Until now, the most comprehensive have given our sport its life and zest. tion is as scarce as the tackle itself. Yet, sources of information on the history of These objects become a part of their the faithful to the religion subscribe to the fly rod have been Martin Keane's lives, like the icons of some new reli- certain unshakable truths that some Classic Rods and Rodmakers and Ernest gion. It's all so wonderful, so desirable. pieces of tackle are obviously better Schwiebert's Trout.' Yet even with these Yet, while the interest in studying than others, even if they've never been landmark volumes, which remain essen- and collecting older tackle has in- ~ersonallvexamined. tial reading for anyone interested in the In general, more has been written history of our sport, one must still be creased. the literature on the subiectI- hasn't kept pace. Indeed, it's fair to say about flies and reels than rods, and even careful to separate fact from opinion less about fly-fishing books and art. And and make every effort to form his own that some flv-fishingu tackle and memo- rabilia collectors are making major pur- further, I know of no book appraising ideas about what makes a "great" fly chases based on very little information. and discussing the merits of various rod. But now the literature on fly tackle I know rods and reels best, so I'll con- rods and reels that has ever been written is beginning to mushroom and I am fine my coments to these items. by an actual rod- or reelmaker. This is pleased to say that it is taking a more unfortunate, because those who split objective turn. the culms of cane and stand at the lathes Dick Spurr and his company Centen- do see a bit of folly in some of the dis- nial Publications, of Grand Junction, Many times an angler will say how he cussions taking place about fly tackle Colorado, have begun to publish a series longs to own, let's say, a fly rod made by (but that's a whole different topic, of books that will be of benefit to collec- Everett Garrison, but, curiously, when which will have to be saved for another tors and students of angling for years. asked if he has ever actually seen an ex- time). Not only do they add to the available in- ample of Mr. Garrison's work, the an- In all fairness, let me make clear that formation on tackle, but Spurr is mak- swer is almost always "no," which is un- I am not referring to those authors ing every attempt to let angling crafts- derstandable since very few of these whose only object is to attempt an accu- men speak for themselves as authors. hand-split and hand-planed rods were rate historical record of various tackle Several books are already available and ever produced. So why the strong desire manufacturers or to catalog the output more are planned for the future. for something that has never been seen, of those makers: they generally do an Centennial Publications's first effort much less ever cast? excellent job. The difficulty lies where in the field of tackle history is Colorado Rods by Payne, Gillum, Young, and a the angling public mistakes the "tackle Classic Cane: A History of the Colorado Bamboo Rod Makers (1991) by Dick were small factories cavable of vroduc- each is illustrated and described by a Spurr and bamboo rod restorer Michael ing many hundreds of rods a year. In- craftsman who really understands their

Sinclair. This book covers the rodmak- deed, one is amazed at the overall highL. use. ing histories of the well-known Good- quality of their products given their Perhaps the only shortcoming with win Granger, Phillipson, and Wright & mass production methods. Dickerson is the section entitled "Com- McGill companies, as well as smaller Centennial Publications is also pro- paring Dickersons with Other Makers." makers, such as the Arend Rod Compay, ducing in-depth biographies of individ- These comparisons and contrasts are the DeBell Fishing Tackle Company, and ual rodmakers. Dickerson: The Man and based on a survey conducted by Dr. several others. Just thumbing through His Rods, the first in this series, is by Dr. Stein of a group of bamboo rod collec- this volume, one quickly discovers that Gerald S. Stein and James W. Schaaf and tors, dealers, and makers. In all fairness, the literature on the history of tackle really sets the standard by which all fu- the desire to compare and contrast manufacturers and their products is ture books on tackle craftsmen will be Dickerson's work with the output of taking a new turn. First, the illustra- judged. Tracing more than just his rod- other makers is understandable and my tions: numerous reproductions of cata- making career, the two authors present criticism is highly subjective. That being logs and magazine advertisements allow a complete biography of the individual said, however, it is disappointing to see the reader to discover the full extent of from his birth in Bellaire, Michigan, on words such as "sweet, elegant, outstand- rod models produced by these various April lo, 1892, until his death in that ing, impressive," and the usual list of su- Colorado companies, as well as their same town on June 16, 1981. This book, perlatives crop up in a serious study. original retail prices. Reproductions of like other Centennial publications, is This is especially confusing since the company documents and dozens of profusely illustrated, presenting unpub- work of Garrison, Young, and Summers shop photographs help to burst the lished photographs of Dickerson and his is not included in these comparisons be- popular myth that bamboo rod crafts- family taken throughout his life, as well cause, at least in part, they made rods of men mope around in their basement as photos of his shop, machinery, and the parabolic and semiparabolic variety; workshops, spectacles dangling on the rock. Have you ever seen an actual Lyle most of Dickerson's rods were made us- end of their noses, ever ready to be rude Dickerson catalog?" Several are revro- ing more progressive tapers. Well, by to customers and callers. These docu- duced in the book, as well as pages from any reckoning, the work of these other ments and photos clearly show that the Dickerson company ledger. And for rodmakers is "outstanding" and "im- many craftsmen, even the smaller one- the first time in print, a craftsman de- pressive." and two-man shops, were far more de- scribes the use of mechanical rodmak- Perhaps a more instructive and in- veloped and professional in their deal- ing machinery. Author James Schaaf clusive comparison could have been ings than is generally believed. And the now owns the tooling from the Dicker- made using something like the simple reader clearly sees that the larger of son shop and he describes the use of the deflection test. The deflection test is that these manufacturers - Granger, Phillip- milling and ferrule drawing machines. old standby where the handle of a rod is son, and Wright & McGill-weren't op- ThroughoutV the book one finds other secured by some safe method and a erating "shops" in the usual sense, but unique rodmaking tools discussed and standard-sized weight is hooked onto

14 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER Makers.

the tip of the rod and then gently re- Bamboo Rod and How to Build It by and so on, to devise methods that work leased to allow the rod to bend under Claude Kreider, with an appendix giving for them. the gravity of the weight. This could be fresh technical information by James W. Also in 1992, Dick Spurr wrote Clas- done against some board or wall Schaaf. First published in 1951, Kreider's sic Bamboo Rod Makers Past and Present. marked with grids, allowing some basis little book is a tribute to the subtle sim- In this book, Mr. Spurr briefly chroni- for objective comparison of different plicity of the bamboo rod and to the cles the rodmaking careers of forty-five rods. These would have easily lent surprising ease with which a rod may be craftsmen, some of whom are still alive themselves to illustration and thus elim- constructed. The first time I read an and very active, some who have passed inated subjective error and opinion. A original copy of The Bamboo Rod I away, and many with whom you will yet more thorough comparison could couldn't believe it was actually possible probably not be familiar. It should be have been made by employing the types to produce a finished rod with the sim- made perfectly clear that this is a fresh of theories and methods developed by ple tools described by Kreider. Mr. Krei- study and does not simply rehash what Greg Spolek in his two-part article enti- der was known to produce fine rods, has already been said by other authors. tled "Where the Action Is," which ap- which proves that it's not in the tools, Makers such as Harold Gillum and Jim peared in the pages of The American Fly but what's in the hands and the heart of Pavne., , who are auite well known within Fisher several years ago.' Perhaps one the craftsman that counts. the fly-fishing fraternity, are included in day someone will undertake a more sci- A word of warning to anyone inter- this volume, but Samuel Phillipe, entific comparison of the Paynes, ested in testing his own hands at con- Charles Murphy, Hiram Leonard, Fred Leonards, Dickersons, and others men- structing a bamboo rod: don't plan on Thomas, and a few others whose lives tioned in Dickerson, and lay to rest using Kreider as your sole guide. The have been chronicled in other places are much of the s~eculationand rumor that single most useful book available to the not. Many new names will be found: surround the work of these makers. prospective craftsman is still A Master's Dave Male, Jon Parker, Mike Spittler, by Daryll Whitehead, and some guy named That would indeed be a maior, %, ~round- Guide to Building a Bamboo Fly Rod breaking study and could be a book in Everett Garrison and Hoagy B. Car- David Klausmeyer, to name just a few. itself. This criticism, however, is as sub- michael.3 Read Kreider's The Bamboo In putting this compendium together, jective as the section comparisons of the Rod, however, for reassurance that you S~urrinterviewed the makers them- book and, actually, the book is strength- will not need the most complicated selves and let them tell their own stories. ened rather than weakened by their in- tooling in order to make a rod that will For the deceased rod craftsman. some- clusion. in all probability meet your expecta- one who personally knew the maker tions. provided the pertinent details. The en- Even with such a complete book as A tries follow a fairly uniform format: a In 1992 Centennial Publications be- Master's Guide, the first tests of the rod biographical sketch of each maker, a dis- gan distribution of three new books of craftsman is that of inventor and impro- cussion of how each individual came to interest to the collector and the student visor. Almost all of today's makers take a the world of fly fishing and rod crafting of tackle. The first is a reprint of The little from Garrison, a bit from Kreider, in particular, any pertinent connections

SPRING 1994 15 with other tackle companies, and a de- but such notions seemed rather odd to els. By this author's count, Montague scription of the types of rods made by many past manufacturers; much of this Rod & Reel offered sixty-six models of each fellow. Facing each entry is a full- type of record keeping may not have fly rods, with many models being made page photograph of each man (why are even occurred to the employees of the in several lengths and weights. This rodmakers alwavs men?). This book Payne Company. Anyway, most of the same breadth of production was carried bridges the gap between the rodmakers production records were unavailable for over into the astounding number of of the past and contemporary crafts- inclusion in this book and so none av- saltwater and other freshwater rods of- men. pear. (From what Mr. Spurr was able to fered by Montague. I suppose that for Centennial Publications reprinted uncover. however. the annual vroduc- the collector of fishing tackle (or the the E. F. Payne Rod Co. Corporate tion of the Payne shop may ha& far ex- American Museum of Fly Fishing), ob- Records, 1930-1968 two years ago. This is ceeded 700 rods per year, the rough fig- taining a complete set of Montague rods an altogether different sort of book. As ure many have accepted as that compa- would be a lot like collecting an entire Len Codella says in his introduction, ny's yearly output.) This is a book for set of 1952 baseball cards! this book has "little literary value." In the most serious students and is bold in Another book offered by Centennial fact, the only "literary" aspect of the that it will only enjoy limited appeal. Publications last year is Fishing Rods by book is the introduction. which is an But it falls right in line with the philoso- Divine by Michael Sinclair. This book excellent thumbnail sketch of the histo- phy of Centennial Publications, for, as covers the rodmaking career of Fred Di- ry of the E. F. Payne Rod Company. The Dick Spurr says, he "wants to preserve vine, who is one of the most maligned remainder and bulk of the book is total- these pieces of history before they're of all rodmakers. In the introduction, ly nonliterary: it is a reproduction of the lost." Sinclair writes. "Bamboo rod historians corporate records of that organization, and aficionados eagerly declare that complete with corporate officer signa- none of the rods made bv the Divine tures, document typos, corrections, and In 1993 Centennial Publications Company were the equal of those made stamps and signatures of notary publics. made several additional contributions by more popular companies. This book Yes, I use the word "organization" be- to fly and fishing tackle literature. To will suggest otherwise." It seems Sinclair cause the reader is confronted with the start, there is a reproduction of a vin- has a gift for understatement! fact that rodmaker and artisan Jim tage catalog of the Montague Rod & The fact of the matter is that al- Payne was serious about running a suc- Reel Company. Though Montague has though most "bamboo rod historians cessful company and didn't simply me- never been considered a ~roducerof and aficionados" do indeed take a dis- ander about his shop tinkering with high-grade tackle, this catalog repro- paraging view of the work of Fred Di- bamboo. Not included are vroduction duction is a L.gem. Students of tackle will vine, most rodmakers admire his inge- and sales records. Some collectors are see rod models such as Manitou, Rapi- nuity and the rods produced by his interested in who purchased rods, and dan, Fishkill, Flash, and so many of the company. Yes, Divine did make several in being able to correlate serial numbers others that we have all examined. What inexpensive grades of rods, but he was with dates of manufacture and sale, etc., is curious is the large number of mod- running a business and had to meet a payroll. The Divine Rod Company of facturing facilities at peak efficiency. At long last, rod historians and col- Utica, New York, also made many rods Once again, the reader will find numer- lectors have access to important infor- that were second to none. The Museum, ous photos and illustrations of Wes Jor- mation that will help them to form their for instance, has one example of a high- dan, rodmaking machinery, and catalog own opinions and discover more about grade eight-strip Divine rod. Making reproductions. the rich history of the fly-fishing tackle this sort of rod is an achievement in it- One funny story deals with how Jor- industry. - self. Take a sheet of paper and draw a dan felt about going to work for Orvis circle. Now divide that circle into eight in 1940. Jordan wrote, "Up until the equal pieces, much like an eight-piece time I went to Manchester, I had never ENDNOTES pie. Try to imagine, if you can, the ma- heard of Orvis and even after all of my 1. Martin J. Keane, Classic Rods and Rodmakers chinery that crafts the bamboo strips re- years in the rod business I had never (Stockbridge, Mass.: Classic Publishing Company, quired to manufacture such a rod. It seen an Orvis rod." And this from the 1976). Ernest Schwiebert, Trout (New York: E. P. should also be noted that Divine held man who played a key role in helping to Dutton, Inc., 1978). several patents for improvements in rod bring the company into the forefront of 2. Craig Spolek, "Where the Action Is," The American Fly Fisher, Summer 1987, vol. 13, no. 4. construction and rod-fitting design. the tackle industry! Part two of this insightful study appeared in The Centennial's Wes Jordan: Profile of a This is a particularly fascinating vol- American Fly Fisher, Winter 1988, vol. 14, no. 1. In Rodmaker (1993) is a collaborative effort ume because Spurr and Gloria Jordan this series, Mr. Spolek not only goes to great between Dick Spurr and Gloria Jordan, used as their basis a manuscript by Wes lengths to provide more precise definitions to wife of the late Wes Jordan. This book Jordan. That manuscript is none other such common fly rod terms as "rod action," but also provides a rather unique methodology for chronicles Jordan's career through the that Jordan's unpublished autobiogra- comparing and contrasting rods of different eras, Cross and Southbend tackle companies phy. In Wes Jordan: Profile of a Rod- materials, and makers. I know that some would be and his years with Orvis. Of particular maker, the reader will find numerous apprehensive in allowing their prized rods to be interest is how Jordan took Orvis's rod quotations from that unpublished book, put through Mr. Spolek's rigorous tests (the seri- production up to 5,000 bamboo rods making this new volume especially au- ous reader is encouraged to read this very interest- thoritative. ing study), but "Where the Action Is" did demon- per year (a feat that just may rank with strate the need to develop a more accurate set of the beveler developed by Hiram Centennial Publications will publish definitions and framework when comparing rods. Leonard which demonstrated that a several additional books this year that From the point of view of this rodmaker, Spolek's multistrip bamboo rod could even be will continue to fill out the libraries of work is the most important to come along in mass-~roducedl and the full storv of tackle historians, including a book con- years. how he developed Orvis's famed im- taining five Payne Rod Company cata- 3. Everett Garrison and Hoagy A. Carmichael, A Master4 Guide to Building a Bamboo Fly Rod pregnation process. Indeed, others may logs and a new book covering the histo- (Piscataway, N.J.: Winchester Press, 1977). There's have solved the financial problems fac- ries of the F. E. Thomas Rod Company, little doubt that today's bamboo rod cottage in- ing Orvis in the early 194os, but it is the various Edwards companies, and dustry stems from the publication of this book. generally agreed that Jordan was the Sam Carlson and his role with F. E. mastermind behind running the manu- Thomas and Edwards.

SPRING 1994 17 NOTES & COMMENT

"Englishmen in Colora- do: Fishing for Break- fast,"fiom the London Graphic, 1872. The American west was a popular sporting desti- nation for European adventurers following the Civil War.

Fly Casting Instruction Reaches the American Frontier by Warren Vander Hill and David Wheeler

OST PEOPLE TODAY learn to to print the July 1886 "Fly Casting" piece return of the public domain to its right- fly cast by attending clinics, in his frontier paper's July 29,1886, issue. ful owners-the people of the United M watching videos, or reading That "geographic leap" should be of States - and, of course, advocated the profusely illustrated magazine articles interest to anyone interested in our immediate opening of the Indian terri- or books on the subject. questions. But even more significantly, tory to homesteaders. For the authors - an American social it is also an example of cultural and lit- Thwarted attemDts to establish illegal" historian and a historical geographer erary mobility which was, of course, an colonies in the Territory and financial who are both avid fly fishers-that fact important aspect of the westward move- difficulties led to freauent shifts in the naturally turned our attention to two ment. Published in New York City, and place of the newspaper's publication. questions: how did people learn to cast, certainlv the best known of nineteenth- Less than two months after it was estab- especially in rather isolated areas of the century juvenile magazines, St. Nicholas lished in Wichita, publication shifted to country where we know that people did was dedicated to advancing a genteel, Gueda Springs, Kansas, and briefly, in fly fish? And what was the source of upper-class view of American life. The the spring of 1884, to the Oklahoma Ter- their instructional information? editor and readers of the War Chief ritory, then to Arkansas City, South The article which follows, written by hardly fit that description. Haven, and finally, in 1885, to Caldwell, the New York art critic, editor, and fly This newspaper began publication in Kansas, the headquarters of the Okla- fisherman Ripley Hitchcock, originally Wichita, Kansas, in 1883. It served as the homa colonv of settlers. appeared in St. Nicholas Magazine in official voice of a colony of settlers Captain Payne died unexpectedly on July 1886. In this essay, as well as one in (boomers) led by Captain David Lewis November 28, 1884, while waiting to be the August 1886 issue of St. Nicholas, Payne, a Civil War veteran, who sought served a glass of milk at the Hotel de Hitchcock talks about fly fishing with to settle the Indian lands of the Okla- Barnard in Wellington, Kansas. He was enthusiasm and reverence. homa Territory against the laws of the at that moment responding to a ques- These writings must have impressed federal "government. tion about the status of the Oklahoma the Oklahoma War Chief's editor, The editorial position of the newspa- Territory. Even though his followers car- Colonel Samuel Crocker, who decided per opposed monopolies, supported a ried on, "the scarcity of money, hard FLY CASTING: How To Acquire a Practical Knowledge of This Accomplishment by Ripley Hitchcock

IT IS NOT NECESSARY to wait for sum- mer nor for access to water, in order to practice casting. A house-top, a door-yard, or even the spa- cious floor of an old-fashioned barn offers just as good a chance for practice as a lake or river. Fly-casting is a very simple movement, and not a flourish. The elbow is kept down at the side, the fore-arm moving only a little, and most of the work is done by the wrist. Holding the rod by the grip, the part of the butt wound with silk or rat- tan to assist the grasp, one finds that the reel, which is just below the grip, aids in balancing the rod. The reel is underneath in casting. After hooking the fish, many anglers turn their rods so as to bring the reel to the upper side, thus letting the strain of the line come upon the rod itself instead of upon the rings. In holding the grip, the thumb should be ex- tended straight along the rod, as this gives an additional purchase. For the first cast, take the end of the line in the left hand, and bring the rod Captain David L. Payne, "the Oaklahoma upward and backward until the line is taut. As you release the line, the Boomer." Courtesy ofthe Kansas State spring of the rod carries the line, backward. This is the back cast. Then Historical Society comes an instant's pause, while the line straightens itself out behind, and then with a firm motion of the wrist, helped a little by the fore-arm, the rod is thrown forward, and the line flies out easily in front. Begin with a times, and legislative disappointment" line once or once-and-a-half as long as the rod, and lengthen it out by caused the Oklahoma War Chief to lan- guish and, on August 12, 1886, suspend degrees. The main points to be remembered are: to keep the elbow at the publication. Publication was not re- side, to train the wrist, to move the rod not too far forward or back, al- sumed, but the techniques of fly casting ways to wait until the line is straight behind on the back cast, and to described here are as interesting to us in make sure that in this the line falls no lower than your head, a process an age of tight loops, reach casts, and double hauls as they were to the Okla- which it will take time to accomplish. There is no more awkward fault homa boomers in 1886. And the article's than that of whipping a rod down to a level with the horizon. appearance in a newspaper like the War When the learner becomes accustomed to handling his rod, he must Chief provides unique evidence of the try to perfect himself in two matters of great importance- manner in which information about this accuracy and delicacy. Place a small piece of paper fifteen or twenty feet method of fishing reached the frontier. away, and aim at making the knot in the end of the line fall easily and quietly upon it. Your efforts will be aided if you will raise the point of Though Captain David L. Payne is the rod a trifle, just as the forward impulse of the line is spent, and the little more than a footnote in our histo- line itself is straightened in the air for an instant in front. This is a novel ry texts, his scheme to settle Oklahoma Territory ultimately succeeded. The Ok- kind of target-shooting, but its usefulness will be realized when the an- lahoma War Chief-the voice of the gler finds it necessary to drop his flies lightly just over the head of some boomers- may be of interest to few but wary trout. archivists, yet it served to foster a fly- fishing tradition on the western frontier, This excerpt originally appeared in St. Nicholas Magazine in July 1886. a tradition that time has not dimin- ished. -

SPRING 1994 l9 OFF THE SHELF

Frontispieces

OR THE BOOK LOVER (and most of our readers would eagerly claim to be one), F there is no finer joy than wandering through the stacks of our library, admiring the Museum's priceless book collection. By appointment, scholars, researchers. and the avid bookworm come here to page carefully, reverently, through the pages of books written or collected by such notables as Atherton, Bergman, Gordon, Haig-Brown, Hen- shall, Hewitt, Halford, and Skues. The covers of these books are themselves worthy of their own coffee table coverage, with their ex- quisite gold-leaf engravings highlighting this sadly lost book-art. We've selected for your reflection just

a samDleI, of the lovelvI ,frontis~iece material show- cased in one of our most valuable antique book col- lections from Theodore Gordon's ~er~onallibrarv (see Gallery, page 22). Though comprised of a rela- tively small number of books (many in his library were lost to fire), Gordon's collection represents some of the oldest and most diverse in terms of composition, subject, and cover art. EDITOR

20 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER SPRING 1994 GALLERY

T IS NOW NEARLY EIGHTY YEARS sinceTheodore of the dry fly, the technique of upstream presentation, and Gordon went "round the bend" as angling writers are the natural float, he had a profound affect on the Ameri- Iprone to say. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, can fly-fishing scene. Gordon adapted the English fly to in 1854 and died of tuberculosis in Bradley, New York, on' American conditions, with stiffer and sparser hackles, and May 1,1915. Gordon, of course, was one of the pioneers of from this the fly developed greater delicacy and buoyancy. modern-day fly fishing and is considered by many to be In the fall of 1976, the Museum acquired a remarkable the "father of the dry fly" in the United States. He was in- gift. William Naden of New York City generously present- troduced to the dry fly by F. M. Halford of England in ed the Museum with a collection of angling books that 1890, his first experience with floating imitations. were originally owned by Theodore Gordon. Though the Gordon was a prolific writer and a frequent contribu- Naden collection forms a major portion of Gordon's orig- tor to Forest & Stream and The Fishing Gazette. Much of inal library, it represents less than half of his total collec- his work is contained in John McDonald's The Complete tion; a 1913 fire in Liberty, New York, destroyed much of it. Fly Fisherman (1947). His rare dedication to the sport In addition, Gordon was in the habit of loaning books to came as a result of an illness that banished him to the friends who in many cases failed to return them. mountains and barred him from a conventional life. Other objects in the Museum's collections belonging to Often referred to as the "American Walton" and the Theodore Gordon are a hand-held fly-tying vise (a prolific "Sage of the Neversink," he lived a remarkable, reclusive tyer, he tied up to the time of his death); a photo of his life. He was an elegant backwoodsman-a man well- New York fishing license; a framed selection of his original versed in the finer things in life, well-read and intelligent, flies tied in the Catskill style he originated; and some pho- a latter-day Thoreau. He shunned the angling elite with tographic portraits of Gordon. their clubs and specially stocked waters-to him, they The Quill Gordon fly, his signature, perpetuates his were too easy to fish and no test of skill. As the champion memory. CRAIGTHOMAS

22 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER Photograph by Cook Neilsc Congratulations! The \lusei~m has rcaihcd m,~nymilc.;toncs, including last

'- I- ),ear's twe~lty-tiithanniversary. NO\\ ~LI- Congratulations dos art' in oitlci as the accreditation cre- dc'nti,~ls\vill hc presented on Febru;lry 25. This was done by the combined ef- Congratulations on your recent ac- Congratulations on your receiving fort, hard work, and love for the Ameri- creditation. It comes as no surprise to accreditation. You folks are an example can Museum of Fly Fishing and what it us that the Museum would be successful to us all. stands for in American history. in this effort. We have long been famil- James Bryant, Director I am so very proud to be a member iar with your exacting standards, the Pember Museum of Natural History of our museum and of its place in the professionalism of the staff, and your Granville. New York American way of life. I do not have dedication to quality. words with which to express to each of Thank you for sharing the news with Bravo! I'm thrilled. Best, from us all. you thanks for making the Museum us. Please pass our congratulations on Nick Lyons what it is today. What I feel is pride and to everyone who was a part of this ac- Lyons e+ Burford, Publishers love for each of you who make this- complishment. New York, New York our museum-grow each day. I know Philip M. Drumheller you love it as I do. Thank you all for President, The Lane Press A very big congratulations on a su- making this all possible. Burlington, Vermont perb job! The accreditation of the Mu- Jim Schaaf seum means a great deal to all-espe- Concord, California Sincere congratulations and thanks cially fly fisherpeople. to all of you on receiving accreditation Lewis M. Borden, II1 Congratulations on receiving your from the American Association of Mu- AMFF Trustee accreditation from the AAM. Please ac- seums. Your dedication and hard work Denver, Colorado cept my best wishes for a happy holiday has taken the Museum into the circle of season and a successful new year. highly respected organizations. You . . . It is a great accomplishment and Gene A. Schott, Director have effectively opened doors to the fu- we, as members, and as friends of the The Heritage Plantation of Sandwich ture and ensured the viability of the Museum, are very proud of what it has Sandwich, Massachusetts Museum. Your work, your accomplish- achieved. We are happy to be associated ment, is historic. with such a terrific organization. Con- Congratulations to you all on achiev- Bruce Begin gratulations to you all. ing your accreditation credentials - a Development Director Dave and Judi Shirley rewarding effort. Proctor Academy Stratham, New Hampshire Jim Baker Andover, New Hampshire Madison, New Jersey Kudos to each of you for your won- On behalf of the Board of Directors derful accomplishment. You did it the Congratulations on the AAM accred- of the Kara Foundation, I am proud to old-fashioned way. You earned it. itation! The Museum and everyone congratulate you and the members of Ivan Schloff; M.D. there deserves such recognition. I'm your staff on attaining accreditation. We Arthur Kaemer, M.D. glad that I have been, at least in some look forward to continuing our support AMFF Trustees small way, a part of it. of your programs, and, once again, con- St. Paul, Minnesota Douglas McCombs gratulations on a job well done. [Ivan and Art's kind letter was received Doctoral candidate and Patrick S. DeMoon only a short while before Ivan's death in former AMFF Intern/Registrar President, The Kara Foundation January. -EDITOR] Kent State University, Ohio Bloomingdale, Illinois

This is truly the finest thing that's Please allow me to add mv, congratu-u Congratulations on the accreditation happened to the Museum since its in- lations to the many which you have un- of the American Museum of Fly Fishing. ception. I know how hard all of you doubtedly already received upon the We have arrived and have acquired cre- have worked to reach this goal; you all gaining of accreditation. This could dentials that will play a key role in the well deserve the congratulations and only have been accomplished through future growth of the Museum. I for one best wishes that will be forthcoming as a the tireless efforts on the part of the en- am proud to have been able to make a result of this splendid achievement, in- tire staff. The fly-fishing fraternity owe contribution to the Museum and hope cluding my own. each and every one of you a sincere vote that there will be an opportunity to Robert W Johnson of thanks. serve in the future. AMFF Trustee Emeritus George Angstadt Donn H. Byrne, Sr. New Canaan, Connecticut Philadelphia, Pennsylvania AMFF Trustee Village of Golf; Florida Congratulations! Thank you for your As a veteran of the museum business hard work and vision on this important (researcher, director, trustee), I can ap- Congratulations . . . from what we event! preciate what you and your staff have have seen and heard, your accreditation Frank Tardo accomplished in gaining accreditation is well deserved. Former AMFF Boston Dinner by the AAM. Congratulations! Carol Ann and Jim Spendifl Committee Chairman Bill Fenton Lewistown, Pennsylvania Medford, Massachusetts Slingerlands New York

SPRING 1994 23 I I Museum Gift Shop

Vest Patch. Museumlogo, .. hunter green with silverlgrey. $5 UpIDowner Hat...... $16.50 With Durham Ranger fly. Specify bright blue or tan supplex. Baseball-style Hat...... $14 Durham Ranger fly. Corduroy avail- able in burgundy or teal. Supplex available in bright blue, teal, or tan.

A Treasury of Reels: The Fishing Reel Collection of The American Museum of Fly Fishing by Jim Brown, photographs by Bob O'Shaughnessy. Deluxe edition is handbound and boxed, I with a signed and numbered print by John Swan. $450 each. T-shirts. Museum logo, specify Available in paperback for $29.95. hunter green with white or heather gray with hunter green ...... $12

Ceramic Mug with Museum logo...... 56 Coasterlpaperweight. Vermont marble with Museum logo .....$10

Note Cards. Photographs ofper- sonality tackle includes Hemingway, ~rosbi,Eisenhower, Webster, Homer, and Samuel Morse. 12 cards per box, Pin. Museum logo, hunter green 2 of each image with envelopes 25th Anniversary Poster. with silver...... $5 ...... 512.95 Photograph by Terry Heffernan (20" X 30")...... $19.95 Please add $5 for postage and handling.

Please make checks payable to AMFF and send to PO. Box 42, Manchester, VT 05254 Telephone orders: 802-362-3300, "Lost Pool" LIMITEDEDITION PRINTS "Battenkill Afternoon" by John Swan (15 "" x 26 by Peter Corbin (30" x 22") edition of 400 Printed on acid-free paper, ample borders. 25th Anniversary Edition of 200 $95 each Each signed and numbered. Postage and $175 each handling included.

"World of the Salmon" "Wind Clouds" by Ogden Pleissner, (26" x 22") "Anglers All: Humanity in Midstream" "Evening Mist" "Casting by Winslow Homer by Chet Reneson (27" x 21 ") (18" x 24") EXHIBITIONPOSTERS Printed on high-quality glossy stock with ample borders. Each poster is $15.

"Time On the Water" by John Swan (26" x 20") "An Artist's Creel" "Water, Sky, & Time" by Peter Corbin (26" x 23") by Adriano Manocchia (25" x 22")

Please make checks payable to AMFF and send to PO. Box 42, Manchester, VT 05254. Telephone orders: 802-362-3300.

SPRING 1994 25 The American Museum of Fly Fishing Box 42, Manchester,Vermont 05254 Tel: 802-362-3300 JOIN! Membership Dues (per annum*) by Donald S. Johnson begin in mid-1994 when the original pe- Associate* $25 Executive Director riod photographs by famous contempo- Sustaining* $50 rary photographers -which have been Benefactor $100 Conservation Grant Awarded slowly deteriorating over the course of a Patron* $250 century through exposure to ultraviolet One of the most welcome bits of light-will be removed, photographi- Sponsor* $500 news in an alreadv memorable and Corporate* $1,000 cally reproduced by a professional con- highly successful year arrived in a No- Life $1,500 tractor, and then stored in the Muse- vember letter from the Vermont Muse- um's environmentally controlled collec- Membership dues include the cost of a um and Gallery Alliance (VMGA) that tions management area where they can subscription ($20) to The American Fly informed us we had been awarded a be regularly monitored by our curator. Fisher. Please send your application to $1,400 VMGA Conservation Treatment The panel originals will be replaced by the membership secretary and include Grant. the reproductions. your mailing address. The Museum is a The conservation (preservation and1 Future plans call for the Marbury member of the American Association or restoration) of certain objects in the panels to undergo further conservation of Museums, the American Association Museum's collections is one of our pri- treatment as well. Treatment of other of State and Local Historv. the New ,, mary objectives. Our highest priority at Museum objects, identified as priorities England Association of Museums, the this time is the treatment of the Mary in the Museum's Institute of Museum Vermont Museum and Gallery Alliance, Orvis Marbury 1893 Columbian Exposi- Services Conservation Survey of 1989, and the International Association of tion panels that are on view in the Mu- will continue on a regular basis Sports Museums and Halls of Fame. We seum's Leigh & Romi Perkins Audio1 throughout the coming years. are a nationally accredited, nonprofit, Video Gallerv. This uniaue collection of educational institution chartered under period flies' and rareL angling pho- Museum Hosts Paper the laws of the state of Vermont. tographs mounted in beautiful hard- wood panels was originally designed Sculptor SUPPORT! and constructed for Chicago's Colum- He has been described as "the world's As an independent, nonprofit institu- bian Exposition of 1893 by Mary Orvis leading three-dimensional paper sculp- tion, the American Museum of Fly Marbury, an innovative fly designer and tor." And a glance at his creations con- Fishing relies on the generosity of pub- author, who was the daughter of Charles firms the validity of that claim as it ap- lic-spirited individuals for substantial F. Orvis, founder of the Orvis Company plies to Leo Monahan, an artist based in support. We ask that you give our mu- of Manchester, Vermont. It is, perhaps, Burbank, California. In one of his rare seum serious consideration when plan- the most popular exhibit in the Muse- East Coast appearances, his work was ning for gifts and bequests. um and one of the most historically exhibited at the Museum during the valuable pieces in our collection. winter, a particularly appropriate venue VISIT! Treatment of the Marbury panels will for Monahan's art since the sculptures 1 Summer hours (May through October Mareot Paee 31) are lo to 4. Winter hours (Novem- ber 1through April 30) are weekdays lo to 4. We are closed on major holidays. BACK ISSUES! Available at $4 per copy: Volume 6, Numbers 1,2,3,4 Volume 7, Numbers 2,3 Volume 8, Number 3 Volume 9, Numbers 1,2,3 Volume lo, Number 2 Volume 11, Numbers 1,2,3,4 Volume 12, Number 3 The Mary Orvis Marbury Volume 13, Number 3 panels will undergo restoration Volume 15, Number 2 thanks to a recent grant from Volume 16, Numbers 1,2,3 VMGA. Volume 17, Numbers i,2,3 Volume 18, Numbers 1,2,4 Volume 19, Numbers 1,2,3,4 Volume 20, Number 1

26 THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER are all revresentations of fishing" flies. have achieved something that almost The festivities begin" at 6:oo P.M.. Fri- His twenty-six original pieces remained everyone in VMGA aspires to." day, June 3, with our traditional gala on exhibit until April 1. The award was officially announced opening reception of the Museum's 1994 Although the images exhibited were at VMGA's 1993 annual meeting at the exhibition of featured artists: two all fly representations, they are only part Bennington Museum in nearby Ben- unique, nationally known talents, of Monahan's work, much of which is nington, Vermont. We look forward to Luther Hall and David Carroll. Addi- based on American Indian themes. "The displaying the award in our reception tionally, our guests can look forward to inspiration," according to Monahan, area in the near future. viewing several new exhibits installed by "comes from my childhood in the Black our staff. Hills of South Dakota. Much of mv fine A Banner Year for AMFF On the morning of Saturday the 4th, art is based on my memories of the In- The Museum's 25th anniversary year, come explore the "World of the Victori- dian obiects I was surrounded with." 1993, may have been the most memo- an Angler" with us at beautiful Equinox Monahan's interest in paper flies rises rable and successful year in the Muse- Pond, which is nestled in the shadow of from the fact that he is an avid flv fisher um's quarter century of continuous op- the famous Mount Equinox just "up the and has a keen interest in the outdoors. eration. Herewith some of the year's road" from the Museum. Participants Paper sculpture is "an unusual medium highlights: can look forward to casting period rods because it's three-dimensional. First, I + Accreditation: In October the Mu- and lines, enjoying lunch at the Equinox do things to the paper to make it look seum was officially awarded accredita- pavilion located next to the pond, and, like surfaces such as leather, wood, or tion, "the highest honor a museum can hopefully, catching one of the large metal hooks, so it fools the eye. I make receive," from the American Association rainbows that inhabit its waters. things out of paper that look like any- of Museums following a rigorous two- Guests can sample the extraordinary thing but paper. The paper is just the year process. ambiance of the historic Equinox Hotel medium I use to illustrate the idea." 9 Finances: Income for the vear while attending the Museum's tradition- After leaving South Dakota for the topped $450,000, a record. All line items al Annual Dinner Party and Auction on U.S. Navy, Monahan won a Walt Disney in the Museum's income budget, from Saturday evening. Lyman Foss, the Mu- Studio Art Scholarship. After attending membership to donations, showed sig- seum's own "Green Mountain Original," the Chouinard School in Los Angeles, nificant improvement over fiscal year will be auctioning" off a fabulous arrav he then entered the field of graphic arts 1992. of sporting items with all proceeds ben- and was soon running his own advertis- 9 Gala Events: Both the Annual Fes- efiting the Museum. ing agency. In 1985 he left advertising to tival Weekend in June and the 25th An- Between 1o:oo A.M. and 4:oo P.M. on devote himself full time to paper sculp- niversary Gala Dinner in August were Sunday the 5th, guests can observe and ture. Among his clients he lists Coca overwhelmingly successful. The Muse- take part in demonstrations of rod Cola, IBM, General Motors, AT&T, the um's Annual Meeting in August was at- building, fly tying, decoy carving, canoe three major television networks, Time- tended by a record thirty-four trustees building, and much more at our Muse- Life, Disney Studios, and some thirty- from every region of the nation. um open house. Refreshments will also five other maior corvorations and insti- be available. 9 Exhibitions: "AnglersV All." the Mu- tutions. Additionally, his works hang in seum's national traveling exhibition, All in all, it should be a memorable, the Smithsonian Institution and in "eal- was hosted bv three Museums for the fun-filled weekend for members and the leries in Germany and Japan. second consecutive year. In all, the Mu- public alike. Additional information The Museum is vroud to vresent the seum developed or participated in sev- will be sent to all our members in the work of some of the world's best-known enteen traveling exhibits. The Museum's near future. See you in June! sporting artists, but this is the most un- in-house exhibition of watercolors by usual exhibit we've yet mounted. We are Chet Reneson was a major success. very pleased to have offered these su- + Publications: The Museum's publi- perb works for public viewing. cations continue to impress. The Muse- um published a special 25th anniversary VMGA Award limited edition print by internationally known artist Peter Corbin, several exhi- Hard on the heels of earning accred- bition posters, a unique "Fish Models: itation from the American Association An Exhibition" catalogue, and four ex- of Museums, came the altogether de- citing 25th anniversary issues of its lightful news that the Museum was be- quarterly journal, The American Fly ing presented with the first Vermont Fisher. Museum and Gallery Alliance (VMGA) A full annual report of the Museum's President's Prerogative Award. activities will appear in the next issue of The President's Prerogative Award the journal. was designed to acknowledge superior Dr. Ivan Schloff, achievement by one of VMGA's mem- Fifth Museum Festival Trustee and Friend ber institutions or individuals. William Dr. Ivan Schloff, a dear friend and a Jenney, VMGA's current president, de- Weekend- June 3,4,5 popular and hard-working trustee of cided that the 1993 award should be pre- Mark your calendars and plan to the Museum, passed away on January sented "to an organization that has just spend an entertaining weekend with us 17, 1994, in St. Paul, Minnesota. Ivan entered the very select ranks of Ver- here in Manchester, Vermont, on June 3, had served the Museum well for over a mont's AAM accredited museums - the 4, 5, 1994, as the Museum hosts its Fifth decade and was a key member of the American Museum of Fly Fishing. They Annual Museum Festival Weekend. Museum's Development Committee.

SPRING 1994 27 Dr. Schloff received his B.A from the fished all over the world. But communi- ceived a Lifetime Contribution Award. University of Minnesota and his M.D. ty service was a cornerstone of Dr. Ivan was, first and foremost, a com- from the Medical School of the Univer- Schloff's life. He served on numerous passionate individual with a great sense sity of Bologna, Italy. He was a past committees and boards both in the of understanding and fairness. The Mu- chief of orthopedic surgery at the Unit- MinneapolisiSt. Paul area and around seum and all that it represents was a ed Hospital of St. Paul, Minnesota, past the country. In addition to his service large part of his life and he played a cru- chief of surgery, Children's Hospital, St. on our Museum board, he served on the cial role in the Museum's growth and Paul, and past instructor in orthopedic boards of Trout Unlimited and the Lew success. He will be greatly missed by all surgery, St. Catherine's College, St. Paul. Jewett Chapter of the Federation of Fly who had the pleasure and honor of His passion was fly fishing and he Fishermen from which he recently re- knowing and working with him.

CONTRIBUTORS

Warren D. Miller is a writer and busi- ness researcher who lives in Tulsa, Ok- lahoma. Miller resolved two days after Arnold Gingrich's death in ~uly1~~6 Warren Vander Hill and David Wheeler that he would write the gentleman's bi- are, respectively, an American historian ography "if no one beat me to it." He currently specializing in the history of learned late in 1988 that no one had, so the American wilderness and a geogra- he is. He has read all of Gingrich's pher whose main interest is the western books, most of his Esquire writing, and range cattle industry. However, both much of the material in the Gingrich spend most of their time these days in papers. He has visited the neighbor- academic administration at Ball State hood where Gingrich grew up, talked to University in Muncie, Indiana, Vander his boyhood chums, quizzed some of Hill as provost and vice president for his fishing companions, and inter- academic affairs and Wheeler as dean of viewed many of his former Esquire col- the graduate school. leagues. Progress on the biography Vander Hill's fly-fishing interests be- comes in suurts because earnings" from gan as a teenager during summer vaca- doing econometric modeling, competi- tions on Vermont's Battenkill and, in tive intelligence profiles, and valuations recent years, have taken him to Michi- of closely held businesses as a Certified gan, Utah, Colorado, and Montana. Public Accountant fund his work on Wheeler, a Michigan native, is partial to America's Esquire. the streams and lakes of his home state David R. Klausmeyer holds degrees in with trips to Canada included for good English (B.A.) and political science measure. (MA.) from Oklahoma State University. Formerly a management development specialist at the University of Tennes- see, Dave now makes fine cane rods on Gordon M. Wickstrom is a professor of a full-time basis and is actively involved drama, emeritus, at Franklin and Mar- in Trout Unlimited. He regularly speaks shall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. to T.U. and F.F.F. chapters and appears He has retired to his native Boulder, at fly shops throughout the eastern Colorado, where he fishes, writes, gar- United States to talk about cane rod dens, politics on behalf of trout, worries construction. Dave, wife Barbara, and about art, and enjoys his hometown. He their two children live in Steuben, is a sometime contributor to Gray's Maine. Sporting Journal. catifie5 that ?he American Museum

has demuns~dtedaprofesswdlevcl ofoperdtion in amwbwLdt the stdkhafe%c&nce prescribed by the,AmenimAsso~n of Mmsems, adis hereby awarhd this urtlf;*zt* of m~e;ditm;twn. THEAMERICAN MUSEUM OP FLY FISHING, a nationally accredited, nonprofit, educa- tional 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 Muse- um's traveling exhibits program has made it possible for educational exhibits to be viewed across the United States and abroad. The Museum also provides in-house ex- hibits, related interpretive programming, and research services for members, visiting scholars, 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.