Fishing for History,

Trout and Wine in New York State

by Kathi Harris

In early June, Gary and I took a two-week fishing and sightseeing road trip through New York State. The main impetus for our trip was to fish the fabled rivers in the region that has been called the ‘birthplace of American flyfishing’. To that end, we had targeted the Beaverkill and the Delaware Rivers in the Catskills and the Ausable River in the Adirondacks. Ultimately, we were able to add the Chateaugay and Salmon Rivers, also in the Adirondacks, to our list.

According to “Fifty Places to Fly Fish Before You

Die” by Chris Santella, Hiram Leonard began building rods near the Upper Delaware in the late 1880’s. Per Wikipedia, around 1890, Theodore Gordon of Pennsylvania began fishing the area and embraced tying and using British dry fly patterns. Gordon went on to design the first dry flies to match American insects, including the Quill Gordon.

We started with a couple of prearranged float trips with guides out of Beaverkill Anglers, based in “Trout Town, U.S.A.”, Roscoe, NY. The float trips were interspersed with an afternoon spent wade fishing near the historic covered bridge on the Beaverkill, where there is a marker commemorating Theodore Gordon and noting it was one of his favorite fishing spots.

As was warned in guide books and by the folks in the fly shops, fishing the Delaware can be challenging. Unlike many Colorado rivers, where the fish are widespread, Delaware fish tend to gather in ever-changing locations. The guide is tasked with finding the fish and using the drift boat to get you to the spots where you can get out and wade. These fish are heavily pressured and very picky.

On the West Branch of the Delaware, we fished from noon to dark with large parachute or stimulator/ emerger combos and landed a few 12-15” trout each. I wish I could get a redo on the big one I broke off just as it was getting dark.

It was our guide, Ray Ottulich, who suggested we wade upstream from the covered bridge on the Beaverkill in order to beat the Saturday crowds. That proved to be good advice. We found plenty of trout in the shallow riffles and small pools eager to take small caddis flies and only saw one other fisherman, on our way out.

For our second guided trip, we fished a different section of the West Branch of the Delaware, just above the main stem and also moved into the main stem. These fish were much pickier and using a reach cast to get a dragfree drift was absolutely necessary. Turns out that while I’m pretty good at producing a slack line, I need to work on picking up all that line at just the right speed to set the hook. I got plenty of hits on the dry flies but only managed to land one trout. I thought I was too slow but our guide that day, Stefan Spoerri, said I was too fast. It would have been better to let the fish suck in the fly and head back down while lifting the rod just a bit more slowly. Timing is everything, right?

After three days fishing in the Catskills, we drove 4.5 hours north to Wilmington, north of Lake Placid, in the Adirondacks. Tourist tip: If in need of a meal and a beer in Albany, visit Albany Ale & Oyster. Terrific lobster rolls and beer selection.

In Wilmington, we stayed at the Hungry Trout Lodge and also used their guide service. Over the next two days, we wade fished three area rivers with our guide, Reed Atkinson. The first morning, we met Reed outside of town and followed him for about an hour to the Chateaugay River. Our guidebook (Flyfisher’s Guide to New York by Eric Newman) describes this river as “brawling” and Reed described it as being “full of fish and greasy boulders”. Both were correct. I found the wading to be tough but the fishing more than made up for it. We caught about 15 trout before lunch using size 8 to 10 Chubby Chernobyls over various large bead head nymphs. After lunch, we relocated to the Salmon River near the town of Malone, enjoyed the easy wading on a large, flat rock shelf and caught another 15 or so rainbows and browns.

The next day, we followed Reed to private property on the West Branch of the Ausable River. Unfortunately, this fabled and beautiful river no longer fishes up to its reputation. Trout habitat and populations have been negatively impacted by road salt runoff, phosphorus, excessive sedimentation, invasive species, aging infrastructure and warming temperatures. I netted only two fish over the next two days on different sections of the river. We noticed road signs indicating a ‘low salt zone’ for the stretch of Route 86 that parallels the river from Lake Placid to Wilmington and later learned this is an experiment by the New York Department of Transportation to reduce the run-off from winter deicing. If successful, the program will be expanded to other roadways to better protect the watershed.

We had flown into Buffalo and actually began our trip at Niagara Falls. The wading looked a bit challenging so we decided to stick to being tourists at that point. Tourist tip: Bring your passport and walk across the Rainbow Bridge to Canada. Spectacular views of the falls and, except for the four quarters you’ll need to get back in the U.S., it’s free.

Our next stop was the Finger Lakes region where I learned that in New York the rivers are for fishin’ and the lakes are for drinkin’…wine, that is. As smoke from Canadian wildfires thickened to the point of completely obscuring all lake views, we felt lucky to have planned indoor activities. Turned out those were to be the smokiest skies we encountered during our two week trip. Tourist tip: Check out the Corning Museum of Glass. Interactive exhibits, demonstrations, fantastic collections of art, artifacts and glassware.

All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed our grand tour of New York and look forward to doing another iteration in the hopefully not-too-distant future.