Catskill Rivers

Catskill Rivers is the story of the “birthplace of the American fly fishing.” Readers will discover this birthplace in such hallowed trout streams as the Beaverkill, the Willowemoc, the Neversink, the Delaware, the Esopus, and the Schoharie. While originally published in 1983, Catskill Rivers remains the definitive study of these fabled waters and the remarkable people who created the American fly-fishing tradition. Painstakingly researched and imaginatively told, readers will also get an unforgettable survey of the early river industries, including rafting, sawmills, tanneries, and wood-acid factories, as well as at the early days on these classic trout waters, where George LaBranche, in Sparse Gray Hackle’s words, “adapted the dry fly to fast water and started an angling revolution.” Along with numerous historical glimpses into the many sociological forces surrounding the Catskill Rivers, readers will see many early, famous flyfishers take to these waters, including “Uncle Thad” Norris, Seth Green, Theodore Gordon, Herman Christian, Roy Steenrod, Sparse Gray Hackle, and many more. This historically accurate and beautifully written glance back into the early days of the Catskill Rivers will have both fishermen and nonfishermen wanting even more. Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for fishermen. Our books for anglers include titles that focus on fly fishing, bait fishing, fly-casting, spin casting, deep sea fishing, and surf fishing. Our books offer both practical advice on tackle, techniques, knots, and more, as well as lyrical prose on fishing for bass, trout, salmon, crappie, baitfish, catfish, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

The Beaverkill, Willowemoc, Neversink, Esopus, Schoharie, and Delaware—the rivers of angling pioneers Thaddeus Norris, Robert Barnwell Roosevelt, Theodore Gordon, and many others—are celebrated in this gorgeous book of photographs and text. In three major sections, Land of Little Rivers presents historical and physical profiles of the rivers; classic rods, reels, and flies; and engaging stories of the people, events, and developments that constitute the Catskill fly-fishing tradition. Complementing its photographic beauty, Land of Little Rivers is a book of substance, filled with fascinating stories, anecdotes, and nuggety captions. Land of Little Rivers is the product of author Francis’s twenty-five years of research and writing about Catskill fly fishing, and of photographer Ferorelli’s more than thirteen thousand images, from which has been selected the most evocative portfolio of photos ever made of these historic rivers. Together they have produced an exquisite, museum-quality work, one that captures magnificently the beauty and passion so central to the sport Izaak Walton called “the gentle art.”

Ed Van Put begins this important book with the history of native brook trout and offers little-known details about their sizes, range, and demise from over-fishing, the growth of streamside industries, and the introduction of competitive species. Sweeping in its scope, Trout Fishing in the Catskills tells a thorough tale of the often tumultuous history of fishing in the Catskills. With a scope of over a century, Van Put tells of the Catskill’s frontier fishing beginnings and tracks the rise, fall, and eventual revival of the fisheries. Throughout, this is a history of people and methods as well as rivers, and there are profiles of Theodore Gordon, Art Flick, Harry and Elsie Darbee, Sparse Grey Hackle, and more. No serious trout fisherman, in any part of the country, will want to miss this pioneering portrait of a seminal region in American angling history. Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for fishermen. Our books for anglers include titles that focus on fly fishing, bait fishing, fly-casting, spin casting, deep sea fishing, and surf fishing. Our books offer both practical advice on tackle, techniques, knots, and more, as well as lyrical prose on fishing for bass, trout, salmon, crappie, baitfish, catfish, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

This complete social and environmental history of America's first famous trout stream, the Beaverkill, fully revises and updates an out-of-print classic. Dan Rather wrote, "This gem of a book is an enlightening and entertaining masterpiece of Americana." The story of "America's stream" from the eighteenth century to the present Portraits of the legendary fly fishers, fly tiers, and writers who lived by the river Contains completely new sections on favorite flies and on fishing tips from the locals

The Catskills region of the eastern United States, just two hours northeast of New York City, was the birthplace of a uniquely American style of fly that continues to grace the bins of fly shops around the world. Mike Valla explores the essence of Catskill flies, delving into the history of the region's rivers, fly fishers, and fly tiers and blending their colorful histories with precise step-by-step tying methods. He compares the styles of all of the Catskill school of fly tiers and shares color photos of never-before-seen flies from the vaults of the Catskill Fly Fishing Museum as well as detailed tying steps for 11 Catskill-style fly patterns. This book is essential for those not only interested in learning to tie the Catskill-style flies, but also those interested in the history of American fly fishing.

The Catskills (“Cat Creek” in Dutch), America’s original frontier, northwest of New York City, with its seven hundred thousand acres of forest land preserve and its five counties—Delaware, Greene, Sullivan, Ulster, Schoharie; America’s first great vacationland; the subject of the nineteenth-century Hudson River School paintings that captured the almost godlike majesty of the mountains and landscapes, the skies, waterfalls, pastures, cliffs . . . refuge and home to poets and gangsters, tycoons and politicians, preachers and outlaws, musicians and spiritualists, outcasts and rebels . . . Stephen Silverman and Raphael Silver tell of the turning points that made the Catskills so vital to the development of America: Henry Hudson’s first spotting the distant blue mountains in 1609; the New York State constitutional convention, resulting in New York’s own Declaration of Independence from Great Britain and its own constitution, causing the ire of the invading British army . . . the Catskills as a popular attraction in the 1800s, with the construction of the Catskill Mountain House and its rugged imitators that offered WASP guests “one-hundred percent restricted” accommodations (“Hebrews will knock vainly for admission”), a policy that remained until the Catskills became the curative for tubercular patients, sending real-estate prices plummeting and the WASP enclave on to richer pastures . . . Here are the gangsters (Jack “Legs” Diamond and Dutch Schultz, among them) who sought refuge in the Catskill Mountains, and the resorts that after World War II catered to upwardly mobile Jewish families, giving rise to hundreds of hotels inspired by Grossinger’s, the original “Disneyland with knishes”—the Concord, Brown’s Hotel, Kutsher’s Hotel, and others—in what became known as the Borscht Belt and Sour Cream Alps, with their headliners from movies and radio (Phil Silvers, Eddie Cantor, Milton Berle, et al.), and others who learned their trade there, among them Moss Hart (who got his start organizing summer theatricals), Sid Caesar, Lenny Bruce, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Joan Rivers. Here is a nineteenth-century America turning away from England for its literary and artistic inspiration, finding it instead in Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” and his childhood recollections (set in the Catskills) . . . in James Fenimore Cooper’s adventure-romances, which provided a pastoral history, describing the shift from a colonial to a nationalist mentality . . . and in the canvases of Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederick Church, and others that caught the grandeur of the wilderness and that gave texture, color, and form to Irving’s and Cooper’s imaginings. Here are the entrepreneurs and financiers who saw the Catskills as a way to strike it rich, plundering the resources that had been likened to “creation,” the Catskills’ tanneries that supplied the boots and saddles for Union troops in the Civil War . . . and the bluestone quarries whose excavated rock became the curbs and streets of the fast-growing Eastern Seaboard. Here are the Catskills brought fully to life in all of their intensity, beauty, vastness, and lunacy.

Color photos of never-before-seen flies from the vaults of the Catskill Fly Fishing Museum Detailed tying steps for 11 patterns First book that compares the styles of all of the Catskill school of fly tiers The Catskills region of the eastern United States, just two hours northeast of New York City, was the birthplace for a uniquely American style of fly that continues to grace the bins of fly shops around the world. Mike Valla explores the essence of Catskill flies, delving into the history of the region's rivers, fly fishers, and fly tiers and blending their colorful histories with precise step-by-step tying methods. This book is essential for those not only interested in learning to tie the Catskill-style flies, but also those interested in the history of American fly fishing.