Ferorelli Enrico - Land of Little Rivers: a Story in Photos of Catskill Fly Fishing

Canterbury Creek , Asher B. Durand, oil on canvas, 1846 .

The Catskills are a well-watered mountainland compounded of Coopers tales and the Psalms of David, deep forests and green peaks, no lava flows, no vast sterilities of sand or ice. The holy of holies, however, has always been a quiet place. Let sublimity stun. The heart warms easier to serenely sloping ranges and the sweet-scented streams of mans oldest pursuit . T . MORRIS LONGSTRETH

Private collection, photograph courtesy Vose Galleries of Boston.

I zaak Waltons influence, said Patrick Chalmers, has made almost every poet a bit of a fisherman and, beyond a doubt, every fisherman a bit of a poet. Beautiful trout streams like those of the Catskills will do that to you; they have done exactly that not only to poets but also to countless painters, photographers, writers, and others of creative bent. We are fortunate that some of the best of these have been influenced by our mountains and little rivers, including the painters Worthington Whittredge, Asher B. Durand, Thomas Doughty, and writers like John Burroughs and T. Morris Longstreth.

The mass of the southern Catskills rises in ranged domes, which on that morning dropped into gulfs made pearl-gray by the mists of melting snow. Westward the chain that walls the valley toward Lexington wandered away until it grew soft with lilacs and lavenders .

T . MORRIS LONGSTRETH

Lower Beaverkill River .

Photograph by Kris Lee.

Long Eddy, Delaware River .

When the Indians chose Mountains of the Sky as the name for the refuge of Manitou, they did not mean the high sky, the empty and interminable blue. They meant the low, rich, all-brooding heaven that settles in between the ranges with its wash of gentian shades. They meant the cloud-heaps of pearl or ivory that west winds set adrift from their moorings in these mountains .

T . MORRIS LONGSTRETH

Dry Brook .

The bed of the stream has been scooped out of the solid rock. Here and there banks of sand have been deposited, and accumulations of loose stone disguise the real nature of the channel... there are other places where everything has been swept clean; nothing remains but the primitive strata, and the flowing water merrily tickles the bare ribs of mother earth. There are long, straight, sloping troughs through which the water runs like a mill-race... as if someone were pouring it very steadily out of a pitcher, and from which it glides away without a ripple, flowing over a smooth pavement of rock which shelves down from the shallow foot to the deep head of the pool . HENRY VAN DYKE

Fly Fishing , Worthington Whittredge, oil on canvas, 1866 .

But the prettiest thing was the stream soliloquizing in such musical tones there amid the moss-covered rocks and boulders. How clean it looked, what purity! An ideal trout brook was this, now hurrying, now loitering, now deepening around a great boulder, now gliding evenly over a pavement of green-gray stone and pebbles; no sediment or stain of any kind, but white and sparkling as snow-water, and nearly as cool . JOHN BURROUGHS

Courtesy Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York.

Peekamoose Gorge, Rondout Creek .

Then steal up the little gorge and sit at the foot of the thread of water that falls into the quiet bowl. The shrunken stream only whispers now, but in the stillness you can think back to the time when you heard it roaring. It seems now more likable, if less splendid. And the woods are thinking it all over. Leaves fall one by one, and here and there shafts of light shine down where the woods were lately dark. If you sit quite still you may see a thrush drink from the pool or hear the chirp of some passing bird. A red squirrel is busy on the upper bank, and the bell of the distant train tells you that there were once people here. Otherwise you have only the Falls and the weight of endless time .

T . MORRIS LONGSTRETH

Little Falls, Beaverkill River .

Enricos Zen Quartet .

Along the Beaverkill where I have fished for thirty-six years, there is a different wildflower show each week during the trout season. The trout fisherman who is unaware of this is missing half the fun .

VICTOR T . NORTON

Books by
Austin McK. Francis

A Company of Anglers
editor (1998)

Smart Squash II
(1994)

Sparse Grey Hackle
editor (1993)

Catskill Rivers
(1983)

Smart Squash I
(1977)

Catskill Flytier
coauthored with
Harry Darbee
(1977)

Below Kellams Bridge, Delaware River .

Beaverkill River, above Cooks Falls .

It was a Fall afternoonthe time of year when nature starts to weave her tapestry of glorious colors, creating purplish hues over the woodland, and scattering her seeds over the earth to begin a new cycle .