Artifact

MY CATSKILL EDUCATION

Flyfishing journal
When I was in grammar school, my grandfather often took me fishing on Long Island Sound. Our success was measured in pounds of flounder for the freezer. Years later, Gramp was amused by my enthusiasm for flyfishing and puzzled by my small flies. “That’s what the fish eat?” he asked. “And it’s illegal to use worms?” I explained that fly-caught fish could be released without harm. “So you drive all that way to catch a few trout,” he mused, “but you let them all go? Well,” he added with a nod and a smile, “I guess that must be fun.”
Words and Captions: Jack Gagnon. Photos: Copi Vojta

Age swept past me, but I caught up.
—Jim Harrison, “Barking.”

 

My first two seasons with a fly rod ended when spring flows dropped and the stocked trout were gone. I didn’t really know much about flyfishing. But in the fall of 1975, when I was 25, I started an entry-level procurement job for a Connecticut manufacturer. As it turned out, my purchasing mentor, Art, was a serious flyfisherman.

Art, in his late 40s, had a seasonal campsite on the Beaverkill River. Steve, who shared the camp, worked one floor up from us in accounting. Seven years earlier, Steve and I graduated from the same high school, so it was easy to get reacquainted. Art gave me much-needed casting lessons. Over the winter, he and Steve got me tying my own flies, and I was invited to share their camp. 

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