‘I am a very ordinary woman who has had an extraordinary life through the magic of fly fishing’
The legendary Joan Wulff: the ‘First Lady’ of fly fishing BY JUDY VAN PUT
ew people have the honor of being recognized by first name only. In the world of baseball, that name might be Derek (Jeter) or Pedro (Martinez)... but in fly fishing circles, if you mention the name “Joan,” it is Joan Wulff. Joan Salvato Wulff of Lew Beach has long been referred to as the “First Lady of Fly Fishing” – an honor justly earned, as in addition to her skills with a fly rod, she is especially gracious and accommodating, as a “First Lady” should be.
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Getting an early start
Her introduction to the sport fostered a love of fly fishing that began at about the tender age of five, and occurred while on a fishing trip with her parents at Greenwood Lake, which straddles the New York-New Jersey border. Her father was fishing bass bugs with a fly rod, while her mother rowed the boat. She was not particularly good at rowing, as her husband constantly admonished her, “Ina, you’re too close to the lily pads,” or “Ina, you’re not close enough to shore,” when suddenly a bass erupted from the lily pads to take his bug, and as Joan related, “some 80 years later I can remember the instant of that monstrous thing exploding up from the lily pads! Then Dad handed me the rod – and I just held it, feeling that living creature at the other end… I came out of that experience thinking it’s much better to be the fisherman than the rower! And so I am, all these years later.” Joan’s credits her father, Jimmy Salvato, with instilling in her the love of fly-casting as well. He ran a sporting goods establishment, Paterson Rod & Gun Store, in Paterson, New Jersey, and also wrote a fishing column. Involved with the Paterson Casting Club, he started to teach Joan’s brothers, Jimmy and Louie, how to cast – she was left out “because I was a girl.” And so one day she asked her mother if she could borrow her father’s fly rod before he came home for dinner, and went down to Oldham 10 • CATSKILL-DELAWARE, SPRING 2015
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Joan Wulff fishing the Willowemoc – the photograph captures her perfect form and beautiful tight loop of line extending above.
Pond and “waved it around, when the tip went into the water, which was about ten feet deep.” She ran home, frightened at what her father might say; fortunately a neighbor came by and fished the tip out of the pond, and when her father came home, “he was not angry with me, and allowed me to go with him to the Casting Club with my brothers.” She was about ten years old at the time.
Her first fish
The first fish she caught on a fly rod came on a fishing trip a couple of years later, with her father, on the Musconetcong River in northern New Jersey. She was fishing a dry fly, alone, and caught a rainbow trout. The excited youngster didn’t know what to do with the flopping fish when she took it off the hook because she had